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Update: An earlier version of this post spelled Justin Shalls name wrong.

Four years ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) was the favorite in a January special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D). She lost to a state senator named Scott Brown (R), the first siren that alerted Democrats nationally to an angry midterm electorate that year.

Now Coakley is running for governor, and Bay State Democrats are getting a sickening sensation of deja vu: Three reputable polling firms show Coakley statistically tied with businessman Charlie Baker (R) with less than four weeks to go before Election Day.

National party strategists on both sides started the year focusing on governors races in just a handful of mega-states: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now theyre dealing with a much larger electoral map, as voter unrest puts an unexpected number of gubernatorial contests in play and leaves Democrats on defense in states they ordinarily win.

Thats especially true in the Northeast, with Republican candidates performing surprisingly well in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut.

Voters are fed up with politicians at every level, say polls, whether in Congress or at the state house. This years midterm elections are likely to turn on voter anger directed at incumbents. In races without actual incumbents seeking re-election, political analysts say, voters can register dissatisfaction by casting ballots against the party they perceive to be in charge, even in states with overwhelming advantages for one party: no Republican has won an electoral vote from any of those four states since George H.W. Bush won Maryland and Connecticut in 1988.

In a state like Massachusetts, that works against Democrats. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is retiring after two terms with healthy approval ratings, but voters take a dim view of the Democratic-dominated state legislature. Republicans have had success in recent gubernatorial elections Patrick broke a 16-year streak of Republican control of the governors mansion when they are able to portray Democratic candidates as products of Beacon Hill.

People in this state, which is dominated by the Democratic Party, will look at the Republican candidate as a balance to the Democratic legislature, said Maurice Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

A Suffolk University poll conducted for the Boston Herald showed 51 percent of voters see Coakley as a Beacon Hill insider, while just 24 percent said she would be a reformer. Forty-six percent of those surveyed told Boston Globe pollsters in August that they preferred the governor and the legislative majority hail from different parties. Every one of the eight public polls released in the last two weeks has showed Coakley and Baker in a statistical tie.

In neighboring Connecticut, voters have the opportunity to weigh in with their views of Gov. Dannel Malloys (D) first term and they dont like what they see. Just 41 percent of voters and 36 percent of independents have a favorable view of Malloy, who stumbled over tax rebates he promised but failed to deliver, while 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Malloy is tied with former U.S. Ambassador Tom Foley (R) at 43 percent apiece, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, with an independent candidate taking 9 percent, in a state President Obama won with 58 percent of the vote.

Original post:
GovBeat: Amid voter anger, Democrats struggle to lock down Northeast governorships

Taxes, polls show, have historically been a better campaign issue for Republicans than Democrats. This year, Democrats appear to be testing that assumption.

Democrats are dominating television advertising about the topic, according to data compiled by Kantar Media Intelligences campaign media analysis group. Of 43,245 tax-related ads that aired in House races through the end of September, some 63% were backed by Democrats, the numbers show. The disparity was even starker in Senate races, where some 73% of tax-related television advertisements came from the Democratic side, leaving Republicans with just 27%.

The Democratic push to gain an edge on taxes may have gotten new momentum with the inversions issue. Over the summer, as Democrats started talking in highly political terms about tax inversions companies reincorporating overseas for tax purposes the issue appeared to give them a one-two punch: Labeling companies as tax dodgers gave them a populist message, and they could accuse Republicans in Congress of not acting on legislation to stem the practice. GOP lawmakersare pushing for a tax-code overhaul that would make the U.S. more attractive for businesses in the first place.

Now Democrats are extending the tax theme into the 2014 campaigns, trying to paint Republicans as the defenders of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Who will win the Senate? See the latest polls and enter our contest.

Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar, said one reason Democrats have been able to seize on the issue is that Republicans have avoided promoting it. Republicans really havent had that much to say about taxes, Ms. Wilner said. They dont have an agenda, at least not one that they are promoting in their ads.

The muted Republican tax message is notable because House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) last month said that fixing the tax code was a necessity in order for Congress to lay the groundwork for economic growth and mobility. While Republicans have pushed for a tax overhaul, neither party is likely to tackle such complicated and fraught legislation in an election year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp (R., Mich.) released an ambitious tax plan in February, but it quickly became clear that the GOP leadership would not rallying around it this year. Then Camp announced a month later that he was not running for re-election.

In the Senate, the tax-writing committee has also been in flux, as former Finance chairman Max Baucus, (D., Mont.) was appointed ambassador to China. His successor, Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) is eager to pass a tax overhaul. But Democrats are divided and the Senate leadership has shown little interest in the issue.

Republicans say that they are talking about taxes. Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, noted that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus last week gave a speech in which he said that overtaxing simply helps Washington D.C. Other Republicans have offered up tax plans, like to expand the child tax credit. If Democrats are running more tax-related ads, I have a feeling this has to do with us having a wealth of issues to talk about and them being fairly limited, she said.

Moreover, letting Democrats dominate the air war over taxes hasnt seemed to hurt Republicans in general. A September Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that Republicans had a four-point advantage over the Democrats when people were asked which party would be better in dealing with taxes.

See original here:
Democrats Test Waters, and Dominate Airwaves, With Tax Ads

Washington National Democrats plan to drop $1 million behind their candidate forSouthDakota'sopen Senate seat, for the first time signaling that political operatives consider the race winnable and part of their drive to defend the Senate majority.

The investment from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will primarily go to television advertising for Democratic hopeful Rick Weiland, who is in a tough race against former Republican Gov. Mike Rounds for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Running as an independent is former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.

Republicans are driving to gain six seats and the Senate majority. Rounds has been considered a favorite in the contest.

A businessman and onetime aide to former Sen. Tom Daschle, Weiland was not the national committee's preferred candidate in the race; they tried to recruit former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. But Weiland and Pressler have both stayed competitive, benefiting from Rounds' recent struggles and the complex, multicandidate race.

Rounds has come under scrutiny for a state-run federal program that let foreign investors earn green cards in exchange for investments in rural job-creating projects. TheSouthDakotaBoard of Regents announced Tuesday that a 2008 lawsuit brought againstSouthDakotarelated to the embattled EB-5 visa program has been dismissed and the state would not be liable for potentially millions in damages.

Democrats have sought to make the EB-5 program a political issue, accusing a Rounds appointee of costing the state money by dragging it into litigation. The lawsuit began while Rounds was serving as governor. Rounds' knowledge about the lawsuit has become an issue in the Senate campaign. He has said he was not personally aware of the lawsuit when it was filed, but Democrats have said he must have known.

Mayday PAC, a political action committee, said earlier this week it would spend another $1 million to back Weiland with TV ads.

Continue reading here:
Democrats plan last minute ad blitz in South Dakota

Bloomberg Pouncing on Pelosi: Some embattled Democrats are turning against the House minority leader.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) Here are five stories you should be reading Thursday.

Turning against Pelosi: House Republicans have company in attacking House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: some of her fellow Democrats. National Journal reports three Democrats running in GOP-leaning House districts have used late-stage television ads to distance themselves from the Californian. Both parties Republican and Democrat are to blame, says Gwen Graham, a top Democratic Party recruit, in a recent TV ad, as a photo of Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner flashes on the screen. The others are Rep. John Barrow of Georgia and Irv Halter, a House candidate in Colorado.

Fund shift: The Wall Street Journal reports House Democrats are pulling advertising money from 11 congressional races where hopes of victory are dimming. The races include several in Michigan, California and New York. In place of those races, theyre shifting cash to a half-dozen different contests where party leaders want to protect vulnerable incumbents or see solid odds of winning. The spending shift was confirmed by a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee aide, who said it involved a few million dollars.

Meanwhile, in South Dakota: South Dakotas Senate race was largely considered a lost cause for Democrats. But now, as the New York Times reports, with former Gov. Mike Rounds showing weakness in recent polls, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is aiming to make the race competitive. A committee official said a $1 million ad buy is planned in the state to boost the prospects of Rick Weiland, the Democrat running against Republican Rounds.

Sink the sequester: President Barack Obama used a visit to the Pentagon Wednesday to renew a call for freeing the military from the draconian budget strictures that would return in the next fiscal year under the so-called sequester. He said Congress must make sure that if were asking this much of our armed forces, that theyve got the equipment and the technology thats necessary for them to be able to succeed at their mission, Politico writes. Obama hasnt spoken much about the sequester since last years budget compromise relaxed the spending limits for two years. The restrictions will return in fiscal 2016, unless theres an agreement on averting them.

New Obamacare showdown? Roll Call reports a group of Senate Republicans have their eye on another Obamacare showdown when Congress returns for the post-election lame-duck session. The 14 Republicans, led by Marco Rubio of Florida, wrote a letter to House Speaker John Boehner urging him to prohibit the White House from spending money on an Obamacare taxpayer bailout. Thats a reference to a recent legal opinion that said extra funding authority would be needed to make payments to insurance companies under the risk-corridor component of the Obamacare health-insurance exchanges. The Republicans say taxpayers could be on the hook for bailing out insurance companies that suffer losses, Roll Call writes.

Originally posted here:
Capitol Report: Embattled Democrats turn against Nancy Pelosi

Message to Hong Kong Democrats - Prof. Larry Diamond
A message on October 1, 2014 to the peaceful demonstrators in Hong Kong advocating for universal suffrage, and to democrats around the world watching with he...

By: developingdemocracy

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Message to Hong Kong & Democrats - Prof. Larry Diamond - Video