In today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jim Galloway gives us a much clearer picture of the 1999-2000 Alabama gambling/anti-gambling scandal in which Ralph Reed, candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, played a central role.Turns out the 1.1 million that flowed from the Choctaws of Mississippi to Grover Norquist to anti-gambling forces in Alabama to Reed’s consulting firm occurred during two different campaigns. The first, involving a $300,000 payment, went to the successful effort to defeat a state lottery initiative backed by then-Gov. Don Siegelman. The rest of the money, $800,000, passed through the Alabama Christian Coalition the following year, and was aimed (successfully) at stirring up public opposition to a bill that would have authorized video poker at four ailing dog racing tracks.More importantly, Galloway clearly explains the motives of the Choctaws in shelling out this much dough to influence gaming laws in Alabama. They weren’t so much worried about a lottery or video poker in Alabama. Their real concern is that legalized public gaming in Alabama would open the way for a ‘Bama tribe, the Creeks, to upgrade an existing facility with bingo-based games into a full-scale casino, in direct competition with the Choctaws across the border.Today’s piece also reveals that Reed has a new story about the source of the money: it came from a special account set up by the Choctaws from their non-gambling revenues. This will apparently become his fallback defense if nobody believes his highly dubious argument that he had no idea his ol’ buddy Jack Abramoff was involving with Indian gaming.I doubt this defense will cut much more ice than the original Reed profession of innocence. The issue is not exactly which Choctaw bank account financed the anti-gambling effort in Alabama; it’s the motive that matters. And there’s not much doubt one tribe, on the advice of Abramoff and utlilizing his close friends Norquist and Reed, was spending freely to avoid competition from another.So far Reed seems to have controlled the immediate political damage to his campaign of his ever-more-intimate implication in the Abramoff scandal. But within the next week or two, the Alabama Christian Coalition is expected to release the results of an internal investigation of the mess. And at a time when Alabama Democrats are pushing a proposal to demand that groups like the Christian Coalition who are involved directly in campaigns disclose their funding sources, the organization might just decide to drop a heavy dime on Reed. Stay tuned.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 11: If Biden “Steps Aside” and Harris Steps Up, There Should Be No Falloff in Support
At New York I discussed and tried to resolve one source of anxiety about a potential alternative ticket:
One very central dynamic in the recent saga of Democratic anxiety over Joe Biden’s chances against Donald Trump, given the weaknesses he displayed in his first 2024 debate, has been the role of his understudy, Vice-President Kamala Harris. My colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained the problem nearly two years ago as the “Kamala Harris conundrum”:
“Top party donors have privately worried to close Obama allies that they’re skeptical of Harris’s prospects as a presidential candidate, citing the implosion of her 2020 campaign and her struggles as VP. Jockeying from other potential competitors, like frenemy Gavin Newsom, suggests that few would defer to her if Biden retired. Yet Harris’s strength among the party’s most influential voters nonetheless puts her in clear pole position.”
The perception that Harris is too unpopular to pick up the party banner if Biden dropped it, but too well-positioned to be pushed aside without huge collateral damage, was a major part of the mindset of political observers when evaluating Democratic options after the debate. But now fresher evidence of Harris’s public standing shows she’s just as viable as many of the candidates floated in fantasy scenarios about an “open convention,” “mini-primary,” or smoke-filled room that would sweep away both parts of the Biden-Harris ticket.
For a good while now, Harris’s job-approval numbers have been converging with Biden’s after trailing them initially. These indicate dismal popularity among voters generally, but not in a way that makes her an unacceptable replacement candidate should she be pressed into service in an emergency. As of now, her job-approval ratio in the FiveThirtyEight averages is 37.1 percent approve to 51.2 percent disapprove. Biden’s is 37.4 percent approve to 56.8 percent disapprove. In the favorability ratios tracked by RealClearPolitics, Harris is at 38.3 favorable to 54.6 percent unfavorable, while Biden is at 39.4 percent favorable to 56.9 percent unfavorable. There’s just not a great deal of difference other than slightly lower disapproval/unfavorable numbers for the veep.
On the crucial measurement of viability as a general-election candidate against Trump, there wasn’t much credible polling prior to the post-debate crisis. An Emerson survey in February 2024 showed Harris trailing Trump by 3 percent (43 percent to 46 percent), which was a better showing than Gavin Newsom (down ten points, 36 percent to 46 percent) or Gretchen Whitmer (down 12 points, 33 percent to 45 percent).
After the debate, though, there was a sudden cascade of polling matching Democratic alternatives against Trump, and while Harris’s strength varied, she consistently did as well as or better than the fantasy alternatives. The first cookie on the plate was a one-day June 28 survey from Data for Progress, which showed virtually indistinguishable polling against Trump by Biden, Harris, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Josh Shapiro, and Gretchen Whitmer. All of them trailed Trump by 2 to 3 percent among likely voters.
Then two national polls released on July 2 showed Harris doing better than other feasible Biden alternatives. Reuters/Ipsos (which showed Biden and Trump tied) had Harris within a point of Trump, while Newsom trailed by three points, Andy Beshear by four, Whitmer by five, and Pritzker by six points. Similarly, CNN showed Harris trailing Trump by just two points; Pete Buttigieg trailing by four points; and Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer trailing him by five points.
Emerson came back with a new poll on July 9 that wasn’t as sunny as some for Democrats generally (every tested name trailed Trump, with Biden down by three points). But again, Harris (down by six points) did better than Newsom (down eight points); Buttigieg and Whitmer (down ten points); and Shapiro (down 12 points).
There’s been some talk that Harris might help Democrats with base constituencies that are sour about Biden. There’s not much publicly available evidence testing that hypothesis, though the crosstabs in the latest CNN poll do show Harris doing modestly better than Biden among people of color, voters under the age of 35, and women.
The bottom line is that one element of the “Kamala Harris conundrum” needs to be reconsidered. There should be no real drop-off in support if Biden (against current expectations) steps aside in favor of his vice-president (the only really feasible “replacement” scenario at this point). She probably has a higher ceiling of support than Biden as well, but in any event, she would have a fresh opportunity to make a strong first or second impression on many Americans who otherwise know little about her.