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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.
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn will resign at the end of current Congress
Coburn’s decision triggers second Senate election in the state this fall
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
WASHINGTON (CFP) — Republican U.S. Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma says he will leave office at the end of the year, triggering an election in November for the remaining two years of his term.
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn
Coburn, 65, has been battling a recurrence of prostate cancer. But he said in a statement that “this decision isn’t about my health, my prognosis or even my hopes and desires.”
“My commitment to the people of Oklahoma has always been that I would serve no more than two terms,” said Coburn, who was elected to the Senate in 2004 and re-elected in 2010. “Our founders saw public service and politics as a calling rather than a career.”
“I am now convinced that I can best serve my own children and grandchildren by shifting my focus elsewhere.”
Because Coburn is staying until the end of the year, his replacement will be selected by the voters, rather than by gubernatorial appointment.
The state’s other Senate seat, held by Republican James Inhofe, is also up for election in 2014. Inhofe is seeking a fourth full term.
Coburn’s decision will likely set off a scramble among Republicans for his seat. U.S. Reps. Tom Cole of Moore, James Lankford of Oklahoma City and Jim Bridenstine of Tulsa are being mentioned, as is Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt.
Given Oklahoma’s Republican tendencies, a Democratic pickup of Coburn’s seat would seem unlikely. A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate race in the Sooner State since 1990.
Coburn was an obstetrician in Muskogee when he entered politics by capturing a U.S. House seat in the Republican wave of 1994, winning in the 2nd District, which at the time was a Democratic bastion in the northeast corner of the state.
In 1997, he was part of a group of conservative House Republicans that led an ultimately unsuccessful coup to oust then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, earning him the ire of many GOP colleagures.
He didn’t seek re-election in 1998, abiding by a pledge he made to serve no more than two terms.
In 2000, Coburn returned to politics by winning U.S. Senate seat vacated by retiring Democratic Senator Don Nickles and was easily re-elected in 2010 with 70 percent of the vote. He had already said he would not run again in 2016 because of his self-imposed two-term limit.
In the Senate, Coburn has been a determined foe of wasteful government spending. Each year, he publishes a Wastebook, which highlights the more “egregious” examples of federal pork.
Coburn has faced serious medical issues, starting with melanoma as a young man before he went to medical school. He has also had colon cancer and had a benign brain tumor removed in 2007.
In November, he disclosed that he was being treated for a recurrence of prostate cancer. In January, he told Politico that he felt he was still strong enough to finish out his term, despite undergoing chemotherapy, but that health issues might force him to leave early.
GOP operative Ed Gillespie announces bid for Virginia U.S. Senate seat
Gillespie, the former head of the Republican National Committee, takes aim at U.S. Mark Warner’s vote for Obamacare
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedp0litics.com editor
RICHMOND (CFP) — High-powered Republican political operative Ed Gillespie is off and running for the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia with a direct swipe at Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Warner’s vote in favor of Obamacare.
Virginia Senate hopeful Ed Gillespie
Announcing his Senate run January 16 with a YouTube video, Gillespie, a top aide in the Bush White House and the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, notes that Warner “cast the deciding vote” for Obamacare, adding, “If I were a Virginia senator, it would not be law today.”
However, adding a bit of nuance to his argument, Gillespie says he would replace Obamacare, rather than saying he would repeal it.
In his announcement video, Gillespie highlights his first job in Washington — working as a parking lot attendant in the Senate while working his way through Catholic University of America.
“I’m running for the Senate because the American dream is being undermined by policies that move us away from constitutional principles of limited government and personal liberty,” says Gillespie, who also hits Warner for voting for “nearly $1 trillion in new taxes and $7 trillion in new federal debt.”
The president’s signature healthcare bill passed in 2009 with 60 votes, the minimum required to get around a GOP fililbuster. Republicans running in 2014 against Democratic senators who voted for the bill are all being tagged with casting the deciding vote.
Though he has never held elected office, Gillespie, 52, is a consummate Washington insider. He was a communications strategist for President George W. Bush’s winning campaign in 2000 and went on to serve as head of the RNC and a White House counselor.
In April 2012, after Mitt Romney was finally able to claim the Republican presidential nomination, he signed on as a senior adviser to the Romney campaign.
Gillespie also has a long association with Karl Rove, the Bush political consigliere who has frequently drawn the ire of the party’s Tea Party wing. He held Rove create Crossroads GPS, the super-PAC that has backed establishment candidates facing Tea Party insurgencies.
Gillespie’s entry into the Senate race sets up a class establishment-versus-Tea Party struggle within Republican ranks in the Old Dominion. Two former military officers, Howie Lind of McClean and Shak Hill of Centreville, are already in the race, running as outsiders and seeking Tea Party support.
Unlike in most states, Republicans in Virginia select their nominees with a party convention, rather than a primary. That could level the playing field for an outsider candidate who can develop a strong cadre of supporters to turn out at the convention, which will be held in June in Roanoke.
Lind’s campaign is touting the results of a “grassroots voter contact program” which it says shows Lind with substantially more support than either Gillespie or Hill. The campaign also says it has already raised $300,000 for the race.
U.S. Senator Mark Warner
Whoever wins the GOP nomination will face the formidable Warner, 59, a former governor and self-made millionaire who already has more than $7 million in cash on hand for the 2104 race — a huge head start over any of the Republicans in the field.
Both The Rothenberg Political Report and Cook Political Report classify Warner’s seat as safely in Democratic hands. Obama carried Virginia twice, and Democrats swept all three of the state’s top offices in the 2013 elections for the first time since 1969,
In a curious parallel to Gillespie, Warner also worked his way through The George Washington University at the Senate, although as an aide rather than as a parking lot attendant.
View Gillespie’s YouTube announcement:
Field set for bellweather U.S. House race in Florida
Republican David Jolly wins primary and will face Democrat Alex Sink in March 11 special election in the 13th District
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (CFP) — Republican lobbyist David Jolly has defeated two other GOP rivals to claim his party’s nomination for the open 13th District U.S. House seat in Florida, which Democrats have high hopes of capturing in a March 11 special election.
GOP nominee David Jolly
Jolly, 41, won 45 percent of the vote in the January 14 primary, beating out Florida State Rep. Kathleen Peters and retired Marine Corps General Mark Bircher. He will now face Democrat Alex Sink in the special election to replace the late U.S. Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young, who died in October.
The district, which takes in most of Pinellas County, including St. Petersburg and Clearwater, is one of just three House seats in the South that President Barack Obama carried in 2012.
Democrats have high hopes that Sink, the party’s nominee for governor in 2010, will be able to flip the seat, which Young, an institution in Tampa Bay-area politics, had held since 1970.
Jolly is a former aide to Young, who left Capitol Hill to become a lobbyist. Peters made his lobbying an issue during the campaign, painting him as a Washington insider.
The race also divided Young’s family. His widow, Beverly, supported Jolly, but his son, Bill Young II, backed Peters.
Bircher had the support of Allen West, a Tea Party favorite and former congressman from Palm Beach County.
Peters came in second, with 31 percent; Bircher, third, with 24 percent.
Democratic nominee Alex Sink
Sink, 65, a former bank executive, was elected as Florida’s chief financial officer in 2006. In 2010, she ran for governor, narrowly losing to Republican Rick Scott.
Earlier this year, Sink decided against a rematch with Scott but decided to for the 13th District seat after Young’s death, even though at the time she lived outside the district in neighboring Hillsborough County.
Despite parachuting into the district, Sink avoided a primary fight after St. Petersburg attorney Jessica Ehrlich dropped out of the race and other Pinellas Democrats opted not to run.
Given Obama’s victory in the district, and the fact that Sink carried Pinellas County in her race for governor, Democrats are hoping to make a pickup.
The outcome in such a closely divided bellweather district may be an early indication of how much problems with the rollout of Obamacare have hurt Democrats ahead of the 2014 elections.
North Carolina governor decides to leave House seat vacant for nearly a year
Governor Pat McCrory says holding a special election for vacant 12th District seat would be too costly and inefficient
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
RALEIGH (CFP) — Democratic leaders and the NAACP in North Carolina are crying foul after Republican Governor Pat McCrory announced that no separate election will be held to fill the 12th District seat of former U.S. Rep. Mel Watt, who resigned January 13.
N.C. Governor Pat McCrory
Instead of separate election, voters in the majority-minority district will pick Watt’s replacement at the same time they decide on their next congressman during the normal 2014 election cycle.
As a result, the strongly Democratic district will have no representation until at least November, leaving the seat vacant for more than 300 days.
State NAACP President William Barber blasted McCrory’s decision, calling it “undemocratic political bullying.”
“Taxation without representation is a form of tyranny,” Barber said in a statement. “Surely there can be a fair formula worked out to ensure that all the people of the 12th District will have their voice heard in this historic session of Congress.”
Two Democratic members of the state’s House delegation, U.S. Reps. David Price and G.K. Butterfield, also called on McCrory to reconsider, saying the decision not to call a special election is “unprecedented in recent congressional history.”
“The assumption that North Carolina is better served by having one less advocate in the House for nearly a full year than by finding a cost-effective way to minimize the vacancy is seriously misguided,” the congressmen said in a letter to the governor.
“The fact that your decision requires so many of our state’s citizen’s to forgo their constitutionally guaranteed right of representation for twice as long as common practice is indefensible.”
The U.S. Constitution mandates that any vacancies in the House be filled by special election, unlike the Senate, where governors can make replacements until the next general election.
Article One, Section Two reads: “When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.”
McCrory is actually calling a special election to fill the vacancy, but it will be held simultaneously with the primary and general election that would normally be held.
Under McCrory’s timeline, primaries for both the vacant seat and the general election will be held on May 6, with runoffs, if needed, on July 15. On November 4, voters in the district will decide both who will replace Watt immediately and who will take the seat when Congress convenes next January.
Presumably, different candidates could run in those separate elections, although that would seem unlikely.
Price and Butterfield noted that six vacancies during the current session of Congress have been filled by special election within an average of 126 days. After the late U.S. Rep. C.W. “Bill” Young of Florida died in October, it took only 145 days until the state held a primary election to pick his replacement on January 14.
But McCrory said that having a separate election to fill the seat sooner would cost the state more than $1 million.
“Because of the various filing deadlines, ballot preparation time, state and federal calendar requirements for ballot access, voter registration deadlines and to avoid voter confusion, it was determined the most efficient process would be to roll the special election into the already established primary and general election dates,” McCrory said in a statement announcing his decision.
The 12th District snakes across six counties in the central part of the state from Charlotte to High Point, including parts of Greensboro and Winston-Salem. It was created after the 1990 U.S. Census as a majority-minority district under the Voting Rights Act and is about 45 percent black and 7 percent Latino.
President Obama took nearly 79 percent of the vote in the district in 2012.
Former U.S. Rep. Mel Watt
Watt, 68, who has held the seat since it was created, resigned after being appointed by Obama to head the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
McCrory’s decision comes on the heels of a racially charged debate last summer over a new state law requiring voters to show identification at the polls. Republicans pushed through the law after taking control of the General Assembly in 2012.
The U.S. Justice Department has since sued the state to block the voter ID law from taking effect.
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