Businessman Mac Warner is rising in the polls in next week’s GOP primary in Rep. Alan Mollohan’s (D-W.Va.) district, even as his family’s business deals with myriad troubles, including several previously unreported tax liens.
A lawsuit filed by PNC Bank against Warner and his family’s collapsed rental housing business in February shows the business owed tax liens in Monongalia County of more than $23,000, as of mid-2009. And a separate document shows the Warners owed a lien of $10,000 in 2003.
The news comes as internal GOP polling shows Warner has surpassed former state Sen. Sarah Minear in polling and is running first in the key Clarksburg and Parkersburg media markets in Mollohan’s district. The national GOP favors former state Del. David McKinley in the race, and the underfunded Warner is threatening to play spoiler.
Warner’s campaign declined to comment on the tax liens, citing the fact that Warner put his assets in a blind trust when he launched his congressional run. The liens were issued before that time.
“We simply cannot comment on this either way, whether it’s accurate or not,” Warner campaign manager Anthony Conchel said. “Clearly we are shooting up in the polls, which explains McKinley’s desperate attacks in these final days – only days after he said he instructed his campaign not to go negative.”
Conchel referred comment on the liens to Warner’s brother, Kris Warner, who is also listed in the PNC suit.
Rep. Jerry Moran's (R-Kan.) latest ad in the Kansas GOP Senate primary couldn't be more emblematic of the environment members of Congress face.
While Moran has been in Congress for seven terms, the ad emphasizes that he comes home on the weekend rather than taking part in "lavish dinners with friendly lobbyists." It also notes that he didn't vote for any bailouts, stimuli or
Obama's healthcare plan.
The ad makes no mention of Moran's opponent, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.),
who is an appropriator.
About the only thing missing is Scott Brown's truck; Moran is driving a car along the dirt roads of Kansas.
We bet you didn’t know that the 17th Amendment was such a hot-button issue this year.
The issue has already made its way into the races of at least two of the GOP's top 10 House recruits, and one of them has already stumbled over it.
The 17th Amendment provides for direct election of U.S. senators, and it turns out it isn’t too popular in the Tea Party movement. It’s a strange issue to be taking a position on, but when the base calls for something, it’s hard to say no.
And nobody knows that better than Steve Stivers.
The former Ohio state senator said in a 912 Project questionnaire last year that he supported repealing the 17th Amendment, and then he reasserted that position in a January interview with The Hill.
But after Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy’s (D-Ohio) campaign began to make an issue of that position, Stivers backed away from it in recent days.
“I made a mistake," he told the Columbus Dispatch. "I answered that question wrong. It was not intentional.”
Stivers is one of 10 candidates who have attained the status of Young Gun in the NRCC’s program for top candidates. Late last week, another one of the 10, Iraq veteran Vaughn Ward, also came out in favor of the amendment.
Ward, who is running against Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) and faces a primary with a candidate who has come out for a repeal, said he agrees with that position.
“The framers of the Constitution believed that the Senate was to be picked by our state legislature, and through the 17th Amendment, they changed that,” Ward said on a local public television program (see it at about the 15:00 mark here). “And I think that that’s been part of the problem of eroding away state’s rights, where that body, the Senate, is no longer beholden to and tied to the state.
“When you look at how come state’s rights have been so abrogated, it’s because of things like the 17th Amendment that has taken away those rights from our states."
Satisfying the framers' intent is generally a winning position to take, but do most people want their senators elected by their state legislatures?
Mitt Romney is backing state Rep. Jeff Perry in the GOP primary in Rep. Bill Delahunt's (D-Mass.) district.
Delahunt's retirement has led candidates to flood the race, including on the GOP side, where Perry faces a primary with former state Treasurer Joe Malone.
Romney chose Perry over Malone on Monday, citing their work together when Romney was governor in the mid-2000s.
"As Governor, I worked closely with Jeff on initiatives to reduce spending, lower taxes, and reform government," Romney said. "He will be a strong conservative voice against the Washington culture of higher taxes, higher spending, and higher debt. I am looking forward to the contributions he will make in the U.S. House of Representatives."
Romney's political action committee is donating $2,500 to Perry's campaign, with the funds being devoted to the primary.
Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson's (R) Senate campaign has released a poll showing his primary with Rand Paul is a tie.
The Voter/Consumer Research poll shows each candidate at 40 percent, with 20 percent of voters undecided. Six hundred likely primary voters were surveyed on Wednesday and Thursday,
The poll does not include crosstabs detailing either candidates strengths, and it did not include any of the minor candidates, who took a combined 6 percent in a recent SurveyUSA poll.
Pollster Jan van Lohuizen points out that both Grayson and Paul have similar name recognition and favorability numbers. But the numbers are not provided.
That Grayson needs to release a poll showing him tied with Paul shows that Grayson's campaign feels the need to assure donors that the race is competitive. Paul has shown a wide lead in other recent polling, and Grayson's campaign is dealing today with Dr. James Dobson switching his endorsement, which he originally made last week, from Grayson to Paul.
The primary is May 18.
Update 12:15 p.m.: Paul campaign manager David Adams responds: "No one, at this point, expects anything but a big Rand Paul lead based on his support for balanced budgets, term limits, a pro-life and pro-family agenda and a strong national defense."
The campaign of a Republican candidate for governor of Michigan on
Saturday blasted Rep. Pete Hoekstra's (R-Mich.) delivery of the weekly
GOP radio address.
A spokesman for Michigan Attorney General Mike
Cox (R) chided Hoekstra and, in part, the Republican National Committee
(RNC), for the address the congressman delivered Saturday before
President Barack Obama's trip to the state.
"Looks like
Congressman Hoekstra is just getting an opportunity to apologize to the
state of Michigan for voting for the $850 billion Wall Street bailout,
co-sponsoring the Bridge to Nowhere, voting to raise the debt ceiling
five times from $6 trillion to $11 trillion, and voting for 12
consecutive budgets that increased the annual debt by a trillion dollars
including billlions of dollars for thousands of earmarks," Cox
spokesman Stu Sandler said. "I hope they gave him enough time."
Republicans
settled on Hoekstra to deliver the address ahead of Obama's
commencement address on Saturday at the University of Michigan in Ann
Arbor.
Hoekstra, mentioning his own alumni status at the school,
suggested that the president's economic policies had shortchanged
graduates of the university.
Cox and Hoekstra, the ranking
member of the House Intelligence Committee, have been battling for the
Republican gubernatorial nomination in the state, where the GOP hopes to
reclaim the top executive spot after incumbent Gov. Jennifer Granholm
(D), who is term-limited, retires.
An EPIC/MRA poll commissioned
by the Detroit Free Press in late March showed Hoekstra maintaining an
advantage over Cox.
27 percent of GOP primary voters said they
would vote for Hoekstra if the election were held then, compared to 21
percent who preferred. Businessman Rick Snyder drew 15 percent, while
former Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard got 13 percent.
The
poll, conducted March 28-31, has a 4.9 percent margin of error for the
primary sample. The Snyder campaign did not respond to an email seeking
comment.
Businessman Bill Binnie says that the fate of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has forced the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) to become neutral in the New Hampshire Senate primary.
“I think that they are moving to a neutral stance in the race,” Binnie said in an interview Thursday, adding: “And I think that the Rubio-Crist parallels have taught everybody a lesson.”
The NRSC endorsed Crist a year ago when he got in the race and was a huge favorite over Marco Rubio. But after Rubio overtook him in the polls and the race appeared lost, Crist on Thursday switched to running with no party affiliation.
The NRSC has since pulled its endorsement of the governor and is backing Rubio.
Similarly, Binnie has emerged as a roadblock between the GOP nomination and the party favorite in his state, former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte. He has self-funded $3 million and raised another $730,000, giving him a big cash advantage in the race and allowing him to climb in early polling.
Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) Senate Conservatives Fund has raised more than $200,000 for Indiana Senate candidate Marlin Stutzman as the state senator looks to pull an upset of former Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) in the GOP primary.
The haul equals the $200,000 that Coats loaned his campaign and should allow Stutzman to continue to build up his name ID in advance of Tuesday's vote. Stutzman has emerged over former Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) as Coats's biggest obstacle to the GOP nomination.
The endorsement of DeMint has paid big financial dividens for Stutzman. Through April 14, Stutzman had raised just $260,000 and had just $45,000 on hand.
Before loaning his campaign $200,000 last week, Coats had raised $445,000, albeit in a shorter time period than Stutzman.
"This race is still wide open, and Marlin is gaining momentum with a clear conservative message," DeMint said. "The response from the grass roots in Indiana and across the nation has been remarkable. Marlin is raising money $25 at a time from thousands of people who want to send a new generation of conservative leaders to Washington."
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