Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* In a very unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has announced<\/a> that it will give up on Rhode Island’s Senate campaign if Cranston Mayor [tag]Stephen Laffey[\/tag] defeats Sen. [tag]Lincoln Chafee[\/tag] in tomorrow’s GOP primary. “If Laffey won, on Day 1 of the general election, it would be over for us,” said Brian Nick, the communications director for the Republican Senate campaign committee.<\/p>\n * In Virginia, Senate hopeful [tag]Jim Webb[\/tag] (D) is using video footage of praise from Ronald Reagan in a new TV ad, prompting Nancy Reagan to ask<\/a> him to pull the ad. As of now, the Webb campaign has no plans to do so<\/a>. “If [tag]Ronald Reagan[\/tag] made any speeches about [tag]George Allen[\/tag], I would imagine George Allen would be wanting to use the footage,” Webb said. “I would encourage them [Allen’s campaign] to try to go find some.”<\/p>\n * Speaking of Virginia, a new Mason-Dixon poll suggests Allen has every reason to be worried. A similar poll in July showed Allen leading Webb by 16 points, but now that margin is just four<\/a>, 46% to 42%. The “macaca” controversy has done wonders for Webb’s support among African Americans in Virginia — his support has jumped from 39% in July to 73% now.<\/p>\n * New York will host three statewide Dem primaries tomorrow, but a new Quinnipiac poll<\/a> suggests none of them will be particularly competitive. In the Senate race, [tag]Hillary Clinton[\/tag] leads Jonathan Tasini, 85% to 9%. In the gubernatorial race, [tag]Eliot Spitzer[\/tag] leads Tom Suozzi, 79% to 12%. In the attorney general primary, Andrew Cuomo is ahead of Mark Green, 50% to 31%.<\/p>\n * In West Virginia, Sen. [tag]Bob Byrd[\/tag] (D) will apparently have no trouble winning another term. A new Rasmussen poll<\/a> shows him leading Republican [tag]John Raese[\/tag], 63% to 30%. Byrd’s 33-point lead is eight points more than it was a month ago.<\/p>\n * And in 2008 news, [tag]Al Gore[\/tag] is once again renewing speculation about his possible interest in another presidential campaign, telling an audience in Australia yesterday that he hasn’t ruled anything out<\/a>. “I haven’t completely ruled out running for president again in the future but I don’t expect to,” Gore said. “I offer the explanation not as an effort to be coy or clever. It’s just the internal shifting of gears after being in politics almost 30 years. I hate to grind the gears.” In May, Gore had reportedly instructed many of his biggest financial supporters to help get the word out, instructing, “Tell everybody I’m not running<\/a>.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * In a very unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has announced that it will give up on Rhode Island’s Senate campaign if Cranston Mayor [tag]Stephen Laffey[\/tag] defeats Sen. [tag]Lincoln Chafee[\/tag] in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}