Capitol View: September 22, 2006 Archive

Double-digit lead for Klobuchar?

Posted at 8:18 AM on September 22, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

I think we can safely say that Rep. Mark Kennedy is trailing DFLer Amy Klobuchar in their bids to be the next senator from the great state of Minnesota. So many polls seem to be coming out now that the only question is "by how much?"

I'll post the MPR survey on this race very early Monday morning.

The latest is the U of M Humphrey Institute poll

The Democratic Party nominee for U.S. Senate, Amy Klobuchar, holds a commanding 52 to 36 point advantage over the Republican Party nominee, Mark Kennedy, according to a Humphrey Institute survey of 1,023 Minnesota voters in the week following the primary. Kennedy’s campaign is being badly hurt by President George Bush’s unpopularity and by deep concerns about the direction of the country and state. Klobuchar is strongly benefiting from extraordinary concern over Iraq and a huge lead among women voters even as she holds her own among men. The issue of terrorism works strongly for Kennedy but it is not playing a dominant role in voters’ minds as they weigh the country’s challenges. Kennedy’s difficulties are not at this time pulling down Republican Tim Pawlenty in his bid for reelection as Governor. Voters who support Klobuchar are crossing party lines to support Pawlenty. The survey was conducted between September 13 and 18, 2006.

The survey was conducted by Lawrence R. Jacobs, Director of the Humphrey Institute’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota and Joanne M. Miller, a Research Associate at the Center and an Assistant Professor in the University’s Department of Political Science.

The full report can be found:
here

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The Daily Digest: 9-22-06

Posted at 11:25 AM on September 22, 2006 by Tom Scheck (3 Comments)

18 times leads the digest.

The Star Tribune says blogger Noah Kunin tried 18 different passwords to get into Scott Howell's site. That pretty much goes against his recent statement, doesn't it?

The incident (if you're just coming out from under a rock - Democrat Amy Klobuchar fired a campaign staffer for viewing an unreleased Mark Kennedy ad that Kunin directed her to view).

MPR and the Pi Press get all technical on us with stories about legal matters.

WCCO advances the story from Wednesday night. Kare-11 basically uses Wednesday's lead for their Thursday night broadcast.

Pat Condon, with the AP, writes a story saying this is the first speed bump Klobuchar experienced this campaign season.

Kennedy's folks are trying to take advantage of it. Their website is still shutdown. That has led for a tit for tat from liberal and conservative bloggers. DFLSenate says Kennedy's website is nothing more than a publicity stunt and gets all technical on us. Minnesota Democrats Exposed says he's disappointed with the liberal bloggers (Michael Brodkorb is a part-time consultant to Kennedy's campaign and a devoted Vikings fan).

Amy Klobuchar is in the lead sentence in an E.J. Dionne column in the Washington Post.

You can't walk down the street without getting hit in the head wth a poll. The U of M has a poll saying Klobuchar is ahead of Kennedy. WCCO has a story on it.

The Pi Press and MPR have stories on (guess what?) the MPR/Pi Press poll on the governor's race. The poll says it's a tight race between Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty and DFLer Mike Hatch.

Cathy Wurzer, with MPR's Morning Edition, was busy this morning. She talked to the campaign managers for Hatch, Pawlenty and Hutchinson. You can listen here. She also interviewed a Business Journal reporter who says Pawlenty is getting the bulk of corporate contributions. You can listen to that here.

Pawlenty went down to Jackson (C'mon, hum it to that Johnny Cash song. You know you want to)

Pawlenty's campaign manager is also asking supporters to watch the media. Let me get this straight, the governor of this state, who gets tons of coverage and interview requests, is upset about coverage. Hmmm?

Hot off the presses. Pawlenty "commends the jurors on making a difficult, but appropriate ruling" on sentencing Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. to death.

A Mike Hatch win would make some gay rights groups happy. That may be news to some.

The Mankato Free Press focuses on rising college tuition.

DFLer Patty Wetterling, Republican Michele Bachmann and I-P member John Binkowski debate the issues. WCCO and MPR have stories. So does the Star Tribune. You can listen to the debate here.

The AP has a story on muslims rallying around Keith Ellison's campaign for congress. Minnesota Monitor wonders why some big name DFLers aren't.

Maybe Norm should have gotten the NRSC post that went to Senator Dole.

Republican Rod Grams tries to make an issue out of Jim Oberstar's voting record.

House Republicans want some form of drug reimportation.

Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher wants to revoke a gun permit from a Bill Finney supporter. I'm getting the sense that these guys don't like each other. Well, they'll appear together at a debate. Here are the details:

WHEN: Tues., Sep 26, 2006, 12:30 PM WHERE: Securian Center, downtown St. Paul, Sixth and Robert. SPONSORS: Securian Financial Group, Inc. and the St. Paul chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) TOPICS: The candidates in the contentious Ramsey County Sheriff campaign answer questions about the future of law enforcement in the East Metro and strategies to promote efficiency and reduce duplication of services among the many local law enforcement agencies.

Finally, a piece about Bill Hillsman in the Dallas Morning News. Hillsman was the ad man for Jesse Ventura and Paul Wellstone. He's now working for Kinky.

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Chalkboad session

Posted at 11:41 AM on September 22, 2006 by Bob Collins

The three campaign managers for the major party gubernatorial candidates were on MPR's Morning Edition with Cathy Wurzer this morning. Here's what they had to say.

Oh, and buy my exercise video too!

Posted at 11:53 AM on September 22, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

I'm weaning myself off the painkillers from Wednesday's surgery and things are still a little bit hazy. I'm not seeing huge rabbits or anything, but because of that, I have to preface this with a disclaimer. "I might have been dreaming this."

I was home having breakfast this morning, watching CNBC when they break in with a live news conference between President Bush and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who earlier in the week said the U.S. threatened to bomb his country.

At the news conference, Bush says he remembers no such conversation and the Pakistani says -- and this is close to a quote -- "I'm under contract to Simon and Schuster and can not comment on this until the book is released."

I'd like to think I dreamed it but, unfortunately, I didn't.

What's next? Hordes of people waiting outside Barnes & Noble for the State of the Union to arrive?

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Enough with the polls, let's go to the hits!

Posted at 2:51 PM on September 22, 2006 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

Over the next few weeks, more political polls will be coming out, and supporters of aggrieved candidates will contort to show that the poll's methodology is wrong. So enough with 'em.

Let's see...we've looked at lawn sides, and polls. What's left? Hits on Web sites!

Occasionally, I like to look at the traffic stats on the news domain (where, for the record, Polinaut just jumped over Midmorning as the most viewed page) around election time and see where people are going.

For the primary, a lot of people were going to the attorney general section of the Campaign 2006 Web site.

But that's small potatoes. A company called Hitwise is out with a release today:

Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, today announced that search term data for September 2006 (12 weeks ending 9/16/06) reveals how political issue have shifted compared to the same time period in September 2005 and September 2004. The search term ‘abortion’ was the most searched for political issue sending visits to the Hitwise Lifestyle – Politics category in the 12 weeks ending September 16, 2006. ‘Abortion’ received the largest volume of searches among political issue search terms for the same time period in 2005 and 2004.

The top political issue-related terms following ‘abortion’ for the 12 weeks ending September 12, 2006 were ‘military deaths in iraq’, ‘antiwar’ and ‘hezbollah’. This contrasts with ‘biodiesel’, ‘death penalty’ and ‘american flag’ for the 12 weeks ending September 17, 2005. For the 12 weeks ending September 18, 2004, the top political issue terms following ‘abortion’ were ‘american flag’, ‘homeland security’ and ‘gay marriage’.

The top search term overall for the Lifestyle - Politics category was 'huffington post' for the 12 weeks ending September 16. 2006. For the same period in 2005 the top term was ‘michael moore’ and in 2004 it was ‘john kerry’.

(H/T: Jon Gordon - Future Tense)

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A tale of two tales

Posted at 3:56 PM on September 22, 2006 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

You know, there's two stories going on regarding the TV ad...ummm...gate and the decision of the Kennedy camp to close the shutters and shield the kids.

There's the one in the mainstream media, which is.... pretty well reserved and not very "technical." (Go ahead, try to explain what "commenting out" items on a page means vs. "taking the site down") and relatively sedate.

And then there's the one on the blogs which is, to my way of thinking, much more entertaining. Maybe it's just that it's OK in the blogosphere to even have a personality that makes it so fascinating.

Not much more for me to weigh in on on this mess. Heck, I'm too busy watching the pies go back and forth.

But the best post of the day -- and not because he doesn't like liberals -- comes from the blog, Kool Aid Report. "Welcome to the Blogosphere, Distinguished Members of the Media!"

I often wonder when the wagons get circled during these times whether anyone who's not a blogger is watching?

Oh, by the way, I just finished the Senate poll numbers that will be released Monday morning. If anyone wants to know how to protect a Web site so data like that can't be culled, let me know. Sounds like a growth industry.

Kennedy's site hasn't really been locked down. And that's causing another pie fight.

This is all Al Gore's fault.

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