Ads Hit Three House Democrats on Health Care Vote [the formerly safe Spratt, Pomeroy & Snyder]

CQ Politics ^ | November 18, 2009 | John McArdle

[MitchellC]

The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting three veteran Democrats who voted for the House version of the health care bill in a weeklong round of television ads that will begin airing on Thursday.

The new 30-second spots hit Democratic Reps. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, Vic Snyder of Arkansas and John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina for their votes by using the words of fellow Democratic legislators who opposed the legislation.

Among the statements the NRCC uses in it' new ad against Pomeroy is one released by the office of Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., when he announced he was going to buck his party and vote no on the bill two days before the vote came to the floor.

"The worst thing we could do during a recession is raise taxes and this bill does just that," Boren said in his statement.

That quote, and others by Democratic Reps. Bobby Bright of Alabama, Travis W. Childers of Mississippi and Chet Edwards of Texas are juxtaposed against a picture of Pomeroy.

"The reviews on Earl Pomeroy's health care bill are in, and they're not good," an announcer says before the statements by dissenting Democrats are read. "And that's just what fellow Democrats say about Earl Pomeroy's national health care bill. Earl Pomeroy, tell him we can't afford it any more."

Pomeroy, Snyder and Spratt all won re-election with relative ease in 2008 despite the fact that they each sit in districts that went for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in last year's presidential contest. But as they look to spread the field ahead of what many expect to be a better environment for the GOP in 2010, the NRCC is putting pressure on several veteran Democrats.

Recent polling has shown that Snyder would be in for a tough election against any of three Republicans -- insurance executive David Meeks, restaurateur Scott Wallace and former U.S. attorney Timothy Griffin -- who have already announced against him. Spratt recently picked up a challenge in October from South Carolina state Sen. Mick Mulvaney and Pomeroy is facing a challenge from little-known insurance salesman Paul Schaffner.

The ads are set to run for a week in the Little Rock, Ark., Bismarck, N.D., and Charlotte, N.C., media markets. An NRCC spokesman called the size of the buy "significant" but declined to go into any further detail. A Democratic source said that their ad buy tracking showed the buy was small, but also would not provide exact details on its scope.

CQ Politics rates the general election race in North Dakota as Safe Democratic;; the Arkansas race as Likely Democratic; and the South Carolina contest as Safe Democratic.

[MitchellC]

CQ Politics rates the general election race in North Dakota as Safe Democratic;; the Arkansas race as Likely Democratic; and the South Carolina contest as Safe Democratic.

Way past due to update those ratings, there.

[hsalaw]

CQ Politics rates the general election race in North Dakota as Safe Democratic;; the Arkansas race as Likely Democratic; and the South Carolina contest as Safe Democratic.

Looks like they're not so "Safe" anymore. Warning to the rest of the smug dems who think they're in "safe" districts.

[MitchellC]

Safe to say Snyder and Spratt are goners? Not sure about Pomeroy.

Does anyone know who keeps the Arkansas and North Dakota ping lists?

[Charles Henrickson]

"The reviews on Earl Pomeroy's health care bill are in, and they're not good,"

BLUE DOG EARL
Tune: "Duke of Earl"

Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl

Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl . . .

Of all the useless terms
Nothing can top the "Blue Dog" Earl
'Cause there, there is this girl
And Earl is her lap dog, oh, oh

Yes, Earl, Earl is Nancy's puppy, oh, oh
Pelosi's Pomeranian
Yes, he's her Lap Dog Earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

And, and Nancy told him:
"You'll be my lap dog, my Lap Dog Earl
You'll come when I call you
And a Porkulus we will share"

Yes, Earl, Earl is Nancy's puppy, oh, oh
Pelosi's Pomeranian
Yes, he's her Lap Dog Earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl

Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl . . .

Yes, Earl, Earl is Nancy's puppy, oh, oh
Pelosi's Pomeranian
Yes, he's her Lap Dog Earl
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Blue, Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl
Blue, Blue, Blue Dog Earl . . .

[MitchellC]

In the case of Snyder, especially. I don’t understand why the district is rated “likely” Democratic when they’re citing polls showing him struggling against no-names.

[Candor7]

Thats gotta smart!

[kcvl]

Vic Snyder of Arkansas

Is certifiably nuts!

[MitchellC]

SC Ping.

Also, could you pass on these links in your ping, just to make sure everyone sees them:

http://www.MulvaneyForCongress.com/

http://DumpSpratt.com/

Thanks!

[RJL]

The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting three veteran Democrats

There weren't any good conservatives like Hoffman or Rubio to target?
/S

[upchuck]

Passing these ping at the request of MitchellC, see reply #8.

http://www.MulvaneyForCongress.com

http://DumpSpratt.com/

South Carolina
Ping
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[Smokin' Joe]

Earl isn't any 'Blue Dog', he has supported the AWB since the git-go.

Nope, he gets votes the old fashioned way here in ND, by promising to save the family farm, by getting pork for the 4 biggest cities (about half the population), and by promising to save social security. That so far has had him on rails, but hopefully, this will upset his Rat applecart.

[MitchellC]

ping

[erman]

Don’t pay attention to anything that Chet Edwards says. He’ a faux conservative that is pelosi’s butt boy and Was hoping to be on Obama’s ticket. He is grade A douche

[MitchellC]

Of course. None of these so-called ‘blue dogs’ are in any substantive way conservative, else they’d never have caucused with Pelosi. I suspect most of them are every bit as committed to socialism as Pelosi and the rest of the party, but they just know they have to cover their asses just enough to keep their party in power after future elections.

Given enough time, they all end up sliding to the left.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Not necessarily goners, but looking at difficult campaigns they haven’t faced recently. The AR GOP has been nearly dead since Huckster jackhammered it into the ground. They may choose to focus exclusively on federal races and ignore the Governor’s race (where Beebe hasn’t been any better or much worse than Huckster - and in ‘08, the GOP gained seats in the legislature for the first time under Beebe in nearly a decade after shrinking under Huckster). All of them still have the upper hand.

Snyder is clearly too left-wing for Little Rock, but the district hasn’t elected a GOP Congressman since 1982.

Spratt is also too leftist and our failure to bounce him in ‘94 has allowed him to hold onto what is clearly a GOP-leaning district. That district hasn’t elected a Republican to the House since Reconstruction (1874).

ND-At Large has been a real pain. We haven’t really run first-tier candidates despite having an embarrassment of riches in farm team candidates statewide. We last elected a Republican House member in 1978 (we actually lost the open seat when Mark Andrews moved up to the Senate in 1980).

Might they all survive ? Possibly, but I don’t think it’s impossible that at least one of them may fall, provided our candidate is well-funded and supported.

[MitchellC]

Obama seems to be killing the Dems in Arkansas, just by association. I guess they’re still upset that he beat ‘their’ Hillary.

Spratt just hasn’t faced many serious challengers. One thing that I think has hurt the GOP there is that the local level Dems remained conservative enough that it has denied the Republicans much of a farm team. The white flight from Charlotte over the past decade has changed that.

[fieldmarshaldj]

It may be harming the party in AR in image, but the Dem party there is still about as strong as the one in WV, although both benefit from a weak state GOP, but the states have already become reliably GOP at the Presidential level now, and it’s a matter of having it trickle down. By all accounts, had Huckster been a Governor more like Haley Barbour, the state would’ve been close to 50-50 instead of where it’s at now (more like the 20% range). That would be quite a coup to take out both Lambert-Lincoln and Snyder and would restore us to where we were federally prior to 2000 (we could actually win all 4 House seats, all have gone GOP for President, as have the 3 in WV).

If Spratt survives ‘10, what could be a problem for him is if SC regains a 7th House seat in ‘12 for the first time since prior to 1933. Because of the Black population in the state, the Justice Department may mandate the new seat be made for a 2nd Black member. In which case, the repercussions would be felt even all the way up to Spratt’s seat. The current 6th would likely be split in half, with the easternmost chunk then taking a good portion of Spratt’s 5th, at least the Black areas (and Spratt would have to run in a more compact and heavily GOP new 5th). A new 7th would take the westernmost sections of the 6th (and strips out of the current 2nd) south of Charleston and up towards Columbia, for which it would also more than likely make the 1st and 2nd utterly safe for the GOP, the 1st is getting uncomfortably marginal (the fact that a lesbian moonbat rodent came that close last time should send off warning bells).

Spratt would be finished, of course, replaced by a 5th Republican, but we’d then probably have an obnoxious and racist Jim Clyburn clone in the 7th.

[AuH2ORepublican]

Adding a second black-majority CD in SC would require placing blacks from Wilson’s SC-02 (and even some from the SC-03 and SC-01) in a black-majority CD and blacks from Spratt’s SC-05 in a second such district, with Clyburn’s CD being split among the two districts. This would guarantee the election of 5 Republicans (in particular, Brown’s Charleston-based SC-01, which has trended RAT, would be strengthened by adding Hilton Head and subtracting black precincts), and I would encourage GOP redistricters to draw such a map even if the Justice Department doesn’t require them to draw a second black-majority district.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Yes. Indeed, if SC doesn’t get that 7th seat, it will continue to imperil our hold on the 1st (not just Blacks in the Charleston area, but wealthy “trendy” liberal Whites), otherwise it will take an expert redraw to excise more of these voters and pack them into the 6th.

[Clintonfatigued]

John Spratt is being challenged by a state Senator who is well-regarded. He could definitely go.

Vic Snyder and Earl Pomeroy are more problematic. Snyder is being challenged by a health company exeutive, who IMHO has an outside shot. I don’t know who’s challenging Pomeroy.