Republicans take Democratic seats in Arkansas, North Carolina and West Virginia without losing any of their own

♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor

ELECTION CENTRAL (CFP) — Southern Republicans are jubilant after voters in the midterm elections gave them three Democratic seats and forced another into a December runoff, helping to usher in a GOP majority in Washington.

Republicans managed to make those gains without losing either of their two seats that were in jeopardy, in Kentucky and Georgia.

With those losses, the number of Democrats representing Southern states was cut from eight to three, with two Democrat-held seats still undecided in Louisiana and Virginia.

In West Virginia, U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito defeated her Democratic challenger, Secretary of State Natalie Tennant, by a margin of 62 percent to 39 percent. The seat opened with the retirement of Democratic U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller.

U.S. Senator Kay Hagan

In North Carolina, Democratic U.S. Senator Kay Hagan lost narrowly to Republican State House Speaker Thom Tillis, taking 47 percent to Tillis’s 49 percent

In Arkansas, the GOP challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, defeated the incumbent Democrat, U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, by double digits, 57 percent to 39 percent.

Likewise, in Kentucky, Democratic hopes of knocking off Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell went up in smoke when McConnell defeated Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes by a margin of 56 percent to 41 percent.

With Republicans taking control of the Senate, McConnell will become the new Senate majority leader.

In Louisiana, the Senate race is headed for a December 6 runoff between the incumbent, U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, and her closest Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Bill Cassidy. Landrieu came in at 42 percent, with Cassidy right behind at 41 percent. An outright majority was needed to avoid a second round of voting in the state’s all-party “jungle” primary.

U.S. Senate nominee David Perdue

Despite pre-election polls that showed a tight race in Georgia, Republican David Perdue had an surprisingly easy time defeating Democrat Michelle Nunn. Perdue captured 53 percent compared to 45 percent for Nunn.

In the surprise of the night, U.S. Senator Mark Warner nearly lost to Ed Gillespie, the former head of the Republican National Committee.

Though Warner’s lead was just 17,000 votes, out of more than 2.1 million cast in the Old Dominion, Gillespie decided not to ask for recount, saying he was unlikely to prevail.

Elsewhere across the South, Republican incumbents cruised to re-election victories in Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, with the GOP holding a second open seat in Oklahoma.

Attorneys for U.S. Senator Thad Cochran want judge to dismiss McDaniel’s suit because it was filed too late

♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor

JACKSON, Mississippi (CFP) — State Senator Chris McDaniel’s legal challenge to results of his June 24 GOP U.S. Senate primary runoff loss in Mississippi will begin September 15, a state judge has ruled.

State Senator Chris McDaniel

In an August 21 order, Hollis McGehee, the retired judge appointed to hear McDaniel’s challenge, said the trial must be completed by October 3 — three weeks after the state’s deadline for printing ballots for the November election. The trial will be held in Jones County, where McDaniel lives and where his suit was filed.

McDaniel went to court to overturn the results of the runoff, asking McGehee to either declare him the U.S. Senate nominee instead of incumbent U.S. Senator Thad Cochran or order another vote. Certified results from the runoff show Cochran beating McDaniel by 7,667 votes.

But attorneys for Cochran are asking McGehee to dismiss the case, saying that McDaniel missed a 20-day deadline to go to court to overturn the election. The judge has set a hearing on Cochran’s motion for August 28.

McDaniel led Cochran in the first round of voting on June 3. But after making direct appeals to Democratic and independent voters to cross over and vote in the runoff, Cochran erased McDaniel’s lead and won by 7,667 votes — a move that enraged McDaniel’s supporters.

About 67,000 more people voted in the runoff than in the primary, and in Hinds County — which includes the predominantly black city of Jackson — Cochran’s margin of victory was 11,000 votes, nearly double what it was in the first round.

State law only allows voters to cross over to vote in the Republican runoff if they didn’t vote in the Democratic primary in the first round. McDaniel’s attorney, Mitch Tyner, has said there were at least 3,500 crossover votes that should not have been allowed.

Tyner also maintains another 9,500 votes were “irregular,” and 2,275 absentee ballots were improperly cast. Those votes, together, are more than Cochran’s margin of victory.

McDaniel went to court after the executive committee of the Mississippi Republican Party declined his request to overturn the results of the runoff and declare him the winner.

U.S. Senator Thad Cochran

The bitter Senate race in Mississippi pitted Cochran and the state’s Republican establishment against Tea Party activists and outside conservative groups — such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth — that strongly backed McDaniel.

Cochran was one of five Southern Republican senators targeted in primaries this year. All five survived.

If Cochran survives the legal challenge, he will face former Democratic U.S. Rep. Travis Childers in November.

Senators Landrieu, Pryor and Hagan are still hanging on, despite the political winds against them.

♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics. editor

The latest poll in the 2014 Arkansas U.S. Senate race showed the Democratic incumbent, U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, with a small but statistically insignificant lead over his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton. Recent polls in Louisiana and North Carolina also show Senate races in those states neck-and-neck.

So is Pryor’s glass half full or half empty? And ditto for Democratic Senators Mary Landrieu in Louisiana and Kay Hagan in North Carolina?

Yes, their votes in favor of Obamacare have proven politically toxic, and they’ve already been blasted with millions of dollars in negative ads. And yet, despite the headwinds blowing against them, they’re still standing.

So the question is, can their opponents really do anything between now and November to make these senators even less popular than they are now? Or has their unpopularity reached a floor through which it cannot fall?

In Arkansas, where I live, the negative ads have reached such a saturation point that they’ve become annoying background noise. The attacks have become monotone: Cotton is a politician we just can’t trust. Pryor is part of the sinister Obama-Pelosi-Obamacare cabal. And yet, this race hasn’t budged from where it was in October.

The problem for Cotton, and for Republican challengers in North Carolina and Louisiana, could be that most of the voters who can be persuaded to dislike Pryor, Hagan and Landrieu have already been persuaded to vote against them. And this still hasn’t put the Republicans in the lead.

Of course, all of these senators are much weaker politically than incumbents usually are, and they are running in states that Mitt Romney carried in 2012. The fortunes of Hagan and Landrieu may also rise or fall on who wins the Republican Senate primaries in their states.

But given all of the factors arrayed against Pryor, Hagan, and Landrieu, the fact that they aren’t behind at this point could bode well for their ultimate survival.

The new ad ties Democrat Mike Ross to President Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitcs.com editor

LITTLE ROCK (CFP) — The first attack ad in the 2014 Arkansas governor’s race is a salvo from the Republican Governors Association painting former U.S. Rep. Mike Ross, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as a free spending liberal in the mode of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.

Democratic nominee Mike Ross

The ad, entitled “Trillions,” started airing in heavy rotation in the Natural State on February 11. The RGA hasn’t said how much money it plans to spend, but the ad is clearly an effort to stop the well-funded Ross from building momentum while Republicans are fighting it out in a three-way primary.

In the ad, pictures of Ross are seen alongside Obama and Pelosi the House Democratic leader, noting that the national debt rose to $10.7 trillion during Ross’s time in Congress.

The RGA criticizes Ross for voting for the TARP rescue plan and the bailout of the auto industry, as well as supporting increases in the debt limit.

The tagline is that Ross, Obama and Pelosi have “trillions of things in common, all of them wasted.”

The irony is that when Ross was in Congress, the Blue Dog Democrat was often criticized by liberals back home for not being sufficiently supportive of the Democratic agenda in Washington, most notably his vote against Obamacare.

Ross has already been up on TV for the past two months, starting with an ad in which he was endorsed by popular Democratic Governor Mike Beebe, who is term limited.

Ross, 52, from Prescott, represented southern and western Arkansas in Congress from 2001 to 2013. He faces no primary opposition and has raised more than $3.6. million for the race.

That’s more than all of his three GOP opponents have raised combined. None of them have begun television advertising.

On the Repubican side, former U.S. Rep. Asa Hutchinson is battling Little Rock businessman Curtis Coleman and State Rep. Debra Hobbs of Rogers for the nomination.

Given that Obama lost Arkansas in 2012 by a staggering 23 points, the RGA’s strategy of linking Ross to the president is understandable. However, Arkansas voters tend to behave much differently in state and federal elections.

While the state’s entire congressional delegation is in Republican hands, Democrats still hold the governorship and most of the other statewide elected offices. While the GOP controls the state Senate, it has but a thin one-vote majority in the state House.

View the RGA’s ad against Ross:

Gallup finds that in all five Southern states with competitive 2014 Senate races, Obama’s approval rating falls below 50 percent

♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor

WASHINGTON (CFP) — Incumbent Southern Senate Democrats fighting to stay in office in 2014 are facing a strong headwind — President Barack Obama’s weak approval ratings across the region.

President Barack Obama

In the four Southern states with competitive Senate races now held by Democrats — Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas and West Virginia — Obama’s approval rating falls below 50 percent — in some cases, well below, according to polling from the Gallup organization.

The worst news for Democrats comes in West Virginia, where just 25 percent of voters approval of Obama’s performance, and Arkansas, where the figure is a tad under 35 percent.

Voters in only one state — Wyoming — have a more negative view of Obama than West Virginians, where Republican U.S. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is hoping to capture a Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller.

In Arkansas, Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Pryor is facing a stiff challenge from GOP U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton.

The news for Democrats is somewhat better in Louisiana, where Obama’s approval is at 40 percent, and North Carolina, where it is at 43 percent. Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senators Mary Landrieu and Kay Hagan are seeking re-election in those states.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, where Democrats have high hopes of knocking off Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, Obama’s approval rating is a weak 35 percent.

Over in Virginia, where Republicans think they have an outside chance of defeating Democratic U.S. Senator John Warner, Obama’s approval stands at about 46 percent, about what it is nationwide.

In none of the 14 Southern states is Obama’s approval rating above 50 percent. He performs best in Florida, at just under 47 percent, and Virginia — the only two Southern states that Obama carried in both 2008 and 2012.

Gallup’s results are based on more than 178,000 daily tracking interviews conducted nationwide in ut 2013. Each state’s sample had a minimum of 500 respondents; Gallup interviewed at least 1,000 residents in 40 states.