Justin's Political Corner

Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin is leading or tied with the various Republican candidates in the Wisconsin Senate race, according to the new Quinnipiac poll.

Baldwin and former Gov. Tommy Thompson are tied at 47 percent each. Baldwin leads businessman Eric Hovde, 47 percent to 43 percent. Baldwin leads former Rep. Mark Neumann, 48 percent to 45 percent. And Baldwin is much further ahead of state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, 51 percent to 39 percent.

h/t: TPM LiveWire

FRIENDSHIP, Wis. — Rep. Tammy Baldwin stood in the Friendship Cafe, giving voters a populist pitch for why she should be elected to keep Wisconsin’s open Senate seat in Democratic hands, where it’s been for the last 55 years.

When she began to field questions, a 70-year-old retiree offered the first comment, and hit on one of the most difficult issues confronting Baldwin as she tries to break the Democrats’ recent losing streak in the battleground state.

For Baldwin, the first openly gay candidate elected to Congress, questions about her sexuality evoke her reputation as an unabashed liberal and a product of left-leaning Madison, and reinforce concerns about her viability in the more conservative parts of the state she’ll need to win the seat in November.

“I ran into all kinds of people who thought Obama was a Muslim,” said Davis, a Democratic activist from nearby Adams, adding that he’s worried Baldwin will struggle to get votes beyond Dane and Milwaukee counties, the more liberal parts of Wisconsin.

With Baldwin running unopposed in the Democratic primary, attention has been focused on the GOP field, where four Republicans are vying for their party’s nod to succeed retiring Sen. Herb Kohl, a Democrat. Leading the pack is former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who is trying to shake off accusations from his challengers that he’s not conservative enough while also positioning himself to win the general election in a state President Barack Obama won by 14 percentage points in 2008.

But she’s far less known in the rest of the state, where the party desperately needs to build support among swing voters. And Baldwin’s Democratic agenda will be tough to sell to a divided electorate that has repeatedly rejected many liberal ideals in the aftermath of the Great Recession. 

h/t: WaPo

Businessman Eric Hovde, who is seeking the Republican nomination for Senate from Wisconsin, said in an interview with The Hill that the presumptive Democratic nominee, Rep. Tammy Baldwin, is a Marxist.

“I fundamentally disagree with Tammy on almost everything. She has a more liberal voting record than almost anybody in Congress,” said Hovde. “Her philosophy has its roots in Marxism, communism, socialism, extreme liberalism — she calls it progressivism — versus mine, which is rooted in free-market conservatism.”

Hovde’s comments fit in with other recent comments from right-wing candidates, such as the declaration by Rep. Allen West (R-FL) that there were “78 or 81 members of the Democrat Party that are members of the Communist Party” — with West naming the Congressional Progressive Caucus as the subversive culprits.

h/t: Eric Kleefeld at TPM

WASHINGTON — Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde (R) says he is sick and tired of reading sad stories about people struggling in the recession. Instead, he wants to see the media focus more on the debt and the larger problems afflicting the country.

Then, pointing to a reporter in the audience, Hovde said he would love to see the press stop covering sad stories about low-income individuals who can’t get benefits and start covering issues like the deficit more frequently.

“I see a reporter here,” he said. “I just pray that you start writing about these issues. I just pray. Stop always writing about, ‘Oh, the person couldn’t get, you know, their food stamps or this or that.’ You know, I saw something the other day — it’s like, another sob story, and I’m like, ‘But what about what’s happening to the country and the country as a whole?’ That’s going to devastate everybody.”

In fact, journalists already give short shrift to stories about individuals struggling in the recession.

In May 2011, National Journal looked at the nation’s five largest newspapers and counted how many times “unemployment” or “deficit” appeared in their headlines or first sentences. The analysis found that unemployment was covered significantly less than the deficit.

Hovde, a Wisconsin businessman, is one of four candidates running for the GOP nomination for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat. The winner will face Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) in November.

h/t: Huffington Post

The Wisconsin Republican convention over the weekend saw a stunning result in the state’s other major election this year: In the vote on whether to endorse a candidate in the four-way GOP primary for U.S. Senate, former four-term Gov. Tommy Thompson came in an embarrassing third place.

Democratic Sen. Herb Kohl is retiring after four terms, and Wisconsin Democrats have already united around Rep. Tammy Baldwin as their presumptive nominee.

The state GOP endorsement in Wisconsin is not the same as the convention process in Utah or elsewhere, where the nomination itself is determined. In Wisconsin’s case, though, an endorsement from the convention would give a degree of official party support to a candidate, if he or she can reach a 60 percent threshold.

On the first ballot, former Rep. Neumann took 42 percent, state Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald 20.9 percent, Tommy Thompson 20.8 percent and businessman Eric Hovde 16.3 percent, the Capital Times reports. On the second ballot, after Hovde was eliminated, Neumann took 46.6 percent, Fitzgerald 35.2 percent and Thompson fell way behind with 18.2 percent — eliminating Thompson from consideration for the endorsement.

Now that Thompson actually is running, he has been targeted by the Club for Growth for being too moderate. Thompson must run in a Republican primary in the era of the tea party, where bucking establishment practices is rewarded and seniority is often derided.

Thompson still has one important element working in his favor: Support from the right wing could split among other candidates, giving him room to win a plurality among actual primary voters. But if nominations were decided solely by party activists, he would be out of luck.

h/t: Eric Kleefeld at TPM