Tag: republican primaries
Christie Struggles In Polls, Even In New Jersey

Christie Struggles In Polls, Even In New Jersey

by The Record (Hackensack, N.J.), (TNS)

HACKENSACK, N.J. — New Jersey voters do not want to see Gov. Chris Christie run for president, but if he does, he should resign and not be a governor and candidate at the same time, a poll released Thursday said.

Voters also appear to favor Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton over Christie, a two-term Republican, according to the Quinnipiac University poll.

Exactly half of the registered voters polled by Quinnipiac University said Christie should not run for president, while 44 percent said he should.

The poll also said that New Jersey voters, by 49 percent to 43 percent, do not believe the nation is ready for a “Jersey guy,” like Christie, to be president.

And in a matchup with Clinton, Christie would lose to her in New Jersey by 50 percent to 39 percent, the poll said. Clinton was the only potential presidential candidate in the poll who showed a favorable rating.

“Even Jersey guys, actually Jersey girls, don’t think the nation will go for a Jersey guy like Gov. Christopher Christie,” said Maurice Carroll, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

“Besides that, we’d sooner vote for the girl from New York, Hillary Clinton. She beats all the probable Republican candidates, including the governor. He does better than the other Republicans, but he still loses his home state.”

Christie did win two elections in New Jersey, the last by an overwhelming margin. But that was in an election that saw significantly low turnout and an opponent who drew little support.

Presidential elections tend to draw a much larger pool of voters, which in New Jersey tend to lean more toward Democrats.

Another survey released Thursday also showed poor results for Christie.

The annual Business Outlook Survey conducted by the Trenton-based New Jersey Business & Industry Association said 57 percent of employers gave Christie a favorable rating. But that is a steep drop from the 74 percent rating from the year before in the same survey, an approval rating similar to one for most of his tenure in this poll.

If Christie does run for president — and he has said he is considering that possibility and will announce a decision in the coming months — an even larger margin of those surveyed said he should resign as governor if he becomes a candidate.

Sixty-two percent of voters polled said that he should leave the State House, compared with 32 percent who said he should not.

Christie has told his staff and potential donors that if he does run for president, he won’t leave the governor’s office.

That raises a fundraising issue for the governor because of federal Securities and Exchange Commission rules that prohibit employees of financial firms that do business, or may seek to do business, with a state government from donating to a sitting governor.

If Christie runs, he stands to benefit from political action committees and issues-based nonprofits, which do not face the same SEC prohibitions and can accept money from the financial sector and spend it on efforts in support of the governor.

But if he does become president, 53 percent of those surveyed said Christie would not make a good president, with 40 percent expecting him to do well. A majority of Republicans, 70 percent to 21 percent, of those surveyed disagreed and said Christie would be a good president.

The survey, conducted from Dec. 3 through Monday, included 1,340 registered voters and had a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Endorse This: Ben Carson And The Fingers Of God

Endorse This: Ben Carson And The Fingers Of God

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Right-wing personality du jour Ben Carson says he’s starting to “feel fingers” from a very special supporter, grabbing at him to run for president in 2016.

Click above to watch a clip of Carson, during an appearance on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network — then share this video!

Video via The Brody File/CBN News.

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Mississippi Republican Senate Primary Too Close To Call

Mississippi Republican Senate Primary Too Close To Call

By Lisa Mascaro, Tribune Washington Bureau

(MCT) WASHINGTON — Republican Thad Cochran, the genteel Southerner who has represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate for nearly half of his life, battled for his political future against Tea Party upstart Chris McDaniel in a race that was too close to call late Tuesday.

The conservative state emerged as the most competitive — and brutal — of the primary season, which has largely played out on the Republican side of the aisle as hard-right candidates try to topple establishment favorites. If neither top candidate clears 50 percent, which was possible, the race is headed for a runoff this month.

“Go out and vote,” implored the McDaniel team on Twitter as the polls were about to close.

“One hour left,” tweeted Cochran’s campaign.

Republicans are favored to keep the seat in November against Democrat Travis Childers, who easily won his party nomination Tuesday. The GOP needs a net gain of six seats elsewhere to take Senate control from Democrats.

Cochran, who ran his campaign simply as “Thad,” enjoyed goodwill from the GOP establishment, which wrapped the senator in a cloak of endorsements and warned voters against dumping a senator with so much seniority in Washington.

But the Republican Party has changed dramatically since white-haired 76-year-old Cochran first won office, and he faced enormous odds against the charismatic McDaniel, a conservative who gave small-government groups their best shot at a win after several high-profile primary season losses.

A state senator who models himself after firebrand Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), McDaniel portrayed Cochran’s record of delivering much-needed federal dollars to the impoverished state as a liability in this era of Tea Party conservatism.

The race became as hardball as it was odd, particularly after supporters of McDaniel were arrested in connection with a blogger who allegedly photographed the senator’s ailing wife in her nursing home.

The episode knocked McDaniel from what had been a growing lead over Cochran and appeared to sour voters on the unusually rough race, strategists said. The Cochran team used the incident in a campaign ad, giving the issue even longer legs.

Neither candidate ran the most sophisticated campaign, providing an opening for the outside groups that poured money into the state as a proxy battle for the future of the GOP. In all, almost $12 million was spent by the candidates and outside groups.

The free-market-aligned Club for Growth argued against Cochran’s spending, and a group headed by allies of former GOP Governor Haley Barbour portrayed McDaniel as a politician who could not be trusted.

Both campaigns often sounded out of touch with the times. Early on, Cochran set off alarms among Republicans when he told an interviewer he didn’t know much about the Tea Party. McDaniel had to backtrack after initially wavering on whether he would have supported federal aid after Hurricane Katrina — a deal-breaker for some coastal voters where storm damage remains evident.

“It was the perfect environment for Chris McDaniel to run a Tea-Party-style campaign,” said Brian Perry, a GOP strategist at the Mississippi Conservatives PAC that backed Cochran. “People are angry with Washington and they want things to change.”

On the Democratic side, Childers, a former lawmaker in the House, sailed to the party nomination, and some in the party believe his conservative streak could give Democrats an opportunity to make the fall race competitive.

Voters on Tuesday were also choosing a Republican nominee for Senate in Iowa, for the seat made open by the retirement of longtime Democratic Senator Tom Harkin.

Republican Joni Ernst, a state senator who catapulted ahead of a wide field with a feisty television ad about her background castrating hogs, had won, according to The Associated Press. She will face Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley in the fall.

Former Florida Governor Charlie Christ Says Bigots A ‘Big Reason’ He Left GOP

Former Florida Governor Charlie Christ Says Bigots A ‘Big Reason’ He Left GOP

By Marc Caputo, The Miami Herald

Democrat Charlie Crist is offering up a new and inflammatory reason he left the GOP: Too many Republicans oppose President Barack Obama because he’s black.

Crist made the remarks Tuesday in an interview with Fusion’s Jorge Ramos that instantly drew rebukes from Republicans who said the party-switching former governor was playing the race card.

But Crist said the bigotry against Obama was a “big reason” for his decision to leave the party.

“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there,” Crist said. “I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”

Ramos said Crist left the GOP to run as an independent because he was losing the 2010 Senate Republican primary to Marco Rubio. But Crist denied it.

Crist has made race an on-again and off-again theme as he campaigns for his old job back as a Democrat, his third party affiliation. When he left the GOP four years ago, he didn’t mention race.

“Being a flip-flopper is bad enough, but playing the race card to win over voters is pitiful,” said Izzy Santa, Republican National Committee spokeswoman.

Crist, saying he was “liberated as a Democrat,” also bashed the GOP for being too inflexible and for appearing to be “anti-women, anti-immigrant, anti-minority, (and) anti-gay.”

Black voters are particularly important to Crist. They comprise 28 percent of the 4.1 million active registered Democrats in Florida, and he still has to beat former state Sen. Nan Rich in a party primary before facing Gov. Rick Scott.

In a general election, black voters are key for Democrats. Along with Hispanics, African-American voters have disproportionately stayed home during midterm elections, allowing more Republican-leaning white voters to dominate and elect GOP office holders. Black and Hispanic voters each account for about 14 percent of all active registered voters.

Crist has generally good relationships with black voters and leaders. He probably had the highest proportion of African-American support of any Republican when he won the governor’s office in 2006 as a Republican. As governor, Crist championed civil rights causes, opposed racial language in the official state song and was called Florida’s “first black governor” by some African-American lawmakers.

In standing with Obama to support the stimulus package in 2009, Crist won a measure of support from black voters but also earned the enmity of the GOP. In 2012, Crist campaign for Obama and boosted his profile further with black voters.

But Crist’s decision to run as an independent, which cost Democrat Kendrick Meek votes in the 2010 Senate race, left some African-American leaders upset with the former governor.

Crist’s comments to Fusion weren’t the first time he used racial imagery.

In February, while plugging his new book The Party’s Over on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report, Crist said some Republicans opposed Obama’s stimulus act in 2009 because he was “not just a Democrat, an African-American.”

“Oh, you’re not going to play the race card,” host Stephen Colbert replied.

“I’m not going to play it, no,” Crist responded.

“You just did,” Colbert said. “Would you like to pick it up again and put it in your pocket? Because you just played the race card.”

Photo via Wikimedia Commons