Orange to Blue roundup, 10/03/2012

Here's what's new in our Orange to Blue races.
 

Speaker Pelosi Project:

CA-07: The Sierra Club is spending $625,000 to defeat Rep. Dan Lungren in this rematch with Ami Bera.

The club is paying for a hard-edged series of TV commercials and mailers in the Sacramento-area district. The ads accuse Lungren of "selling out California" and practicing "oily politics," claiming he favors tax breaks for oil companies and offshore oil drilling.

CA-10: Here's today's handy campaign lesson: Don't campaign on your opponent's paid-back tax lien unless you're really sure you're all paid up to the IRS. Rep. Jeff Dunham just got that embarrassing lesson. He's been making a campaign issue of a tax lien against Democrat Jose Hernadez that was paid off within a year.

Hernandez's campaign staff provided The Bee with documents showing two 2003 tax liens imposed on businesses linked to Denham.
One was a $31,982 IRS lien on Bin Doctor LLC, and the other was a $1,061 Monterey County tax collector lien on 1 Planet Recycling.

Oops.

CA-41: Bloomberg has a good backgrounder on Mark Takano's bid to become the first Democratic congressman from Southern California's Riverside County in two decades. He'd also be the first openly gay Asian American representative, from a majority minority district, with Hispanic voters comprising the majority of this newly drawn district.

'I'm a longtime elected official here,' he said. 'People know me and they've watched me govern at RCC. I personally feel it's a different time. Riverside County and the country have moved to a different place.'

Let's work to make him right.

MN-06: Fun times for MN-08: Democrat Rick Nolan is hitting Rep. Chip Cravaack for an ad in which he repeats the big lie about Medicare cuts under Obamacare. The ad hits Cravaack for his support of the Ryan budget, and to "end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a private voucher system which would raise costs for seniors by $6,400 per year."

NH-02: [Laura Clawson] Charlie Bass has an ugly new ad featuring a fake Annie Kuster tap dancing "around her extreme partisan record." The reality is that Kuster is completely up front about who she is and what she supports, while Bass is the one whose record requires him to duck and dodge, trying to paint himself as a moderate Republican while quietly sucking up to tea partiers. I'm taking this pretty obviously gendered attack ad as a sign of Bass's desperation. He's always been a fan of ugly dog whistle politics, but it used to be he restricted it to small audiences, as in his YouTubed 2006 rant that Bernie Sanders and his supporters should "go back to taxi driving in the Bronx of New York City, where they came from to begin with." Bass's 2006 opponent, Paul Hodes, was, like Sanders, not just from New York but Jewish. Now, Bass is running against someone with a similar New Hampshire background to his own, but she's a woman, so why not make her dance?

PA-06: The American Hospital Association is jumping in to the rematch between Rep. Jim Gerlach and Manan Trivedi, apparently as a reward to Gerlach for his ongoing opposition to Obamacare. Look who's doing the ads:

McCarthy Hennings Media, responsible for the infamous 'Willie Horton' ad in 1988, produced the AHA's ads. Mentzer Media Services, part of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004, made the ad buys. The consulting team also provides its services to pro-Mitt Romney super PAC Restore Our Future.

PA-08: What's GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick afraid of? Apparently, his opponent, Kathy Boockvar. Among the conditions he's set for participating in candidate forums is that she can't be at them, too. No, really.

Several groups sponsoring forums say U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick has set strict conditions, including requirements that there be no recording devices and that Democratic challenger Kathy Boockvar not be present when Fitzpatrick speaks.

He has, however, consented to three debates, apparently requiring a more controlled environment. Upgrade the Senate:

CT-Sen: Whoa. The deep-pocketed wrestingly mogul Linda McMahon has outspent Democrat Chris Murphy three-to-one on television ads.

The analysis shows McMahon spent $2.8 million on ads in a top market in the period from Sept. 9 to Sept. 30, while $921,810 was spent on behalf of Democrats with 4.1 percent from outside groups.

And she's still losing.

OH-Sen: On Monday, the roundup reported on Republican Josh Mandel's mini-meltdown in an elevator, when he pushed a tracker from American Bridge. In front of a reporter. Mistake number one. Mistake number two, lying about it.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Josh Mandel said a political video tracker 'made the initial physical contact with me' in an incident that occurred Friday in a public elevator, offering an explanation that is not supported by eyewitness accounts nor the video of the incident and is a twist from the original statement put out by the Mandel campaign.

Sherrod Brown is winning (up nine points in the latest Marist poll), and it's sending Mandel over the edge. Now the looming question for Mandel is if he can salvage any kind of future political career.

Daily Kos for Marriage Equality:

Kudos to Scott Wooledge for making the Bruce Springsteen graphic that's being talked about all over the place. Here's USA Today:

An Internet-based campaign aimed at passing same-sex marriage initiatives in four states is getting a little help today from Bruce Springsteen.

The rocker's picture and a quote in support of marriage equality is featured in new content by The Four 2012, a social media campaign aimed at young people who live on sites such as Facebook and Twitter. The goal is to pass ballot measures in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington that are on the November ballot.

"The marriage-equality issue should be recognized for what it truly is -- a civil rights issue that must be approved to assure that every citizen is treated equally under the law," Springsteen says on The Four 2012's "image macro."