Subject: POLITICO's Morning Score, presented by Bosch: ZERO HOUR: What to watch today - Latino voters swing Calif., pollster says - RGA, Crossroads drive GOP turnout - Bloomberg talks up indy prez - Palin backs Tancredo
From: "Morning Score" <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2010 05:41:45 -0400 (EDT)

By Alexander Burns (@aburnspolitico, [email-masked]) 

FIRST IN SCORE - SURGE IS WORKING: A spike in Latino voter interest will help carry California Democrats to victory Tuesday, SEIU pollster David Binder predicts in a pre-election memo, crediting a $5 million independent expenditure campaign with delivering the key voting bloc for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. During the time that the SEIU's "Cambiando California" program was running - under the leadership of Courtni Pugh - Brown picked up 17 percentage points among Latino voters. His support jumped from 49 percent to 66 percent, according to Binder's polling, while Republican Meg Whitman's share of the Latino vote dropped from 28 percent to 19 percent - a net movement of 26 points in Brown's favor. Latino voter enthusiasm climbed as well: In a poll taken Sept. 23-28, 60 percent of Latinos rated their likelihood to vote an 8-10 out of 10. A month later, between Oct. 27-29, that proportion had ticked up to 67 percent. 

MORE - WHY THEY MOVED: Binder notes that a major breaking news story helped drive this shift: "This movement is attributable both to Latino voters' negative reactions to Meg Whitman's contradictory statements on immigration and the hypocrisy exposed when her employment of an undocumented housekeeper became public, followed by Whitman's blundered reaction to the scandal." But, he continues: "The movement among Latinos over the last five weeks was not due to this story alone ... A surge in Latino voter enthusiasm to participate in the November 2 election coupled with increased support among Latinos for Jerry Brown will be the deciding factors propelling Brown to victory in the California gubernatorial election." A Public Policy Polling survey released Monday showed a tighter governor's race than last week, with Whitman trailing by just 5 percentage points. But at this point it would be considered a major upset if the former eBay CEO pulled out a win and Brown could very well give his party their biggest victory on a pretty dark night. 

As the White House turns to radio, Bill Clinton rallies in Orlando and Nick Ayers fires a warning shot toward 2012, here's POLITICO's Morning Score: your daily guide to the permanent campaign. Thanks for making us part of your daily read this cycle - we'll be back tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and so on ... 

BUT FIRST - MATCH GAME 2010 - Pair the morning-after, CYA spin with the committee or candidate most likely to be pushing it ... 

THE SPIN: (1) That wasn't a wave - that was Armageddon. Neither man nor beast could have turned it back; (2) Remember back in 2009, when we were supposed to lose seats this cycle? (3) I did my best against the most out-of-control liberal media conspiracy since they took out Ollie North; (4) A majority is a majority, no matter how small. We were up against serious structural/atmospheric obstacles; (5) The RNC wet the bed! 

AND THE SPINNERS: (a) The NRSC; (b) All Republicans; (c) The DSCC and the NRCC; (d) The DCCC; (e) Christine O'Donnell/Joe Miller/Sharron Angle/Carl Paladino 

*** A message from Bosch: Did you know? Bosch produces solar photovoltaic cells, solar water heating systems and geothermal heat pumps that provide solutions for reducing C02 emissions, fossil fuel consumption, and heating and cooling costs. To learn more, please visit www.bosch.us WHAT TO WATCH FOR - POLITICO's viewer's guide: "All the outstanding questions of the 2010 campaign boil down to this: How big is the wave? ... Here are the most important results we'll be watching on election night for clues about where the 2010 campaign is headed - and what it all means: "The early returns: Indiana and Kentucky: The first polls begin closing at 6 p.m. Eastern time in Indiana and Kentucky, where a handful of House and Senate races could signal just how ugly the night is likely to be for Democrats. ... In Kentucky, Republicans have mounted a serious challenge to 6th District Rep. Ben Chandler, a popular moderate from a prominent political family. If Chandler goes down, few Democrats may be safe. ... Turnout, turnout, turnout: If two words can sum up the GOP's hopes for Election Day, they'd probably be: 'enthusiasm gap.' Republicans have been campaigning for months on the assumption that, by a wide margin, their supporters are more likely to vote than Democrats. ... It's a mark of how dire the Democratic predicament is that the party's best shot at averting disaster may be hoping that all the current turnout models are simply broken. ... What women want: Many of the Democrats' most aggressive, atomic-level campaign attacks have been aimed at moving exactly one group of voters: women. ... Democrats don't just need to win female voters - they need to win them by a huge margin, and they need them to turn out in force. ... A mandate for the tea party? ... Some of these folks are really going to win, and some will likely win by big margins. That has important consequences for the internal GOP debate about whether the tea party is a net plus or a net minus. Try telling people who win with 60 percent of the vote that they won in spite of their ideas. ... The state legislatures ... Several important chambers could go either way, including ones in battlegrounds such as Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. As bad as Democratic losses may be this year, they'll get exponentially worse over the next decade if Republicans end up redrawing the House map next year to favor their fresh-faced incumbents." 

Get the full download here: http://politi.co/aJX4GV  

SCORE'S PICKS - The races we're watching with elevated and/or eccentric interest: KY-06, MA-10, NJ-12, NY-23; California and Pennsylvania Senate; Florida, Minnesota and Hawaii governors; California attorney general and lieutenant governor; Bergen County executive. What are yours? Reply to this e-mail and let us know ... 

AND - PLACE YOUR BETS ... In the Anzalone Liszt/Stratalys prediction contest. The Democratic pollster and the consulting firm have teamed up to host a competition with a $1,000 purse. Free to enter! http://bit.ly/aBDEi3  

POLL CLOSINGS - 6 p.m.: Indiana, parts of Kentucky ... 7 p.m.: Florida, Georgia, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, the rest of Kentucky ... 7:30 p.m.: North Carolina, Ohio, West Virginia ... 8 p.m.: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas ... 8:30 p.m.: Arkansas ... 9 p.m.: Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming ... 10 p.m.: Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah ... 11 p.m.: California and Washington ... Midnight: Alaska and Hawaii ... http://bit.ly/al0t6o  

GOTV - NOT JUST FOR DEMS ANYMORE: Republicans have fretted throughout the cycle about what would happen to their once-legendary turnout operation, with the RNC on weak footing. Here's one solution: Have the RGA, American Crossroads and other cash-flush groups pick up the tab ... 

RGA'S TALLY: The committee has run an even more extensive ground game in 18 states, according to a memo shared with reporters, sending some 12.8 million mail pieces into eight states and spending over $18 million in 10 state-level GOTV programs. The biggest direct contributions: $1 million in Georgia, $1.8 million in Florida, $2 million each in California and Pennsylvania and $4 million in Michigan. And the 2012 angle: - The RGA also announced that it has invested a total of $49.5 million in 10 potential presidential battlegrounds: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. On a very good night, those states could all break for the GOP - Ohio and Florida are the closest and most important governor's races still balanced just about evenly. Quoth executive director Nick Ayers: "We will present a steep climb and difficult map for the President's reelection campaign. That was a driving factor of why RGA invested so heavily in all of the above." 

FOR CROSSROADS - The year's most talked-about conservative independent group has reached a total of 10 million likely voters across nine states, and implemented a $1 million canvassing programs that will reach 150,000 households in Washington and 120,000 in Colorado. The group also sent 50 volunteers, each, to Nevada and Colorado to canvass with the assistance of a new iPad application - that reached a smaller number of households (24,000) in each state, as a test-run for the next round of elections. 

LAST NIGHT - CLINTON IN ORLANDO: The Democratic Party's surrogate-in-chief was on the attack last night in Florida, where he made an 11th-hour stop for gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink and Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Senate nominee Clinton once attempted to coax from the race. The St. Petersburg Times reports: "A crowd of a thousand or more greets former President Bill Clinton shortly before 11 p.m. Monday in downtown Orlando as Florida's full slate of Democrats charged them up in the final rally of the 2010 election cycle. He gives the crowd a lesson in the 'at-risk' student loan program and says they should vote for Kendrick Meek to protect it. 'Alex Sink got to run the biggest bank in Florida the old-fashioned way, she earned it,' he said. ... 'She saved money. The other made a fortune by ripping your money off.'" http://bit.ly/dusQV6  

WHY THIS ONE IS SO CLOSE - The Miami Herald's Marc Caputo zooms in on the details of this contest, which may be both the most important and unpredictable governor's race tonight: "When the polls open Tuesday, Alex Sink will find herself in familiar territory for a Democrat in a Florida governor's race: losing the voter turnout war. About 271,000 more Republicans than Democrats cast absentee or early-vote ballots, which probably translates into a sizable lead for Republican Rick Scott before the first person votes on Election Day. But that doesn't mean Scott is up by a huge margin -- and he's unlikely to hang on to much of a lead for long. Two polls released Monday showed Sink leads Scott by a percentage point -- essentially a tie. And every major recent public opinion poll shows that Sink draws more support from voters with no party affiliation, who have cast about 14 percent of the ballots so far. ... Scott right now could have a real lead of more than 100,000 votes, according to a Herald/Times analysis of recent public polls applied to the early and absentee ballot data. Democrats say it's not an insurmountable lead. 'One hundred thousand is not a huge hill,' said Steve Schale, a Sink campaign advisor, who notes that Democrats have a voter-registration edge over Republicans of more than 600,000. ... Republicans say they'd rather be in Scott's position. And they say their pre-Election Day lead is probably greater than 100,000. 'We think the people who have voted so far, especially Republicans, are Rick voters,' said Republican Party of Florida spokesman Dan Conston." http://bit.ly/9CG2o4  

TODAY - From the White House guidance: "The President will do local radio interviews with KPWR Los Angeles, WGCI Chicago, WSOL Jacksonville and KVEG Las Vegas from the Oval Office." Those hits follow up multiple GOTV interviews Obama gave to radio stations Monday. And for the VP: "In the morning, the Vice President will do a radio interview with the Tom Joyner Morning Show from Wilmington, Delaware. Afterwards, the Vice President will vote in Wilmington. ... Later, the Vice President will do radio interviews with WENZ Cleveland and WNCI Columbus." 

BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE NUMBER 300: As in the tally of events Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will have hit and exceeded by the end of the campaign, going back to his first event in January 2009 for ... South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. 

POLL OF THE DAY - ANYONE'S BALLGAME: More than one in five Alaska voters remains undecided in the state's Senate race, according to a Hays Research poll conducted for the DSCC, meaning that election is very much up for grabs. Republican Joe Miller has a slight lead in the poll, taking 27 percent of the vote, versus 26 percent for Democrat Scott McAdams and 25 percent for "another candidate you have to write in" - a.k.a. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. That's a different result than PPP got over the weekend, when the survey firm gave Miller 37 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for each of his opponents. The forest-for-the-trees takeaway is this: We might not know the winner of this race for a long time. http://bit.ly/9hJhDZ  

INDY SIREN - BLOOMBERG TEASES: The New York mayor talked up the possibility of a third-party president during an appearance at Harvard's Institute of Politics Monday, suggesting: "I think actually a third-party candidate could run the government easier than a partisan political president because the partisan political president - yeah he's got half the votes, but he can't get the others - whereas the guy in the middle may very well be able to get enough across the aisle." Bloomberg - appearing with Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski and Jon Meacham - said he wouldn't run himself. But he offered only a dry pledge to serve out his term: "He said he asked the New York City voters who elected him in 2009 for another four years, adding that he is 'sort of inclined' to fulfill that promise." http://bit.ly/adD7tT  

NOW THAT'S GOING ROGUE: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has endorsed former GOP Rep.-turned-American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo for governor of Colorado, cutting a robocall that says he'll "stop growing government and start growing the economy, and we know he'll continue to work to end illegal immigration." http://bit.ly/aXuP0A  Bonus Media Matters headline: "Fox News' Palin endorses birther" http://bit.ly/d8TlAl  

LITIGATION WATCH - Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle has run afoul of a prominent toymaker, KVVU reports: "Hasbro, makers of the world-famous Monopoly board game, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle on Monday, claiming one of her campaign websites constitutes copyright infringement. The website, HarryReidsAmnestyGame.com uses images of the Senate majority leader alongside a game board very similar to Monopoly. ... 'Your unauthorized use of these monopoly elements is likely to tarnish and/or dilute their distinctive qualities,' attorneys wrote in the letter. 'Aside from the strictly legal aspects of the matter, we hope that you would respect Hasbro's desire to avoid associations of its toys and games with partisan politics.'" ... And the Charlottesville Daily Progress reports that state Sen. Robert Hurt has filed a sizable lawsuit against environmental groups running ads attacking him: "Hurt, the Republican candidate seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello, D-Ivy, has filed a $1.09 million defamation lawsuit against the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club and Charlottesville's Newsplex TV stations and NBC29. Hurt's lawsuit, filed in Greene County Circuit Court, asserts he was defamed by TV ads that call his vote in the General Assembly in favor of a uranium mining study a 'shocking conflict of interest.' ... Hurt's campaign spokeswoman did not immediately return a call for comment Monday. ... Spokeswomen for the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters said they also have not yet been served." http://bit.ly/aF6uaQ  and http://bit.ly/a2YVoc  

CODA - SUMMING IT UP: "It's been a long, strange trip." - Maine Senate president Libby Mitchell, the Democratic candidate for governor. http://bit.ly/aT6W0t  

*** A message from Bosch: Did you know? As the largest independent supplier of wind turbine components, Bosch Rexroth has played a significant role in developing new gear and drive technology that has helped increase the power generating capacities of today's wind turbines. To learn more, please visit www.bosch.us  

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