Just in time for the negative ad season, our WSB Radio blogging colleague Jamie Dupree has this:
Some facts dug up by Dupree:
-- 37 Democrats are using official office account money to lease a vehicle, spending an average of $606.73 per month.
-- 26 Republicans are using official office account money to lease a vehicle, spending an average of $615.20 per month.
Those from Georgia who are leasing their rides:
-- Rep. David Scott D-GA $523.32
-- Rep. Phil Gingrey R-GA $479.26
-- Rep. John Lewis D-GA $417.93
Given that two of the above names are currently involved in hot primary contests, you can expect to hear more about this.
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He doesn't have much money, and doesn't like to talk to the corporate lackeys of the press. So how do you get attention if you're Derrick Grayson, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate?
You hop a weekend plane West to express support for America's most famous rancher – or infamous, depending on your point of view. From a group called Communities Digital News:
Grayson's quiet and quick sojourn to Nevada demonstrates his commitment to the anti-government vision he preaches. Despite the fact that Bundy's claim to grazing rights is legally shaky at best, Grayson has remained one of the rancher's few outspoken allies.
Surely a YouTube clip is in the works.
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Michelle Nunn's basketball-infused ad last week featured her dad. The ad you see above, which was released this morning, features her grandmother.
What neither of them - or any of her ads - has said so far is that she's running for the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. Yet by introducing viewers to her family and background as a nonprofit executive who worked with President George H.W. Bush, Nunn is trying to define herself before the GOP can.
Nunn's campaign reported nearly $4 million in its coffers at the end of March and her aides are beginning to spend it. Federal records show she's already reserved tens of thousands of dollars worth of spots through early May as her primary contest against several lesser-known Democrats looms.
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The AP's Bill Barrow traveled down to Shellman to explain why Nunn is explicitly holding up her father, former Sen. Sam Nunn, as a kind of old-school moderate southerner. Nunn told Barrow:
"I often hear from people that they miss the days in which they felt like they had someone who was a statesman and reached across the aisle. I'm both lucky to have that connection and to have my own experiences that demonstrate my capacity to lead in that way."
We wrote about a similar dynamic last week in the governor's race, where Jason Carter isn't exactly trumpeting that he's the grandson of the former president, but he's increasingly relying on his grandfather's help.
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Get ready for another Super PAC TV barrage. Citizens for a Working America PAC, which has been hitting Jack Kingston on the airwaves, is putting up another $500,000 for pro-David Perdue spots, bringing its total to $1 million spent trying to influence the GOP primary.
Still no word on who the donors are behind the effort.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealed that it put $920,000 behind its pro-Kingston buy.
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In the 11th Congressional District race, Ed Lindsey is getting some Super PAC ammunition of his own. The American Jobs Council Federal PAC was formed in March and took in $50,000 in one day from three donors -- Arkansas investor Warren Stephens and a pair of sister biotech corporations with the same Marietta address, Vivex and Amendia.
So far, the PAC is spending $13,000 on pro-Lindsey direct mail.
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John Stone, a Republican running in the 12th District race to face U.S. Rep. John Barrow, is going for quirky and eye-catching in his ads to overcome a relative lack of funds in the race. He started with a literal bang, firing a cannon in his opening spot. Now he's casting his GOP foes as the Three Stooges:
The question is how many voters will see it. Stone's opening buy was for a mere $1,100 on cable.
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The 10th District congressional campaign of Donna Sheldon, a Republican from Dacula, this morning announced that it has the endorsement of former Georgia congressman and current Mississippian John Linder.
“Donna is committed to the FairTax and I believe the best candidate to help further that important reform bill,” Linder is quoted as saying.
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Democrats Kyle Williams and Elena Parent, both candidates for the state Senate District 42 seat being vacated by Jason Carter, have a debate date scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at Agnes Scott College, sponsored by DeKalb County Young Democrats.
You can bet this flyer sent out by the Williams campaign, accusing Parent of consorting with Gov. Nathan Deal, will be a topic of conversation:
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Nothing finishes off a good meal like a campaign ad.
A reader tells us of a weekend lunch at Chin Chin, a Chinese restaurant on Peachtree Street, ended with a political message in a fortune cookie.
From one:
"Tired of politicians who lie? Time to elect more honest people. Vote Catherine Bernard for State House."
Bernard is mounting a primary challenge to state Rep. Mike Jacobs, R-Brookhaven.
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Last week's InsiderAdvantage poll of the Republican race for U.S. Senate, which showed Karen Handel in a statistical tie for the lead and was conducted for WAGA-TV and Morris News Service, employed some innovative methodology. It was conducted through a mixture of automated phone calls on land lines and Internet interviews.
The latter were conducted by OpinionSavvy, a firm headed up by Matt Towery, Jr., son of InsiderAdvantage CEO Matt Towery, according to the Huffington Post. From the HP:
Towery explains that they started with a larger sample (a total of 1,474 interviews), and randomly selected the 737 interviews used to produce the final results, setting a 2:1 ratio of telephone to online surveys (491 telephone and 246 online surveys)
There's much more, so be sure to read it. The HP also includes some implicit criticism of the methodology from the likes of Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette Law School poll and co-founder of Pollster.com:
"Those based on explicit models can be replicated and tested in a variety of settings but how well they work is an empirical question. The more ad hoc the approach the more impossible it becomes to assess. In effect we have polls with no theoretical basis to claim legitimacy. Maybe they work. Maybe they don't. We don't know."
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Former U.S. House speaker Newt Gingrich sparked some accusations that he was turning socialist with this weekend Tweet:
The right answer to the Clippers ownership challenge is to sell it to the people of Los Angeles. Green Bay, not billionaires, is the model
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