Dem
53
Ties
2
GOP
45
Yesterday, we wrote that it's now primetime for political skeletons to come out of their various closets. If any reporter or oppo researcher is sitting on something juicy... well, absentee ballots are about to be in voters' hands, and Election Day is only a month away.
In yesterday's item, we noted that the only major Democratic dirt we've seen in the last couple of weeks is a New York Times' exposé on former Alaska representative and would-be future Alaska senator Mary Peltola, and how she was mean to her staff sometimes. We don't know how much that will hurt her, if at all, but we do know the story only survived for one or maybe two news cycles before disappearing from view.
We also said that today we'd pass along some recent Republican dirt. There's been a bit more of that recently. First up, at almost exactly the same time that the Times was tearing down Peltola, they were also conducting a focus group with a dozen Texans who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, and how they feel about this year's two major-party U.S. Senate candidates, James Talarico (D) and Ken Paxton (R). The responses that got the most attention, from other media, were the 12 answers to the question, "When you hear the name Ken Paxton, what comes to mind?" Here are all of the answers:
Depending on how you count that last one, that's either 12 negative reviews or 11 negative and one sorta neutral.
Of course, a focus group is not "dirt," per se. And in Paxton's case, there hasn't exactly been new dirt in the last week. That is because there is already so much dirt on him, old dirt just keeps bubbling up to the surface on a regular basis. This week, it's been the fact that Paxton and his staff released a child predator (Adam Hoffman) after he served virtually no time. During an appearance at the United States Hispanic Business Council, Paxton was asked how he could release Hoffman after just 1 day in jail. The would-be senator was irritated by the question, and said that it wasn't 1 day, it was 60 days. That may not be the "tough on crime" flex that Paxton thinks it is.
Next up is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), who is currently in a tough race against Troy Jackson (D). Collins is famous for bringing pork home to her state, though she's never been implicated in any sort of pay-to-play shenanigans. At least, not until this week. Investigative journalism outlet ProPublica reported that, back in 2020, Collins was facing a different tough race and was low on campaign cash. So, the head of Collins' PAC met with the CEOs of several corporations who have government contracts, and secured six-figure donations from several of them, including Navatek's Martin Kao.
Kao eventually got busted for making bribes. He was indicted in 2022 and spent the next 2 years spilling his guts in hope of a reduced sentence. He is thus not an entirely reliable source. However, he said that Collins was aware of the nature of the arrangement, and that she agreed to steer millions in government contracts to his firm. That is not quite enough to convict, but it was enough to cause the FBI to commence an investigation of Collins and her staff in late 2024. However, before that investigation could bear fruit, the Trump administration retook the White House, and all such FBI probes were canceled.
We may never know if Collins was on the take. But, as we have written many times, the court of public opinion is not a court of law. Mainers love their pork, but they do not love corruption. This story is getting at least some play in the Pine Tree State, so it could do some damage to the Senator. And in a year where she doesn't need additional anchors weighing her down.
And finally, at least for today, there is Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS), whose reelection bid is a fair bit tougher than one would expect for a Republican politician in a ruby-red state. In yet another New York Times' exposé (at least they are exposing poor behavior for both Democrats and Republicans) it was revealed that the Senator, who was an OB/GYN in his past life, sued over 700 patients who were unable to pay off their bills, in part because of the usurious 18% interest rate he charged. And 81 of those were arrested and spent at least some time in jail. The bills were often for fairly small amounts of money ($100 or so), and the targets were almost all mothers of newborns.
In fairness, Marshall probably needed the money. After all, his salary in his last full-time year as a doctor was a paltry $780,000, and his net worth is between $3 and $10 million. Hard to make ends meet with that kind of scratch. Both the Senator and his bill-collecting attorney say that people have to be held to account if they don't pay (true enough), and that most doctors pursue delinquent accounts with this same vigor (not true, according to the experts the Times interviewed, one of whom described the behavior as "definitely on the extreme side"). And, as with Collins, politics is about perception. The image of a mother of a newborn being hauled off to prison because she couldn't afford the 18% interest rate is not a good one.
Anyhow, as you can see from our map above, our method of weighting polls actually has Adam Hamilton (D) leading the Senator. The aggregators all have Marshall with a tiny lead of less than 1%. And earlier this week, The Hill had a piece headlined "GOP fears 'perfect storm' could lead to Marshall's loss in red state Kansas." This new reporting certainly isn't going to do anything to dispel that perfect storm.
At the end of our item yesterday, we asked readers to send in any dirt on Democrats we might have missed, and we got a couple of things, which we'll run soon. If any readers have additional dirt on Democrats, or dirt on Republicans that we missed, please do let us know at comments@electoral-vote.com. (Z)