Washed It!

If Republicans win control of the House in the Nov. 2 election, California’s congressional delegation will undergo a dramatic transfer of power, as Democrats such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Beverly Hills give way to a team of Republicans who could take over at least five committees.

Although Democrats are certain to remain in the majority of the state’s delegation, California Republicans hold enough seniority within their party to wield the chairmanship gavels of more committees than any other state:

•Rep. Darrell Issa of Vista, in line to chair the top investigative committee, could become the Obama administration’s chief congressional antagonist.

•Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, the senior California House Republican, could return as Appropriations Committee chairman, tasked with carrying out his party’s pledge to rein in spending, even as his home state looks to Washington for more money.

•Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of Santa Clarita is positioned to take control of the Armed Services Committee, setting up a possible confrontation with the White House it if sticks to its plan to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July. He also would take over the panel at a time when budget cuts loom over the state’s defense industry.

•Rep. David Dreier of San Dimas is likely to return as chairman of the Rules Committee, which sets the procedures for considering House bills. And Rep. Dan Lungren of Gold River, if he wins his tough reelection campaign, could chair the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the day-to-day operations of the House.

Republicans feel so good about their prospects that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) is working behind the scenes to win the Science and Technology Committee gavel. Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), who provided more than $1 million of his own campaign funds to help elect Republicans, has been mentioned as a possible candidate for chairman of the Financial Services Committee.

And Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), in only his second term, is expected to move up in party leadership, perhaps to the third-ranking position of whip, responsible for counting votes and maintaining party discipline on important floor decisions. It would be a reward for the telegenic 45-year-old chief recruiter of Republican candidates who has traveled the country from Lake Oswego, Ore., to Frog Jump, Tenn., working to deliver a GOP majority.

California’s potential clout in a Republican-controlled House is striking given the blue tinge of the state, which still views President Obama more favorably than most other places, though six California Republicans chaired major committees before the Democrats won control of the House in 2006.

Democrats say they believe their party will hold onto the majority after Nov. 2, but are using the “what if” prospect of a Republican takeover in the campaign.

“Every time I try to encourage the White House to do more to help us elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, I send them a picture of Darrell Issa with the word ’subpoena’ underneath,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks), in reference to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s power to drag administration officials before the bright TV lights of investigative hearings.

Democrats question how strongly California Republicans will look out for the state’s interests while shaping their party’s national agenda.

“When the Republican governor of California came to Congress with his hand out, saying, ‘I need your help,’ they all said, ‘no,’ ” said Daniel Weiss, chief of staff for Rep. George Miller of Martinez, one of five California Democrats who chair House committees.

All of the California Republicans present last summer opposed a $26-billion aid package for cash-strapped states, including $1.2 billion sought by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, attacking it as another expensive federal bailout.

“We will not be a prosperous state if our country has policies that are bringing us a trillion and a half dollars more in debt each year,” Rohrabacher said.

“Chasing after nonexistent federal dollars is hardly our priority,” added Dreier, chairman of the California Republican delegation. “Our goal is to implement fiscally responsible pro-growth economic policies so that we can get Californians working.”

Frederick Hill, a spokesman for Issa, said California Republicans would be “positioned to play key roles in addressing the failed efforts of this Congress and administration to lower unemployment — many California congressional Democrats don’t even seem to acknowledge that this administration’s job policies aren’t working as advertised.”

California Republicans could face resistance within their own party over aiding a blue state and the longtime mind-set among many lawmakers who would rather have federal resources go “anywhere but California.”

Among the biggest changes in a GOP power transfer would be Issa taking over as chairman of the oversight committee, which over the years has investigated subjects including steroid use in sports, and waste, fraud and abuse in government contracts.

Danielle Brian, executive director of the watchdog Project on Government Oversight, expects Issa to be “oftentimes partisan.”

But, she said, so was Waxman, an investigative pit bill while leading the panel, investigating such things as whether the George W. Bush administration sought to muzzle climate scientists in order to downplay the dangers of global warming and the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California permission to implement its global warming law.

“We think it could be interesting having him as chairman of the committee,” Brian said.

But interesting isn’t a word Democrats use.

“So far, he’s given a lot of indications that he’s looking forward to using the position for partisan purposes,” Waxman said.

There is speculation that some longtime California Democrats may retire rather than try to adjust to life with less power. But if Republicans win the majority by only a few seats, those Democrats might stay on in hopes of regaining the majority in 2012.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) is among those eager for a Republican takeover of the House. “Most importantly, it will put people in charge who are not from San Francisco or Hollywood,” he said.

richard.simon@latimes.com

Election could shift power in state’s congressional delegation

Defections from Meg Whitman’s ranks on the part of women, Latinos and nonpartisan voters have fueled a surge by Jerry Brown in the race for governor, according to a new Los Angeles Times/USC poll.

The shift comes after a tumultuous month for the Republican candidate that has led some voters to question her veracity and her handling of accusations by an illegal immigrant housekeeper.

Brown, the Democratic attorney general and former governor, led Whitman 52% to 39% among likely voters, the poll found. His advantage has more than doubled since a Times/USC poll in September.

The abrupt movement in the race for governor came as Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer held onto her 8-point margin over Republican Carly Fiorina in the U.S. Senate contest. Boxer’s 50% to 42% lead was statistically unchanged from September’s 51% to 43% edge.

For both Democrats, the month between the two polls found the party’s strongest supporters rallying to the candidates’ sides: liberals, women and Latinos either solidified or expanded their backing for Brown and Boxer. Nonpartisan voters, whom Republicans had counted on to overcome the Democratic advantage in voter registration, moved away from the two Republican candidates, and moderate voters also tilted toward the Democrats.

Paula Bennett, a schoolteacher in the Sacramento-area town of Acampo, said she was drawn to Brown in part by the blizzard of cash Whitman has thrown at the race.

“I like the little guy; he didn’t have the money behind him like she did,” she said in a follow-up interview, adding that she sided with Brown for the same reason that she favors a mom-and-pop establishment over a retail behemoth.

“We don’t shop at Walmart. We shop at the local store. He just seemed like more of a down-home candidate.”

Although she is Republican, Bennett is also siding with Boxer. She said she was offended by both Whitman’s and Fiorina’s infusions of personal cash into their races.

“That message that they’re sending to people is a very bad choice,” she said. “We’re looking to people to act their values rather than throw money at causes. People are holding their money really closely and those candidates are really splurging.”

Most of the nation has seen pronounced enthusiasm by Republican voters as the midterm elections approach. In California, however, Democrats have gained strength and GOP motivation has ebbed slightly in the last month, the poll showed. The current standings represent a reassertion of a more typical profile for the state after an election year convulsed by a foundering economy, widespread discontent about the future and record-breaking spending by Whitman, who has dropped more than $141 million of her own money into her campaign.

The poll was conducted for The Los Angeles Times and the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences from Oct. 13 to 20 by the Democratic polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner and the Republican firm American Viewpoint. It included a random sample of 1,501 California voters, including 922 likely voters. Results for likely voters have a margin of sampling error of 3.2 points in either direction, with a larger margin for subgroups.

The survey was taken as the two gubernatorial candidates pummeled each other over the state’s airwaves and flooded telephone lines and mailboxes with entreaties for the election — now nine days away. And it came at the close of a particularly difficult period in the race for Whitman.

A turning point appears to have been the Sept. 29 announcement by her former housekeeper, Nicandra Diaz Santillan, that she had been employed by the former EBay chief for nine years, a period during which she said Whitman became aware of her illegal status. Whitman countered that she had not known of Diaz Santillan’s status until shortly before firing her in 2009, and she released copies of falsified documents presented to her by Diaz Santillan.

Diaz Santillan, accompanied by attorney Gloria Allred in a series of sob-wracked news conferences, displayed a copy of a 2003 government document sent to Whitman and her husband that could have alerted them that their employee was using a false Social Security number.

The subsequent days of controversy upended Whitman’s carefully nuanced position on illegal immigration and whipsawed her between voters who thought she was too easy on Diaz Santillan and those who thought the housekeeper deserved better than banishment. Whitman slipped among both groups in the new poll.

Among likely Latino voters, support for Brown grew from a 20-point lead in September to a 34-point advantage in the new survey. His lead among women voters expanded from 9 points to 21 points. Among nonpartisan voters, who in California register as “decline to state” and tend to recoil from tough stances against illegal immigrants, Brown’s lead over Whitman grew from 6 points to 37 points.

At the other end of the ideological scale, Whitman’s standing among conservatives ebbed slightly, from 77% to 70%. She continued to outdistance Brown among those voters, although his support grew slightly from 16% to 21%.

Overall, by 52% to 41%, voters said that Whitman had not handled the housekeeper controversy well. The same key voter groups — women, independents and Latinos — offered the harshest verdicts. When asked how Brown had handled the matter, voters were more divided, with 37% saying he did well and 43% saying he did not. Among independent voters, a plurality approved of Brown’s actions.

Jerry Brown’s lead doubles in a month; little change in Senate race

President Barack Obama rallied thousands of loyal supporters at the USC campus Friday, urging them to defy skeptics who have predicted losses for Democrats and turn out in force on election day to give his administration more time to turn around the nation’s flailing economy and deliver the change he promised in the 2008 election.

“We need all of you to fight on. We need all of you fired up,” the president told the roaring crowd of students and admirers — 37,500 of them, by USC officials’ estimates — who spilled out across the sun-soaked lawn of Alumni Park and the streets beyond. “We need all of you ready to go, because in just 11 days … you have the chance to set the direction of this state and of this country, not just for the next two years but for the next five years, the next 10 years, the next 20 years.”

“Just like you did in 2008,” the president said, “you can defy the conventional wisdom that says young people are apathetic, the conventional wisdom that says you can’t beat the cynicism in politics.”

In the combative tone that has defined his remarks in recent days, Obama offered a sharp rebuke of the Republican agenda, accusing the opposition party of embracing a strategy of “amnesia” after sitting on the sidelines saying “no to everything” while blaming him for the nation’s troubles.

“They figured that y’all would forget that they caused the mess in the first place,” he said. “…But Los Angeles, as I look out on this crowd, this tells me you haven’t forgotten.”

With a new Los Angeles-Times/USC poll showing a narrowing enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, the president’s trip to California served the dual purpose of motivating his troops and raising money for endangered Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and attorney general candidate Kamala Harris. Boxer, Harris and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, all spoke briefly at the event, asking Democrats to match the fervor of Republicans.

Actor Jamie Foxx also underscored the Democrats’ precarious position by alluding to Obama’s encounter with a woman earlier this year who said she was exhausted by defending him — and then prompting the crowd to chant: “We’re not exhausted.”

Boxer, who has been hit with millions of dollars’ worth of attack ads from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other outside groups, said the other side has “giant, wealthy, unlimited-spending special interests with them.” But, she said, “We have our own army.”

Unlike on his last visit to Los Angeles, the President sought to avoid the wrath of the city’s commuters by flying from LAX to USC on Marine One for the event organized by the Democratic National Party. He also attended a luncheon fundraiser for Boxer and sat for an interview with Spanish-language radio host Piolin in Glendale. Then he jetted off to Nevada for another Democratic rally and a dinner to benefit Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is in an uncomfortably close race of his own.

While some Democratic candidates have kept Obama at arm’s length — distancing themselves from the administration’s controversial healthcare legislation and the $814-million stimulus package — Boxer has welcomed his help in California. In this state, 56% of likely voters said in a recent Times/USC poll that they wanted a senator who supports the president.

Boxer has been an unfailing defender of Obama’s policies, even in the face of relentless criticism of Obama’s policies from her challenger, Republican Carly Fiorina. The White House has rewarded Boxer’s loyalty with multiple trips to California on behalf of the three-term senator, who is clinging to a slim lead over Fiorina.

The president’s visit will be followed next week by a fundraising event for Boxer featuring First Lady Michelle Obama. The efforts will provide a much-needed boost to Boxer’s coffers in the final stretch.

New fundraising reports covering the period from Oct. 1 to Oct. 13 showed Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive, raising slightly more than Boxer, though Boxer still had twice as much cash on hand as her opponent. But Fiorina announced a new $1-million loan to her campaign Friday for the final push, in addition to the $5.5 million she gave herself for the primary.

At Friday’s rally, the candidates took care to avoid mentioning the names of their rivals but drew distinctions between themselves and their opponents.

Brown signaled that he would reject what he has criticized as the divisive tactics of his opponent: “We don’t scapegoat anybody, not public workers, not immigrants, not anybody because we’re all Californians together.”

And Obama argued that if Republicans were to regain control, they would cut “middle-class families loose to fend for themselves.”

“Their basic philosophy is — you’re on your own,” he said.

Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund called Obama’s visit “another rescue mission for Boxer” and said the fact that Boxer did not mention Friday’s new unemployment figures or her specific plans to address them in her short speech proved “just how out of touch she is with the reality that 1 in 8 Californians is without a job.”

Brown’s Republican rival, Meg Whitman, meanwhile, campaigned in San Jose on Friday with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He had held the all-time record for self-funding a campaign until Whitman, who has put $141.5 million into her gubernatorial bid, surpassed him.

The former EBay chief executive said the Obama administration’s efforts to revive the economy had been a failure.

“The progress has been terrible,” Whitman said. “Look at the unemployment rates we face in California and we face in the country.”

maeve.reston@latimes.com

seema.mehta@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael J. Mishak in San Jose contributed to this report.
In USC speech, Obama urges 37,500 Democratic voters to ‘fight on’

With the 2008 Democratic primary race all but won, Barack Obama appeared at a massive outdoor rally here and delivered a message that was unique by the cutthroat standards of American political campaigns.

“We’re not going to worry about what other folks are doing,” Obama told a crowd of 75,000 at the waterfront event in May 2008. “We’re going to try to focus on what we think we can do for America.”

Obama returned to Portland on Wednesday night and delivered a different sort of speech. His message of national unity and reconciliation had been replaced by a stark warning against cynical Republican tactics, vague threats to America’s political system and the urgent need to keep the GOP marginalized.

There was less hope, more fear.

Obama conveyed much the same message Thursday during a rally in Seattle, and the appeal is not expected to vary significantly as he campaigns in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Minneapolis over the next two days.

Obama in Portland suggested that “foreign-controlled corporations” were bankrolling a “misleading, negative” ad campaign that serves Republicans, but offered no evidence.

“We don’t know,” he said.

Whereas his 2008 speech said that Americans needed to “start trusting each other again, start working together again,” he said at the Oregon Convention Center rally this week that even if Republicans cooperate more with the White House, they would be forced to “sit in the back seat.”

Two years ago, he said Americans are “tired of a politics that’s all about tearing each other down.” On Wednesday, he painted a grim picture of life under Republican leadership: The chronically ill, the unemployed, the student who can’t afford college tuition — all would be cut “loose to fend for themselves.”

The shift in tone reflects the realities of Obama’s political predicament. With Democrats facing the likelihood of major losses in the midterm election, Obama wants to fire up his base and make sure voters go to the polls. Instead of letting the campaign become a referendum on his first term at a time when the unemployment rate is nearly 10%, Obama is instead framing the election as a clear choice.

David Axelrod, a senior White House advisor who helps craft Obama’s speeches, said the aim was to lay out the stakes in the Nov. 2 election.

“Everything looks different through the gauzy recollections of the past,” said Axelrod when asked how Obama’s message has changed in the last two years. “We offered a fairly strong critique of the Republican policies of 2008…. Every election is a choice. People need to understand what the contrast is.”

Obama has been delivering a similar version of the Portland speech recently. Speaking in Columbus, Ohio, earlier in the week, he imputed a motive to lawmakers who’ve resisted his agenda: Republicans opposed his proposals because they want him to founder, cynically positioning themselves to pick up seats in the upcoming election at the nation’s expense.

Appearing in Boston last week, he told the crowd that with the country facing an historic economic downturn, Republicans “didn’t lift a finger to help.”

The darker message may be rooted in Obama’s experience as president. Nearly two years into the job, the partisan divisions are not going away.

“As a candidate in 2008, Obama made an appealing but naive promise to bring Republicans and Democrats together in Washington and end the bitter partisan standoff,” said Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies and writes about governance. “He learned that was easier said than done.

“He is now giving voice to a reality that he was hesitant to accept.”

peter.nicholas@latimes.com

cparsons@latimes.com
In two years, a fearful turn in Obama’s speeches

It wasn’t tough decisions on California’s ailing schools, or the prison crisis or the direction of healthcare reform that kept lawmakers locked in chambers for more than 20 hours before they finally passed the latest budget in state history Friday morning.

What bedeviled the process of approving the $125-billion spending plan was such matters as whether electronic highway billboards should have advertisements, whether a big political donor should be appointed to a state commission, whose name should adorn a disaster-relief bill, and whether the state needs a paid secretary of volunteerism.

The vote was supposed to be easy, a bipartisan election-year feint that pushed tough decisions into the future, papering over the deficit with clever accounting.

The budget lawmakers passed would keep state services at the status quo, with a freeze on school spending, modest trims to healthcare programs and some new money for universities.

It assumes billions of dollars in federal aid that most experts agree will never materialize and relies on loans and bookkeeping maneuvers such as transfers and funding shifts.

Yet the approval process became an all-night affair, with tens of millions of dollars in transportation spending lost because lawmakers had a spat over electronic billboards and DUI checkpoints.

Some Democrats disliked a provision to sell advertising space for soft drinks, automobiles or other products alongside the flashing alerts about abducted children and hazardous road conditions on the more than 700 state-owned electronic freeway billboards. The proposal was pushed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Who thinks it’s a good idea to give drivers one more reason to take their eyes off the road?” said Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto). He chairs a budget subcommittee that initially rejected the plan, which was later reinserted into the budget by legislative leaders.

Sen. Gil Cedillo (D-Los Angeles) sought to make the multi-provision bill more palatable by adding a new measure. It addressed an element of alleged corruption in Bell, where the city was reported to be making money by towing the cars of sober immigrants from DUI checkpoints if they did not have proper ID.

Without a provision banning such a practice, Cedillo was refusing to vote for it and other parts of the budget, which was contained in 21 bills. Democrats added it. Some Republicans said the proposal could interfere with legitimate law-enforcement actions, and the bill failed to garner enough votes to pass. So the Senate killed the entire $112-million transportation bill.

Just after dawn, an impromptu hearing was needed to get a bill authorizing schools funding back on track. GOP senators were refusing to put up the votes for it, and the measure came up short. Senate leader Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) abruptly announced there would be a 120-second hearing, stopped business on the budget and conducted a confirmation proceeding that took just slightly longer.

Senators approved a Schwarzenegger nominee to the California Transportation Commission whom they had refused to confirm through the normal committee process. Steinberg, with a hint of sarcasm, declared the nominee, Fresno developer and GOP donor Darius Assemi, “eminently qualified.”

Sen. Jeff Denham (R-Atwater) spoke in praise of Assemi and changed his vote. The education bill passed.

Over in the Assembly, meanwhile, lawmakers were annoyed by a demand they said came from the governor. It called for the state to create a “Secretary of Volunteerism,” a paid post. The idea was heavily mocked in side conversations and during floor debates.

“I would like to volunteer to be the Wizard of Adjournment,” Assemblyman Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) said after 3:30 a.m., when the legislation finally passed the lower house

Ultimately, the full Legislature approved the post, with some lawmakers expressing worry that the governor might otherwise use his line-item veto authority to retaliate.

“This was the governor’s thing — or else his blue pencil came out,” said Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills).

Other last-minute side issues included a bid by Republicans to secure a tax break for online travel companies such as Orbitz and Expedia. It didn’t survive. A proposal to help San Diego use more redevelopment funds in a way that could help facilitate construction of a new NFL stadium made it to the governor’s desk.

Special tax breaks for a timber company, cable companies and software firms made it to the governor’s desk too. So did a provision that could help boost the bottom line of an ethanol company founded by former Secretary of State Bill Jones, an ally of and contributor to Schwarzenegger.

Not all of the bickering was partisan. Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco, a Democrat, refused to vote with most of his caucus on many elements of the budget. He paid a price: Disaster-relief legislation that he wrote for families affected by the San Bruno explosion and fire was killed, and Democrats later moved to Schwarzenegger an identical measure without Yee’s name on it.

Lawmakers sweat the small stuff

The day after Jesse Kelly won the Republican primary in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Gabrielle Giffords went on the air with a lacerating attack. Noting that Kelly said he ultimately wanted to eliminate Social Security, Giffords’ television ad warned that Kelly “is a risk we can’t afford.”

Kelly, a construction manager with no political experience, had made the mistake of venturing into the mine-strewn politics of Social Security. No matter that he said he would preserve benefits for current retirees. The fact that he once described it as “the biggest pyramid scheme in history” gave his rival the equivalent of cannon fodder in a district where nearly one-fifth of the population is older than 65.

Kelly is now running his own ad vowing to “honor our commitment to seniors,” trying to fend off a line of assault that Democrats are stepping up throughout the country. It’s one of the few consistent themes in Democratic campaign commercials in a year when the party has otherwise eschewed a national message.

Accusing Republicans of wanting to do away with Social Security is a well-worn trope for Democrats. But a slew of “tea party”-backed candidates who have called for privatizing or eliminating the program have given Democrats fresh ammunition at a time when they are on the defensive about healthcare reform and the economic stimulus.

The strategy allows Democrats to link their rivals to former President George W. Bush, who sought to allow younger workers to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes in the stock market.

“And because it has also become a rallying cry among some of the tea party movement … it’s an indicator of how far to the right and how extreme a position the Republican candidates are taking,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has devoted the majority of its spots to slamming House GOP candidates on the topic.

Republicans, however, complain that their rivals are distorting their position.

“There have been numerous fact-checks and editorials calling out Democrats for their Social Security attacks,” said Paul Lindsay, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Democrats are desperately trying to scare seniors.”

“This is what a Democrat says when they’re losing an argument,” said Grover Norquist, president of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform. “If they’re saying this, it means they don’t have anything else to say.”

Nevertheless, Norquist advises GOP candidates to steer clear of Social Security on the campaign trail: “It’s too easy to demagogue.”

Indeed, it’s a testament to the political thorniness of the subject that most Republicans are strenuously avoiding it now that the primaries have passed. While Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposed personal retirement accounts for younger workers in his “Roadmap for America’s Future” economic plan this year, the GOP “Pledge to America” released last week does not address how to reform Social Security, whose outlays will regularly exceed its revenue beginning in 2016, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

But Democrats are still feeding off comments made by their GOP rivals earlier in the year. In Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid weaves it into nearly every spot he runs against Republican Sharron Angle, who has backed away from earlier statements that she would phase out Social Security. A commercial for Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) includes footage of GOP rival Ken Buck calling Social Security “a horrible policy,” words Buck later said he regretted.

A commercial for Rep. Baron P. Hill (D-Ind.) spotlights a clip of GOP challenger Todd Young calling the program “a Ponzi scheme.” And a new ad by Democratic challenger Tarryl Clark argues that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) views seniors as addicts, noting that she said she wants to “wean everybody off” Social Security.

“In the past, the Democrats had to strain and work hard to convey the risk of a Republican victory to Social Security,” said Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota who studies the program. “This year, it’s low-hanging fruit … because there are prominent Republicans running for the Senate and House who have very publicly and clearly raised questions about future of Social Security.”

But in some races, Democrats have taken more generic comments by GOP candidates as evidence of their antipathy to the entitlement. In Wisconsin, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has run three ads asserting that former prosecutor Sean Duffy, the GOP nominee for an open House seat, supports a plan to privatize Social Security. “Sean Duffy may not be worried about his retirement security, but the rest of us are,” stated one, featuring images of the onetime star of MTV’s “The Real World” climbing into a purple SUV.

As evidence, the committee cited Duffy’s endorsement of Ryan’s “Roadmap” plan. But Duffy has never explicitly voiced support for personal accounts, and on his campaign website he states, “I have not and will not endorse privatizing Social Security.” The Democrats’ campaign committee said Duffy was merely trying to backtrack.

It remains to be seen whether the Democratic fusillade will pay off for them at the ballot box. Evan Tracey, president of Campaign Media Analysis Group, a division of Kantar Media that tracks political advertising, said the party was hitting Social Security particularly hard in this cycle because the passage of healthcare reform took away one of their traditional critiques of the GOP.

“The Democratic message is — let’s face it — fear-based and designed to get seniors worried about their Social Security check,” he said. “That’s as common as Republicans calling Democrats liberals. I don’t know if anybody has presented a real argument that’s going to connect with voters.”

matea.gold@latimes.com
Democrats campaign on GOP threats to Social Security

President Obama drew a sharp contrast with Republicans Wednesday over what was shaping up as a key issue in the midterm congressional elections: the extension of tax cuts for top earners, which he said were unsustainable.

Obama’s remarks, delivered in the traditional electoral battleground state of Ohio, sounded every bit like the speeches he gave there two years ago during his first election bid. Originally billed as a policy speech, Obama only briefly outlined his new plan for $180 billion in spending — including $50 billion in infrastructure investments and a permanent extension of research-and-development tax credits.

Instead, he used the debate over Bush-era tax breaks to make a populist pitch, shaping the coming congressional midterm election as a choice between Democrats who support policies to advance the middle class and Republicans who would return to policies that created only “the illusion of prosperity.”

As he did so, Obama mentioned House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) by name eight times, as the White House sought to elevate the man who would become speaker of the House if Republicans gained a majority this fall.

“Make no mistake: He and his party believe we should … give a permanent tax cut to the wealthiest 2% of Americans,” Obama said. “With all the other budgetary pressures we have, with all the Republicans’ talk about wanting to shrink the deficit, they would have us borrow $700 billion over the next 10 years to give a tax cut of about $100,000 each to folks who are already millionaires.”

“So let me be clear to Mr. Boehner and everybody else,” he continued. “We should not hold middle-class tax cuts hostage any longer.”

Obama’s plan calls for extending tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000 a year, while allowing the marginal rates for higher earners to increase as scheduled Dec. 31.

“For those who claim that this is bad for growth and bad for small businesses, let me remind you that with those tax rates in place, this country created 22 million jobs, raised incomes, and had the largest surplus in history,” he said.

Obama also, as he had done often since Congress broke for its summer recess, urged Republicans to pass a package of small-business tax credits that had been stalled in the Senate, a holdup he said was delaying hiring.

Obama said Republican obstruction was emblematic of a strategy aimed at allowing the GOP to “sit on the sidelines and let Democrats solve the mess.”

“They’re making the same calculation they made just before the inauguration: If I fail, they win,” he said. “Well, they might think this will get them where they need to go in November, but it won’t get our country where it needs to go in the long run.”

Earlier Wednesday, Boehner announced two Republican alternative economic proposals for the September session. Foremost among them was a two-year extension – which he termed a freeze – of all current tax rates.

Republicans also would seek to cut non-security spending to 2008 levels, which they estimated would save $100 billion in its first year.

In January, Obama had proposed a three-year budget freeze that the White House said would save $250 billion over the next decade.

“We can’t deal with the deficit until we’re willing to get our arms around spending and have a strong economy,” Boehner said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Wednesday. “And you can’t have a strong economy if you’re raising taxes on the very people that you expect to invest in our economy to begin hiring people again.”

The Ohio Republican also seemed to welcome the direct confrontation with the Democratic president.

“Here’s the White House worrying about what I’ve got to say instead of working together to get our economy going again and to get jobs back in America,” he said.

Under election-year pressure, even Democrats have expressed reservations about Obama’s new proposals. Sen. Michael Bennet, seeking election to a full term this November in Colorado, said in a statement Wednesday morning that he opposed “additional spending in a second stimulus package.”

mmemoli@tribune.com
Obama blasts continued tax cuts for the rich

Democrats went back to work on Tuesday, fresh from what was supposed to be the summer of economic recovery, only to find themselves facing the fall of their political pummeling.

With the general election eight weeks away, Democrats finished the Labor Day holidays, the traditional end of summer, to wage autumn campaigns amid what polls and prognosticators predicted would be an ever-worsening political climate. The malaise is so deep that it threatens Democratic control of Congress and is likely cast a pall even on the presidential election two years away.

In the House, where Republicans need to gain a net 39 seats to win control, the Cook Political Report’s current outlook is for a Republican net gain of at least 40 seats. At this point, only 209 House seats are “solid,” “likely or “lean Democratic,” while 181 seats are “solid,” “likely” or “lean Republican,” and 45 seats are in the “toss-up” column, the report said Tuesday.

Earlier, the Rothenberg Political Report moved 20 House races toward the GOP, citing “national and local polls [that] continue to show further deterioration in Democratic prospects.”

“Given that, we are increasing our target of likely Republican gains from 28-33 seats to 37-42 seats, with the caveat that substantially larger GOP gains in the 45-55 seat range are quite possible,” Rothenberg said.

On the Senate side, Republicans face a tougher job, having to win a net 10 seats from the 19 Democratic seats at stake. The GOP is defending 18 seats of its own. No one expects Democrats to lose control of the Senate, but their grasp is expected to sharply loosen.

But the elections are just the surface manifestation of the deeper wave of discontent washing through the country, which is trying to deal with a stuttering economic recovery. Stubbornly high unemployment and an unhappiness with Democrats’ performance in Congress and the White House are among factors threatening to squeeze incumbents.

And those factors spell special trouble for the Democrats as they seek to mount a counterattack this year. President Obama already has called for Congress to help small businesses with new tax cuts and has offered another round of spending on infrastructure — both designed to foster job creation. This week, the president will travel to Ohio to outline his proposals, first made on Monday in Milwaukee.

Even as Obama pushes economic proposals, polls show there is a general lack of enthusiasm for Democrats who rode President Obama’s tide of euphoria and change into the White House in 2008.
According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Monday, Republicans hold a two-point lead over Democrats in the generic ballot, but that becomes a 13-point lead among those most likely to vote in November.

That finding is similar to the Wall Street Journal- NBC News poll also released on Monday. That poll found an even split at 43% on the question of whether Republicans or Democrats should run Congress. But likely voters put the GOP ahead 49% to 40%.

Even more worrisome for Democrats, the Washington Post/ABC poll found voters said they trusted Republicans about the same as they trusted Democrats to handle the nation’s problems. About 40% said they had more confidence in Democrats and 38% said the GOP. Three months ago, Democrats had a 12-point advantage.

On the economy, 43% of voters said they agreed with Republicans when it came to dealing with financial problems, while 39% favored Democrats, the poll found.

The WSJ/NBC News poll found only 26% of voters said they believed the economy would get better in the next year, down from 47% a year ago. About three of every five voters surveyed said they believed the country was on the wrong track, up from 48% a year ago. Only two of every five voters said they approved of how President Obama was handling the economy.

michael.muskal@latimes.com
A gathering end-of-summer storm of negative political sentiment

The two Republicans at the top of California’s November ticket fanned out across the Central Valley this week, denouncing government dysfunction and asserting that their business experience would help them rescue the region’s unemployed workers, small firms and struggling family farms.

“I have spent a lot of time in the valley, and what is going on here due to lack of water is a humanitarian crisis,” gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman told scores of supporters on a recent afternoon in a sweltering feed warehouse in Lemoore, about 30 miles south of Fresno. “It just breaks my heart.”

A hundred miles south at a technology company in Bakersfield, Senate nominee Carly Fiorina ticked off statistics about the slowing recovery and Kern County’s unemployment rate — contending that incumbent Democrat Barbara Boxer had failed the region by neglecting its water woes and by embracing what Fiorina described as the failed federal stimulus program.