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8:15 AM PT: MO-Sen: Obviously you've already heard about this:
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
Akin said that even in the worst-case scenario—when the supposed natural protections against unwanted pregnancy fail—abortion should still not be a legal option for the rape victim.
"Let's assume that maybe that didn't work, or something," Akin said. "I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and not attacking the child."
With these remarks, Rep. Todd Akin probably made himself the third most-famous Republican running for office this year. He's also issued a couple of
non-apology non-walkbacks, but right now, Democrats just have to hope he doesn't succumb to pressure to drop out of the race altogether (even some fellow Republicans are getting on his case).
Personally, though, I don't think that's likely: Akin's 65, had to give up his seat in the House to run for Senate, and won a pretty serious primary upset. This is the capstone of his career, and there really isn't any inducement anyone can offer him to step aside. What's more, since when do conservative Republican office-seekers ever quit because of extremist things they say? Hell, Akin believes this shit. As Kevin McDermott at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch points out, even his second statement "didn't specifically counter [his] initial comment that rape-induced pregnancies are rare." So we'll see where this goes, but I'm thinking Akin stays in.
8:30 AM PT: So yeah, PPP will be jumping into Missouri with a new poll right away, and Tom Jensen is taking question suggestions.
9:19 AM PT: Based on my read of section 115.359 of Missouri election law, there's no question that Akin can drop out. He can do so automatically by "the eleventh Tuesday prior to the primary election," which just so happens to be tomorrow. But even if he misses that deadline, he can still get off the ballot by "the sixth Tuesday before the election" as long as he gets a court order (which is to be "freely given" unless election officials can show "good cause" to deny it), and he agrees to pay any ballot reprinting costs. In other words, it's trivial for him to bail.
So the real issue is whether and how Akin can be replaced. That also looks pretty straightforward to me:
3. A party nominating committee may select a party candidate for election to an office on the general election ballot in the following cases: [...]
(3) If the person nominated as the party candidate shall withdraw at or before 5:00 p.m. on whatever day may be fixed by law as the final date for withdrawing as a candidate for the office....
As long as Akin were to meet that "sixth Tuesday" deadline, it appears that the GOP would be able to pick a replacement. (
Another statute explains that for statewide office, "the nominating committee shall be the state committee of the party.") So legally, it all seems pretty easy (unlike the situation in a lot of other states). What matters most now, of course, is whatever's going on in Akin's brain.
9:30 AM PT: KS-03: If you want a break from Akin-mania, this story is damn funny:
The FBI probed a late-night swim in the Sea of Galilee that involved drinking, numerous GOP freshmen lawmakers, top leadership staff—and one nude member of Congress, according to more than a dozen sources, including eyewitnesses.
During a fact-finding congressional trip to the Holy Land last summer, Rep. Kevin Yoder (R-Kan.) took off his clothes and jumped into the sea, joining a number of members, their families and GOP staff during a night out in Israel, the sources told POLITICO. Other participants, including the daughter of another congressman, swam fully clothed, while some lawmakers partially disrobed. More than 20 people took part in the late-night dip in the sea, according to sources who were participants in the trip. [...]
These GOP sources confirmed the following freshmen lawmakers also went swimming that night: Rep. Steve Southerland (R-Fla.) and his daughter; Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.) and his wife; Reps. Ben Quayle (R-Ariz.), Jeff Denham (R-Calif.) and Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.). Many of the lawmakers who ventured into the lake said they did so because of the religious significance of the waters. Others said they were simply cooling off after a long day. Several privately admitted that alcohol may have played a role in why some of those present decided to jump in.
I love that last line. More at the link, including reports that Eric Cantor (the lone Jewish Republican in Congress) flipped out at his caucus after these hijinks. Fun stuff!
9:43 AM PT: Scott Brown, I don't care about. But this is bothering me:
Todd Akin’s statements are reprehensible and inexcusable. He should step aside today for the good of the nation.
— @Ron4Senate via web
Ultra-conservative Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson is a different story. However, it must be pointed out that Johnson is very close with John Brunner, the second-place finisher in the GOP primary. Indeed,
one newspaper article called Johnson Brunner's "mentor." Brunner would of course be at the front of the pack in terms of replacement possibilities should Akin step aside.
9:54 AM PT: Well, sigh. I'm doing exactly what I told myself not to do, which is spend all day blogging the slightest tea leaves and updates on Todd Akin. But I just can't help myself. I'm back to thinking this is good news:
Todd Akin will have his first interview since his comments on rape and abortion this weekend on my radio show at 1:06 PM ET.
— @GovMikeHuckabee via web
Huckabee provides just about the safest platform for Akin (Huck endorsed him during the primary). What's more, Huckabee has a soft spot for guys who believe exactly what Akin does.
Check this out:
Arkansas politician Fay Boozman followed up during during his 1998 Senate campaign by arguing that “fear-induced hormonal changes could block a rape victim’s ability to conceive.” Those remarks lead to a backlash when then-Gov. Mike Huckabee tapped Boozman to run the state’s health department.
9:56 AM PT: Via The Hotline:
And businessman John Brunner has been making exploratory phone calls, according to a GOP strategist in Missouri.
10:05 AM PT: NY-27: Here's that expected Siena poll of the race in New York's revised 27th Congressional District. They have Dem Rep. Kathy Hochul trailing former Erie County exec Chris Collins, 47-45. That's a damn sight closer than that survey from Republican pollster National Research last week which put Collins up by an impossible-to-believe 47-34 spread. And unlike that NR poll, we actually have presidential numbers here: Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama 53-41, a very plausible result since John McCain carried the reconfigured district with a 54-44 margin in 2008.
Still, this poll, if accurate, shows that Hochul has a tough road to re-election ahead of her—something I don't think anyone disagrees with. To that end, she's out with her first ad, in which she touts her votes for a balanced budget amendment and for cutting aid to Pakistan as evidence of her willingness to make "tough choices." No word on the size of the buy.
10:09 AM PT: If you want, you can try listening to Huckabee's radio show here. Warning: Flash-based monstrosity, and I'm not even sure you'll be able to hear the program.
10:15 AM PT: Awesome. Akin just said "I'm not a quitter." Looks like we're good (for now, at least).
10:42 AM PT: On the other hand, Crossroads GPS says it's cancelling a planned buy on behalf of Akin that was scheduled to begin on Wednesday. It looks like a pretty clear shot across the bow, with a Crossroads spokesman saying: "The act speaks for itself." Perhaps more importantly, even NRSC chair John Cornyn is lighting a fire under Akin's ass:
Cornyn: "...over the next 24 hours, Congressman Akin should carefully consider what is best for him, his family, the Republican Party..."
— @FixAaron via Seesmic twhirl
11:03 AM PT: IL-17: Back in May, when GOP freshman Bobby Schilling released an internal poll from Public Opinion Strategies showing him up 51-35 over Democrat Cheri Bustos, I was skeptical of the results because the same survey showed Barack Obama beating Mitt Romney by just 10 points, in a district where Obama defeated McCain by 22. But Bustos never released contradictory numbers, and now Schilling is out with a second survey that still has him up 50-37. In response to this latest poll, Bustos amazingly pointed to a February internal (PDF) of her own that had Schilling up "only" 44-35!
Now, the air wars haven't really begun here, and POS didn't bother to provide Obama-Romney toplines this time, so who knows what kind of sample they turned up. But we're finding the Bustos pushback (or really, lack thereof) pretty concerning. We originally filed this race as "Lean D" thanks in large part to the district's demographics, but it now looks like it'll be a tougher battle for Democrats than we expected. Therefore, we're changing our rating on this race to Tossup.
11:46 AM PT: NH-Gov: In addition to her "pledge zombies" ad, Democrat Jackie Cilley is also out with a more traditional introductory spot, offering a bit of bio and background on her priorities when she served in the legislature ("good jobs" via "better schools, good roads, and good bridges"). But she also hits the pledge theme again, once again saying she "won't play pledge politics" because "jobs have to come first."
12:04 PM PT: WI-Sen: Seriously, is this a joke? Newly nominated GOP Senate hopeful Tommy Thompson, who has been a total jerkface about releasing his tax returns, now has this to say:
"I pay 31 percent of my gross revenue into taxes. That's much more than Congresswoman Baldwin is," Thompson said on "Upfront with Mike Gousha" on WISN-TV (Channel 12) in Milwaukee.
"That is what I pay. That's what I paid this year, that's what I paid last year and that's a higher percentage than Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Congresswoman Baldwin. I'm the highest and I think that's enough. I can put it out there and show everybody that I paid 31 percent of my gross income to taxes. That's a lot of money."
Thompson did not provide proof of the 31 percent and repeated he would not release his returns.
Um, dude, you don't get to make this claim and still refuse to release your tax records.
12:30 PM PT: Now this is more like it:
I am in this race to win. We need a conservative Senate. Help me defeat Claire by donating:
https://t.co/... #mosen
— @ToddAkin via web
What a day!
12:55 PM PT: It's such a weird day that I think I'll post this:
Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller is retiring from mixed martial arts as an undefeated light heavyweight. [...]
"I'm one and done," Miller said. "Competing in an MMA event was on my bucket list. Now that I've got it done, I've got a day job and an important election coming up."
The 6-foot-4, 205-pound Miller won his MMA debut/swan song, one of 10 amateur fights Saturday held by the World Fighting Championship (WFC) at the Montbleu Theater in South Lake Tahoe.
There's a pic of Miller at the link if you wanna see how jacked he is. Sort of funny that he's not the only fighter elected to statewide office in Nevada: Sen. Harry Reid, as you may know, used to be an amateur boxer!
1:07 PM PT: More:
"I was told that there is a decision has to be made by 5 o'clock tomororw but I was calling you and letting you know that I'm announcing today that we're (staying) in," Akin told Hannity.
1:59 PM PT: NY-11: Here's another Republican (along with Kansas's Kevin Yoder and basically any member of Congress who participated in that "Animal House on the Galilee" junket to Israel) who's surely grateful for Todd Akin going supernova: freshman Rep. Mike Grimm, who just saw one of his top fundraisers, Ofer Biton, arrested by the FBI. Biton, an Israeli citizen (as it so happens), is charged with immigration fraud, in particular for "deceiv[ing] the government in June 2010 about the source of $500,000 that he claimed to have put into a new business that was to make him eligible for a permanent visa."
As the New York Times explains, the criminal complaint filed against Biton "strongly hints that the money was raised through more coercive means, like extortion." Not at all coincidentally, Biton also was reportedly responsible for raising about half a million for Grimm's first election campaign in 2009-10, and a previous NYT report indicated that the money came from congregants of an Orthodox rabbi, whom Biton is accused of embezzling millions from. Grimm has spent a lot of time fantasizing that the media is out to get him over this story; is the FBI in on it, too?
2:45 PM PT: FL-10: Democrat Val Demings is out with her first ad, an introductory spot in which she references her humble upbringing and describes her rise to chief of police for the city of Orlando. Demings has a terrific biography, and it seems to me that this is exactly what she should be leading with as she introduces herself to voters. She's looking to unseat freshman GOPer Daniel Webster.
3:01 PM PT: Vote at the link: Do you think Todd Akin will drop out of the Missouri Senate race?
3:11 PM PT: NV-04: I presume that Republican Danny Tarkanian has leaked his latest internal poll to reassure donors that despite a disastrous week—in which he accused his black opponent of "pretending to be black" and then also told a judge he'd have to file bankruptcy if he's forced to pay a $17 million judgment against him—he's still in the game. His new numbers, from Public Opinion Strategies, have him up 46-35 over Democrat Steven Horsford. That's basically unchanged from a December poll (also from POS), which gave Tarkanian a 47-36 edge—and a static race makes sense, since the air wars have only just begun. (A late June poll from a different outfit, the Tarrance Group, had Tark on top 47-41.)
But I don't think these results are as good for Tark as you might think: Horsford is still largely unknown, while the Tarkanian name is famous in Nevada, and Tark has run several races before. Indeed, POS notes that Horsford is currently only earning the vote of 65% of self-identified Democrats, but they seem to think this is a positive sign for their client. It isn't: Tark doesn't have much crossover appeal, and Horsford should not have much trouble consolidating the Democratic vote, especially with Obama at the top of the ticket. Speaking of which, this polling memo didn't bother to include the presidential toplines, which is my latest hobby-horse: If you aren't showing us that data, how are we supposed to trust your poll?
3:34 PM PT: CO-07: Here's another one of those "does anyone believe this crap?" kind of polls. Republican Joe Coors is pushing month-old numbers from OnMessage that purport to give him a 45-36 lead over Dem Rep. Ed Perlmutter. Obviously there are no Obama-Romney numbers here, but I'm just not buying this survey no matter what.
4:36 PM PT: DCCC/NRCC: The one good thing about TV ad spending by campaign committees is that, thanks to independent expenditure reporting requirements, you always get to find out the size of the buy ("SOTB"). And here we have IE reports for both the DCCC's and NRCC's first set of ads. For the Dems, they spent just $28K in MI-01 and only $21K in NC-07. The GOP shelled out a lot more, though since the NRCC didn't separate out production costs from their media buys, it's a little hard to tell exactly (though a decent rule of thumb is that creating an ad should cost around $10-20K). In GA-12, they're forking out $154K; KY-06, $105K; NC-07, $103K; and PA-12, $159K.
4:38 PM PT: And how about that: The DSCC just threw on another $402K for ads attacking Todd Akin, in an IE report filed on Monday. I wonder if they'll delay their latest assault for a little bit, though, to give Akin time to shore up his standing.