Needless to say, California GOP gubernatorial frontrunner Meg Whitman has had a week she’d probably rather forget. After all, our own DK/R2K poll showed that despite a month of saturation level advertising, she still trails the in absentia campaign of Democrat Jerry Brown by four points. Of course, that came after her absurdly bad press availability in the Bay Area this week, where she got the “deer in the headlights” look when reporters began peppering her with questions, tagging off to her press aide who promptly ushered the reporters out of the room with great haste.

This “press event without the press” fed an already growing campaign narrative that Whitman is deeply fearful of finding herself in unscripted situations.

This will do little to disabuse people of that notion:

A funny thing happened when Camp Whitman was filming its 30-minute info-mercial last night in Orange County. Oh, besides stuff like covert filming by her opponents, cops being called, crowd screening and Meg goosing the audience for applause.

* * * * * *

The tickets to this “private” Meg event — which didn’t tell the ticket-holder that they were going to potentially be part of infomercial history — found their way into the hands of Whitman’s political opponents, both Democratic and Republican (of the Insurance Commish Steve Poizner variety.)

Somehow operatives from the two camps were giving off some sort of musk that told Team Whitman that they weren’t Meg’s type of people. The Poiz operative was told to stop filming. But before he did, he managed to get shots of Meg asking the crowd to make sure to applause loudly for her. “A lot of cheering would be good” she tells them.

The Democratic operative booted from the festivities was a Californian named Jeremy Thompson, who made the charge on his Twitter page that Team Whitman actually called the cops on him for being there, despite the fact that he had been invited to the event.

On its own, the incident probably would not amount to much embarrassment for the Whitman team. Stacking the crowd for a Town Hall is hardly political breaking news, nor is it a grand aberration for politicos or their subordinates to coach a crowd prior to cameras rolling.

But for a campaign that has already taken no small amount of heat for both secrecy, and for keeping their candidate in a hermetically sealed bubble, this was a gaffe targeted right at their Achilles’ Heel.

Jerry Brown, whose campaign as of the close of the year had spent less than Meg Whitman had on staff travel alone, has to be thanking his good fortune that the Whitman campaign is building this quite perilous narrative for their candidate without his help.

The 42-year-old mayor is best known for his approval of same-sex marriages at San Francisco’s City Hall in 2004. He dropped his gubernatorial campaign in October after being unable to find the same popularity throughout California tha…

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/8-10. Likely voters. MoE 4% (8/2-12/09 results)

Let’s start with the governor’s race:

Poizner is the ultra-conservative teabagger candidate in the race, and going nowhere, so we’re likely to get a Whitman/Brown matchup. Both those candidates are evenly matched in favorabilities, though the state’s Democratic tilt gives Brown a bit of a head start. The results are still a bit surprising, however. Brown has run the most invisible, stealth campaign, in state history. Seriously, the dude is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Whitman has spent tents of millions of dollars in her campaign, and is running on near saturation television ads:

The campaign’s Gross Rating Point report, measuring total delivery of the current week’s broadcast ad schedule in 11 markets in California, shows that eMeg’s buy is comparable to what a fully-loaded campaign might ordinarily deliver in the closing weeks of a heated race – not three months before a primary that she’s prohibitively leading.

“These are some big fuckin’ numbers,” said Bill Carrick, the veteran Democratic media consultant after reviewing the report. “She’s buying the whole shebang.”

While she may be the prohibitive favorite in the primary, it’s done little to bolster her general election standing. She’s gained just two points on Jerry Brown since last August. And remember, that’s against Brown’s invisible campaign.

Brown dominates in the Bay Area 61-22, while Whitman does best down South, around San Diego, 56-34. Independents split 41-40, with Brown with the small but statistically insignificant edge. 19 percent of independents remain undecided.

The biggest undecided block are African Americans, who break 66-6 for Brown, but with 28 percent undecided. Getting them out to vote will be key for Brown. Same with Latinos, who give Brown a 60-27 edge, with 13 percent undecided.

Brown may be 255 years old (give or take a decade), but voters over 60 go for Whitman 45-38. The Millennials  remain the strongest Democratic age group — 49-37 for Brown. They are also the least likely to vote. Thus Brown’s early edge is one built on a shaky foundation — strong support from the demographics least likely to turn out and vote. Whitman has been running a gaffe prone campaign thus far. If she gets her act together, this could be a real dogfight.

In the Senate race:

Boxer has the early edge, but she’s under the magical 50 percent safe mark. Fiorina and DeVore have terrible favorability numbers, leaving Campbell as Boxer’s most serious competition.

Of course, this is familiar territory for her. In 2004 — another strong GOP year — the scary accurate Field Poll had Boxer head just 48-38 in February of that year. Boxer didn’t break the 50 percent mark in that key California poll until May, and she never looked back. We’ll see if she can repeat history in this, yet another challenging year for Democrats.

Against Campbell, who runs strongest against her, Boxer dominates the bay Area (63-24) and leads 2-1 in LA County (58-28). The Central Valley and San Diego area, on the other hand, are problems. Also, like Brown, her strongest demographics are also those least likely to vote — young voters, African Americans and Latinos.

Still, Boxer starts off with the edge. And Campbell is nowhere near locking down his primary like Whitman. That contest appears to be anyone’s game, especially with 36 percent still undecided.

Update: Oops, sorry for the dead crosstabs. That page is now working properly.

During the Winter Olympiad out here in California, it became obvious that a big part of Meg Whitman’s strategy for getting elected Governor of California was going to be flooding the zone with ads, drowning out her opponents with her burgeoning bankbook.

Yesterday, Californians got another insight into Whitman’s recipe for victory in 2010: avoid unscripted situations with the press, even at the risk of looking completely ridiculous:

Reporters from Bay Area media outlets — TV, print and radio — turned up for Whitman’s advertised campaign stop in Oakland, where the former eBay CEO had announced a campaign stop and press event.

But once at the Union Pacific Railroad site, the assembled reporters were not allowed to view her tour — and herded into a holding room instead.

Then came the news that Whitman also wouldn’t take questions; reporters had been called in to “see” her make statements on “how she could be helpful as governor” on jobs and the economy, Whitman spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said.

Veteran reporters, who included KTVU’s Randy Shandobil and KPIX’s Hank Plante, were among the crowd that wasn’t amused. Question: is Whitman a candidate for governor, or a museum piece to be “watched” by reporters?

In case there was any doubt that the press did not take well to being reduced to the role of stenographers for the Meg 2010 campaign, check out this absolutely withering treatment of the event by the aforementioned Hank Plante of KPIX. The commentary by the anchors at the close of the video is particularly devastating:

(Notice that while the YouTube clip is merely a re-airing of the KPIX evening news segment on the Whitman event, it is being shopped around on Youtube cheerfully by the campaign of GOP rival Steve Poizner. They clearly know an opportunity when they see it.)

KPIX, not content with merely kicking dirt on Whitman for her campaign’s poor behavior during the press availability, portrayed it as part of a pattern, courtesy of a quip from Democratic consultant Dan Newman:

NEWMAN: She refuses to release her tax returns…refuses to release documentation about her flights on the corporate jet for personal purposes. She refuses to tell us what happened on the board of Goldman Sachs at that critical time.

The rationale given for Whitman’s refusal to take questions was an unyielding schedule. But the Chronicle’s Carla Marinucci was not so sure about the validity of that excuse:

Reason, we were told: Whitman was running late. But Whitman lingered for some time with railroad officials in the same room — just feet away from the press, who refused to leave. Finally, they were herded out, at which point Whitman’s campaign drew the blinds and put up a movie screen to block them from seeing the candidate.

Whitman did sit down to talk for 30 minutes with the Chronicle’s Republican op-ed columnist, Debra J. Saunders — but the rest were shut out.

California is on the DK/R2K polling calendar, with results coming soon. Given her multi-million dollar advertising blitz during the Olympics, it would be shocking to see Whitman leading Democrat Jerry Brown (who seems to be intent to become the first Governor elected without anyone actually knowing he is running for the job).

The question is: can Whitman maintain enough of a reservoir of goodwill with voters if she continues to refuse to speak to them beyond anything other than rehearsed press availabilities and 30-second/60-second advertisements?

DUBLIN, N.H. (AP)– A New Hampshire woman who was known as Granny D and walked across the country a decade ago to publicize the need for campaign finance reform has died. She was 100.

Spokeswoman Maude Salinger says Doris “Granny D” Haddock d…

Washington D.C. has just joined New Hampshire, Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut as jurisdictions that allow same sex marriage in the United States. According to CNN:

A lesbian couple together for more than a decade smiled through tears Tuesday as they became the first same-sex couple to marry in the District of Columbia, on the first day such unions are legal in the nation’s capital. Sinjoyla Townsend and Angelisa Young said they had waited years to marry. They were first in line last week to apply for a marriage license at Washington’s marriage bureau.

“You are my friend, my partner, my love,” Young, 47, told Townsend, 41. “I will love you today, tomorrow and forever.” After the wedding, those present cheered as the two women embraced and cried. They have been together for 12 years and have children, according to biographical information released by the Human Rights Campaign and D.C. Clergy United for Marriage Equality.

The new law survived a Supreme Court challenge. The measure went into effect last week, but couples had to hold off until Tuesday because of the district’s three-day waiting period. “We’re very excited,” Townsend said last week. She and Young were among

…

How else to explain this?

“If we want to talk about misleading advertising, we might look at Bill’s first ad,” [Lincoln campaign manager Steve] Patterson said. “It puts a football in his hands and highlights his humble roots when, in fact, he’s a multimillionaire who somehow talked labor unions into paying off a half-million-dollar campaign debt to himself with the union dues of their members so he can run for higher office.”

How is highlighting his humble roots misleading? Halter has humble roots. He played high school football. He graduated valedictorian of his high school class. He went to Stanford. Studied hard. Got a Rhodes Scholarship. Worked hard and smart. And he was successful, making a fair amount of money.

That’s the embodiment of the American Dream, someone who pulled himself up by his bootstraps. And Lincoln’s campaign manager somehow has a problem with it?

So maybe that’s the problem — Lincoln has deep distrust of those who rise above their station in life. But if that’s the case, her campaign should just say so, rather than come up with a bizarre rationalization why Halter’s ad is somehow “misleading”.

Incidentally, this is more of the Lincoln campaign’s effort to wedge Halter from progressive donors, like their bizarre effort to taint Halter on the public option. It’s just shocking how bad they’re at it.

They might want to give Plan B a shot, because this isn’t working too well.

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Update: Uh oh, just got a press release about Halter’s second ad. This one will REALLY piss off Lincoln:

This afternoon the Bill Halter for U.S. Senate campaign released its second television commercial, “Grocery”.  The ad, set in a local grocery store parking lot, highlights Bill Halter’s experience of earning a college scholarship by bagging groceries in high school.  In the ad, Halter also recounts his work to protect Social Security from privatization and his fight to create a scholarship lottery in Arkansas.

That ad will be totally misleading, because even though Halter bagged groceries in high school, he is now a successful businessman. And that’s deeply offensive to Blanche Lincoln. Apparently, he should’ve stayed poor.

Update II: Uh oh, Blue Aardvark in the comments has just predicted the Lincoln response to Halter’s second ad:

Arugula!

He bagged arugula!

Update III: Here’s the second ad:

Election prognosticator Charlie Cook (who I like and respect) has been quick to trash Democratic chances this November. Just a few short weeks ago, he said:

[It's} very hard to come up with a scenario where Democrats don't lose the House.

It was actually pretty easy to come up with a scenario where the GOP didn't pick up nearly 40 seats, but Cook --who in December 2007 was predicting Democratic gains of 2-7 House seats in 2008 when they won 21 --  was sticking to his guns.

It's not a new phenomenon -- the Beltway crowd is quick to pounce on perceived Democratic vulnerabilities, and slow to respond to Republican ones; just another facet of your liberal media at work. Still, it was a weird call for Cook to make, since Republicans would have to take out 33 incumbents to win back the House. As Chris Bowers notes, that is all but impossible:

In 2006 and 2008, Democrats won the national popular vote by 6.49% and 8.65% respectively.  Despite this, they still only defeated 37 Republican incumbents in those two years combined.   With Republicans nowhere close to that level of strength in the generic congressional ballot, it is still more likely than not that Democrats will retain control of the House.

The signs are certainly not there for a massive Republican wave. In fact, what early advantages Republicans have had appear to be receding:

For example, there's the new Ipsos poll for McClatchy newspapers:

Looking ahead to November's elections, 50 percent said they'd vote for Democratic candidates if the election were today, while 40 percent said they'd vote for Republicans.

The Pollster.com poll composite shows the two parties neck and neck:

But take out the crappy YouGov internet poll (which leans Democratic) and Rasmussen, and you get:

Rasmussen's numbers are single-handedly propping up the GOP, showing leads that no other credible pollsters shows. But even with Rasmussen's suspect numbers included, the trend is certainly up for Democrats.

That's not all. Republicans are losing top recruits, including this one from a swing D+2 district in Oregon:

Initially lauded by Republicans nationally as their best hope to win a House seat long held by Democrats, [Springfield, Oregon, Mayor Sid] Leiken faced an uphill battle against [Rep. Peter] DeFazio, a 24-year incumbent. Leiken did poorly in campaign fundraising; as of the most recent filings, DeFazio had at his disposal more than 100 times Leiken’s campaign cash.

Plus, observers said Leiken’s violation of Oregon campaign laws last year could have hurt him. Leiken paid a $2,250 fine for unlawfully converting $2,000 of his mayoral campaign money to personal use.

And Alabama Rep. Bobby Bright, a supposed goner considering he represents a district that is R+16, shows that, well, he’s not a goner:

A new poll conducted for Rep. Bobby Bright's (D-AL) campaign shows that while he may sit in a very vulnerable CD, he starts out in strong shape for re-election.

The survey, conducted by Anzalone-Liszt (D), shows Bright leading Montgomery Councilor Martha Roby (R), AL school board member Stephanie Bell (R) and businessman Rick Barber (R) handily. The survey was conducted 2/8-11, among 500 LVs; It has a margin of error of +/- 4.4%. The survey was first posted in the Montgomery Advertiser.

General Election Matchups
Bright    54%        Bright    55%
Roby      30         Bell      29

Bright    58
Barber    26

If Republicans can’t compete against the Bobby Brights of the party — freshmen congresscritters in tough Southern districts, or field top-tier candidates against the DeFazios in competitive swing districts, then their chances of massive national gains are all but nil.

Heck, even Cook seems to have noticed. Today, he made several race rating changes, including Bobby Bright’s:

Governors Ratings Changes

TX GOV    Lean R to Toss Up

House Ratings Changes

AL-02    Bobby Bright    Toss Up to Lean D

AR-01    OPEN (Berry)    Lean R to Toss Up

NC-08    Larry Kissell    Lean D to Likely D

I suspect we’ll be seeing more of this in the coming weeks. Democrats have suffered their nadir well in advance of November’s elections. Republicans like Jim Bunning have reminded voters of the GOP agenda. Health care reform is just weeks away from passing (yes, I’m an optimist), giving Democrats an epic and hard-fought victory, and Republicans continue to face severe funding gaps at all levels.

Their one advantage, the intensity gap, is in jeopardy as the teabaggers splinter and begin supporting either fringe or third-party challengers, and Democrats are starting to wake up (thanks Blanche!).

At this point, Democrats are still poised to suffer setbacks in November, but no chamber will change hands. Yet Republicans have so convinced themselves of their epic victory against “socialism,” that even incremental gains will shatter them. Their expectations have been set so high, aided by Cook and other analysts like him jumping the gun, that meeting them is an impossibility.

And therein lies our own motivation: We help build the firewall, protect our most valuable members, lose some of our (Blue Doggy) deadweight, play offense in some key places, and deny Republicans their triumph, and we’ve won the cycle.

Playing defense isn’t as glamorous as playing offense, but if we come out of it a more cohesive party, we’ve won, and if we shatter the GOP’s will in the process, so much the better.

The biggest obstacle Meg Whitman faces in her run for the governorship of California is not Jerry Brown. Her hurdle is the urban state press and the gray-beards among the political pundocracy who have set their minds against her.

Stunning. Blanche Lincoln’s first campaign ad is out, and the message is…Washington is filled with screaming children and Lincoln is at home among them? Lincoln is the grade school teacher you always hated? Lincoln is so wedded to the Party of No that she doesn’t just vote with them but can’t mention a single thing she’s for?

Nah, the real message is: Fuck you, Democratic establishment. You’re supporting me in this race and I’m glad to take any money and support you want to throw my way, but fuck you nonetheless. I’m not just going to vote against every major piece of legislation that matters to Democrats, I’m going to join the Republicans in preventing it from coming to an up or down vote.

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3 pm ET!

Bill Halter discusses his outsider campaign for U.S. Senate, telling Ed Schultz he supports making it easier for workers choose to unionize and coming out in favor of a public option in health care:

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When Halter released his announcement video, Lincoln responded:

I know that I am the target of both political extremes but that’s what makes this campaign so important to all of us. This Senate seat belongs to Arkansas, not to outside groups that are angry I don’t answer to them.

Of course, given Lincoln’s woeful favorability ratings in Arkansas (easily the worst in the country for any senator), it’s clear that it’s her constituents are angry.

So who is she answering to?

One of three Democratic senators who supports blocking U.S. EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants draws one of the highest amounts of campaign contributions from electric utilities.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) received $162,202 from utilities since 2005, placing her fifth overall for power plant money among senators seeking re-election this year, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Contributions from power companies came during a period where Congress has considered a number of sweeping climate and energy bills. Lincoln chairs the Senate Agriculture Committee and also sits on the Energy & Natural Resources and Finance committees, giving her votes on policies affecting rural electricity service, energy businesses and taxes [...]

“We support our friends,” said Patrick Lavigne, director of media and public relations for National Rural Electric Cooperative.

Sort of explains everything, doesn’t it? Lincoln’s camp is right about one thing:

Senator Lincoln is accountable to Arkansas voters alone.

According to the polling, Arkansas voters can’t wait to hold her accountable.

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Expect Blanche Lincoln to make much hay of “outside extremists” (us, labor unions, groups like the League of Conservation Voters) that are “meddling” in the race. For example, in her statement greeting Halter into the race, she said:

I know that I am the target of both political extremes but that’s what makes this campaign so important to all of us. This Senate seat belongs to Arkansas, not to outside groups that are angry I don’t answer to them.

Except, of course, “outside groups” only refer to groups friendly to Halter.

WASHINGTON – Sen. Blanche Lincoln has been getting large amounts of campaign dollars from Texas for her re-election fight this year and now a newspaper report explains why [...]

Through the end of 2009, Lincoln had received $345,558 in money from Texas, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research organization.

Hmm, Texas is outside Arkansas. In fact, 61 percent of her money come from outside of the state, with Washington DC and (gasp!) evil New York City making up the 2nd and 3rd biggest metro areas for her contributions.

If someone wants to pass a constitutional amendment banning out-of-state (or district) contributions for candidates to elected office, I’ll be game. Until then, I’d like the people as outraged by outside grassroots money to be just as outraged by outside corporate money.

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