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Representative Steve King (R-IA)

If Rep. Steve King enters the race for the open Iowa Senate seat he would start out as an early favorite in the Republican primary. A Wenzel Strategies poll found King would have a 15 point lead over Rep. Tom Latham in an eight-way contest. Similarly, Public Policy Polling found King with a large lead in every possible primary field combination they tested. From PPP:

We tested three different iterations of the GOP candidate field for next year, and King leads by at least 19 points in each one of them. In a four candidate scenario he gets 41% to 22% for Tom Latham, 10% for Kim Reynolds, and 9% for Bob Vander Plaats. In a three candidate field that doesn’t include Reynolds he gets 42% to 23% for Latham and 19% for Vander Plaats. And in a head to head with Latham he leads 50/27.

King’s substantial lead over Latham has a lot to do with his appeal to ‘very conservative’ voters- they prefer him by a 61/19 margin. But even with moderates King edges Latham 37/35. And it’s not really about name recognition- the 75% of primary voters familiar with King is only a little more than the 64% who know Latham.

While King is an early favorite among Republicans, his long history of extremely conservative stances and statements would be extremely problematic in a general election. PPP found King is trailing all potential Democratic candidates by a respectable margin.

Iowa could turn out to be an interesting test case to see if the Republican establishment is able to stop ultra-conservative primary winners from costing them control of the Senate. King could easy end up the 2014 equivalent of Todd Akin or Christine O’Donnell. Karl Rove has started a new group with the aim of stopping this problem, but it is still too early to see what if any impact it will make.

Photo by Gage Skidmore under Creative Commons License

Tagg Romney

This story in the Boston Herald perfectly demonstrates why it was so fortuitous for Democrats that Scott Brown decided not to run in the Massachusetts special election to replace John Kerry. According to the Herald some “heavyweight Republicans” are urging Tagg Romney to run.

Tagg Romney is considering a run in the special Senate election now that Scott Brown has opted out, the Truth Squad has learned.

Calls for Romney, 42, to join in the short campaign to replace Secretary of State John F. Kerry have increased since the Herald first reported heavyweight Republicans are urging both Romney and his mother, Ann, to get in.

The eldest son of former governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney already has statewide name recognition and could quickly ramp up the campaign infrastructure for a short, five-month race.

This is the same Tagg Romney that spent a year trying to convince the national Republican base that his father was conservative enough to carry the party’s banner. That is simply not going to play well in the most liberal state in the country. The campaign commercials would practically write themselves.

Brown actually had a real shot of winning. Polling found that he would have entered the race with a lead. But without Brown the Republican pool in the state is incredibly small and shallow. The fact that Tagg’s name is even being floated in rumors highlights just how shallow.

Scott Brown

Democrats got a piece of very good news this afternoon when former Sen. Scott Brown (R) decided he will not run in the special Massachusetts election to replace John Kerry. Multiple news sources are reporting Brown will sit out the special election. Without Brown in the race Democrats’ chances of keeping the seat have improved significantly.

Despite recently losing to Elizabeth Warren (D), Brown remains popular in the state. He continues to have strong approval ratings and two recent polls both found that if Brown had entered the race he would have started with a lead over the Democrat Ed Markey. He was widely seen as the GOP’s best hope for taking the seat.

Several other Republicans have shown interest in a possible run but it is unlikely that any other Republican candidate will stand nearly as good a chance of winning. Massachusetts is one of the bluest states in the country and it will be difficult for any Republicans to win statewide.

Republican House members have little personal political incentive to back immigration reform. More than half of House Republicans represent districts that are more than 80 percent white and unless an individual is directly or indirectly touched by the issue they are unlikely to see it as a top priority. According to Pew Research immigration reform [...]

The governor officially setting the Massachusetts special Senate election for June 25th has spurred Rep. Stephen Lynch (D) to finally make a decision. Today Lynch announced that he will run in the special election to replace John Kerry, launching his campaign with a Youtube video asking for volunteers. The video highlights his working class background [...]

Something historic happened yesterday. Thanks to the interim Senate appointment of William ‘Mo’ Cowan in Massachusetts the United States Senate will for the first time ever have two African-Americans serving together, but only for a few months. This will bring African-American representation in the Senate to a historic 2 percent, even though they make up [...]

Today, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) named William ‘Mo’ Cowan as the interim Senator for the state. Cowan previously worked as Deval’s chief of staff and will be one of the few African Americans to have ever served in the United States Senate. Cowan was named to temporarily replace John Kerry who recently left the [...]

Former Democratic Senator Russ Feingold is apparently not pulling any punches as the founder of Progressives United. In an email to supporters about the Amgen subsidy in the fiscal cliff deal, Feingold called out Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) by name for being part of the corruption that permeates government.

Over the weekend Tom Harkin surprised the political world by announcing he will not run again in 2014. He announced his retirement just days after the Senate Democrats failed to reform the filibuster, which has been a long term goal of Harkin’s. When Democrats chickened out Harkin said President Obama “might as well take a four-year vacation” because Senate Democrats effectively killed any chance of advancing his agenda.

It is possible that President Obama has handed Republicans a Senate seat by nominating Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) to be Secretary of State. If former Senator Scott Brown (R) decides to run in the special election he would start off with a large lead over the likely Democratic nominee Ed Markey, according to a new [...]

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