Perhaps the surprising* results in New York’s 9th district should dissuade us from believing in the power of endorsements and surrogates (if we ever did).

Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo posted a 75 percent approval rating in the district, and he recorded a robocall for the Democratic candidate, David Weprin. His endorsement was prominent in Weprin’s mailer; in fact, considering the size of Cuomo’s smiling mug, it’s easy to forget which one is the candidate:

And Weprin received 47 percent, a mere 28 percentage points behind the most prominent New York Democrat.

* As of about a week or so ago, the result isn’t actually that surprising.

Over in the Corner, Katrina Trinko pours water on the Obama-Cuomo 2012 rumor, noting that Fox News is reporting that White House aides have shot down the idea that Joe Biden would be replaced.

Of course, we have to suspect that if there was any serious discussion of replacing Biden, it would be kept under wraps and the move denied until officially announced. Remember the very first thing that Biden said to the public, days before the official announcement back in August 2008:

“Hey guys, I’m not the guy. See ya.”

Biden didn’t say, “wait and see,” or “I haven’t heard anything yet,” he offered a flat denial. As some of us pointed out at the time, Biden began his role as Obama’s running mate by lying to the press.

So… it would seem that statements on the future makeup of the Democratic presidential ticket and whether it includes Joe Biden should be handled with a certain wariness.

Doesn’t it feel like the day after Independence Day should be a holiday? I certainly think so.

In the first Morning Jolt of the week, beginning this shortened work week…

Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend. Or as Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., puts it, “Happy Fourth of YOU-LIE!”

Does Obama’s Reelection Bid Need Some Cuomentum?

Fredric U. Dicker, the New York Post’s reliably-plugged in columnist covering state politics, offers a bit of a bombshell to join the fireworks for the Fourth of July:

A Prominent Republican is joining a prominent Democrat in predicting that Gov. Cuomo will become President Obama’s running mate for vice president next year.

Former New York GOP boss William Powers, credited with playing a key role in electing Rudy Giuliani mayor and George Pataki governor, was effusive in his praise of Cuomo’s successes in the just-ended legislative session, and in his prediction of the freshman governor’s political future.

…”I don’t think there’s any doubt Obama is going to pick him as his running mate. The president is in trouble and [Vice President Joseph] Biden doesn’t bring anything to his ticket. The president will call him up later this year and say, ‘Andrew, you have to do this for the good of the country.’ What’s Andrew going to say, ‘No?’ “

Cuomo, who saw a flurry of predictions last week in the wake of the gay-marriage victory that he’ll run for president in 2016, has repeatedly refused to discuss the possibility of higher office.

He wouldn’t comment either on Powers’ prediction, but a source familiar with his thinking half-jokingly said this when asked what action Cuomo would take if Obama called to offer him the nation’s No. 2 position: “He won’t answer.”

Of course, at this point, this is a columnist quoting two sources who don’t know Cuomo’s thinking, or the president’s, and so it’s speculation, filling a holiday weekend column. Having said that, the whole thing sounds rather plausible, especially since it’s easy to believe that Obama would like to choose his successor.

The Jammie Wearing Fool observes a double standard and an earlier chapter of Cuomo’s career he might not want scrutinized too closely: “It’s funny how a Democrat can take on public-employee salaries and pensions and there’s nary a peep from the unions, let alone the media. But when a Scott Walker of Chris Christie does it, all hell breaks loose. So the Democrats could have a ticket with an anti-gay marriage candidate in Obama and a union-busting VP in Cuomo. Finally, some change we can believe in. t’s probably a given the media will ignore the buildup of the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac fiasco while Cuomo was HUD Secretary under Bill Clinton. He doesn’t need the messy reminders.”

Doug Powers writes, “While I’m convinced that Barack Obama will in desperation be forced to offer up a head to voters before the election next year (he sure as hell ain’t accepting the blame), but I’ll be surprised if it’s Sheriff Joe’s plug-riddled scalp.”

I wonder if Joe Biden ever brings up these rumors when he meets with the President… “Boy, the nerve of that guy Cuomo, putting out a rumor like that, huh? I mean, the vice-presidency is a big f- well, you know how it goes. And things are going so well for us, why on earth would we ever want to change a winning team, right, Barack? I mean, I’m your lucky charm! I mean, he should try to stay awake for all of these addresses, see how well he does…”

If you thought you would never see the National Republican Congressional Committee speaking well of Democrats like California governor Jerry Brown, Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, departing Chicago mayor Richard Daley, and New York governor Andrew Cuomo . . . well, here’s their latest web ad:

Of course, the point is to draw a contrast between Democrats in state capitals and major cities, who have to balance budgets and who are embracing at least some spending cuts, and Washington Democrats, who have yet to find any serious non-defense cuts that they’re willing to embrace.

A detail at the bottom of Quinnipiac’s release this morning:

By a 48 – 43 percent margin, New York State voters approve of the job President Barack Obama is doing, his lowest approval ever in the Empire State.  Democrats approve of the president 75 – 16 percent, but he gets a negative 12 – 82 percent rating from Republicans and a  44 – 46 percent split from independent voters.  President Obama gets a negative 36 – 55 percent score from white voters, with positive scores of 93 – 3 percent from black voters and 71 – 17 percent from Hispanic voters.  

Elsewhere, the story is Cuomo-mentum:

By a 59 – 25 percent margin, New York State voters are optimistic about the next four years with Andrew Cuomo as governor.  Even Republicans are optimistic 46 – 39 percent.

But only 45 percent of voters say Cuomo will be able to fix state government, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds, while 42 percent of voters say Cuomo will fail in this effort.  Democrats are confident 57 – 28 percent that Cuomo will succeed, but pessimism rules Republicans 57 – 34 percent while independent voters are split   43 – 43 percent.

And voters say 57 – 33 percent that the New York State Legislature will not cooperate in fixing state government.  Democrats split 44 – 44 percent on whether the Legislature will cooperate in the fix-up, while Republicans say no 63 – 25 percent and independent voters are glum 66 – 26 percent.

Perhaps the baseball-bat style loses its appeal after a while . . .

Despite his lead among the many New York State likely voters angry with state government, Republican Carl Paladino is falling behind New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for governor, and now trails 55 – 37 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

 This compares to a 49 – 43 percent Cuomo lead in a September 22 survey by the independent Quinnipiac University, conducted one week after Paladino’s landslide Republican primary win.

But perhaps Paladino can turn it around with . . . er, a major televised announcement on every channel:

“Paladino has purchased a [block of TV time] in Buffalo with the 3 network affiliates at 5:13 with a satellite uplink avail for downstate media. You cannot turn on the major channels with-out seeing Carl.

“The broadcast will be rerun in Rochester, Albany and Syracuse (broadcast ) and Channel 12 on LI, plus Westchester Fox cable later that evening,” Source 1 tells me. “YNN and NY-1 [were] asked to sell Paladino time for statewide reach — they both declined. [He is] trying to buy FOX statewide at 5:13… Simulcast difficult — may be on at 6 p.m. Huge audience. Then the campaign looked to put it up statewide on a Sports network where few women watch. [It] fell through — too complicated for simulcast. [About] 45 % of general elections upstate will see it…. Satellite will reach [approximately] another 30 % through news outlets.”

Paladino is taping this message — whatever it may be — at 4 p.m., and it will post online at 5:13 p.m., Source 1 said.

Hmmm.“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.”

Carl Paladino’s mad-as-hell bid just got a bit easier: Rick Lazio had won the Conservative Party nomination but lost the GOP nomination to Paladino. Now word is Lazio is ending his bid entirely.

This will prevent the anti-Cuomo vote from being split between two candidates. Paladino still faces a steep uphill climb, but that climb looks a little easier today.

UPDATE: A New York reader says that now, barring some sudden new development, Paladino will be the nominee of the Conservative Party as well.

Well, New York is either seeing a big Republican surge . . . or it isn’t.

Arguing against:

The Siena Research Institute found [Democrat gubernatorial candidate Andrew] Cuomo beats [Republican Carl] Paladino 57 percent to 24 percent among registered voters. Conservative Party nominee Rick Lazio is backed by 8 percent, while 10 percent are undecided.

Further arguing against:

A new poll finds Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand maintaining double-digit leads over their Republican challengers. The Siena College poll released Thursday found Gillibrand leading Republican Senate candidate Joe DioGuardi by 57 percent to 31 percent. Schumer has a wider lead over Jay Townsend, 63 percent to 30 percent.

But I would note that these polls are of registered voters; the shocking ones from Quinnipiac and SurveyUSA are of likely voters.

A Washington Republican points to interesting local results in November 2009 as a possible omen. I wrote at the time:

NASSAU COUNTY

Republican challenger Ed Mangano is, as of this writing, not quite the next Nassau county executive. But he leads Tom Suozzi by 353 votes after a weekend of absentee and affidavit ballot counting, a process of counting that is expected to extend past the Thanksgiving holiday.

A county-executive race doesn’t dominate the headlines the way a presidential race does, but Suozzi entered this race the heavy favorite. In a county with more registered Democrats than Republicans, in a state where the GOP is supposed to be dead, an incumbent with a huge fundraising advantage ought to be able to win in his sleep. Perhaps that is a good way of describing what Suozzi attempted; he finished the race with perhaps $2 million in his campaign war chest unspent.

Mangano’s message was nothing fancy; he was a local who pledged to eliminate government waste. As in New Jersey, locals are furious about high property taxes, and in a slumping economy (the local unemployment rate in October was 7.2 percent, compared to 5 percent a year earlier) the general mood was frustration that government was taking more but delivering less. Suozzi had spent earlier years criticizing state government and running a “fix Albany” campaign (part of his failed bid for governor in 2006); Mangano jabbed that Suozzi was “so busy trying to fix Albany, he forgot about Nassau County.”

In the end, Republicans were more motivated to vote than Democrats were; Newsday found turnout in traditional GOP areas was 32 percent, while it was 22 percent in traditionally Democratic neighborhoods.

WESTCHESTER COUNTY

Rob Astorino is supposed to be the kind of Republican candidate who can’t win in the northeast anymore. He ran a fairly explicit campaign emphasizing fiscal conservatism, depicting the county’s management as wasteful, bureaucratic, inefficient, corrupt, and out of touch. He hammered his rival, telling voters that the incumbent county executive, Andy Spano, “raised your taxes almost 60 percent in the last seven years alone. Mr. Spano has ballooned the annual budget by $1 billion in the past 12 years, from $800 million to $1.8 billion per year. He spends more than 87 nations do, and you pay for it.” Intriguingly, while the pro-life Astorino didn’t put his faith or social views front and center, his conservative bona fides are impeccable:  He is a radio host and program director for the Catholic Channel on Sirius Satellite Radio and hosts a Thursday-night program with Cardinal Edward Egan, the former archbishop of New York.

Astorino shellacked the three-term Democrat, 57 percent to 43 percent, in a county where Democrats have nearly a 2-to-1 advantage in voter registration.  This is a county where Al Gore and John Kerry carried 58 percent of the vote, the county Bill and Hillary Clinton call home. It may be a bit self-serving, but Spano contends that his defeat reflects voters’ anger at Democrats at the state and national level. “It has nothing to do with me, as far as I’m concerned,” he told the New York Times. “They’re mad at Albany, and Washington.”

A big problem for all of the GOP’s statewide candidates will be money; New York is among the most expensive states to run in. One Republican worried that Gillibrand has a big war chest that she’s going to be putting to use the next six weeks, while DioGuardi doesn’t have much in the bank. “Anything is possible in this environment but he needs to raise money fast,” he said.

UPDATE: Brian Walsh, NRSC Communications Director: “Since being appointed by David Paterson, Kirsten Gillibrand has blindly rubberstamped her party bosses’ out-of-control spending and debt in Washington, and it’s clear that, just like the rest of the country, voters in New York are fed up with the Democrats’ reckless spending agenda.  So the message to voters from our candidates in New York is the same as our other Republican candidates across the country which is that ‘if you support the bailouts, support a $13 trillion debt, support government health care and support tax increases in a recession than vote for Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer. But if you believe we need to restore accountability and responsibility in Washington than vote for Joe DioGuardi and Jay Townsend.’  It’s clear this message is resonating and we intend to carry it forward in New York and around the country right up until November 2nd.”

Ladies and gentlemen, unless SurveyUSA had a wildly off-kilter sample . . . New York now has two competitive statewide races.

Republican candidate for Governor, Carl Paladino is nine percentage points behind Democrat Andrew Cuomo, according a new scientific poll commissioned by Two On Your Side, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and the White Plains Journal News.

The poll shows Cuomo with 49% of the vote. Paladino has 40%. Eight percent said they would vote for another candidate and three percent were still undecided.

There is a 4.2% margin of error.

Survey USA interviewed 1,000 adults in New York State on September 20th and 21st.

Of them, 867 were registered to vote. Of the registered voters, 572 were identified by SurveyUSA as being likely to vote in the November general election.

In the Special Election to fill the final 2 years of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s term, incumbent Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand and former Congressman Republican Joe DioGuardi today finish effectively even, with Gillibrand’s nominal 1-point lead being within the survey’s theoretical margin of sampling error.

Gillibrand leads in the 5 boroughs of NYC but trails elsewhere.

SurveyUSA also finds that in New York’s general election for U.S. Senate, incumbent Democrat Chuck Schumer leads Republican Jay Townsend 54 percent to 33 percent.

Two shockers from Quinnipiac this morning, each one making the other a wee bit suspect.

In Pennsylvania: 

Republican Pat Toomey has hit the magic 50 percent mark as he leads Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak 50 – 43 percent in the race for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll of likely voters released today.

Pennsylvania likely voters disapprove 56 – 40 percent of the job President Barack Obama is doing, the independent Quinnipiac University survey, conducted by live interviewers, finds.  This first general election survey of Pennsylvania likely voters in this election cycle cannot be compared to earlier surveys of registered voters.

I’m sure Team Toomey will take it, but a seven-point margin is actually one of the better ones Sestak has seen lately.

But here’s the holy-smokes-can-this-be-real one:

Republican Carl Paladino, aided by a 4 -1 margin among Tea Partiers, trails New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic candidate for Governor, 49 – 43 percent among likely voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Only 18 percent of New York State likely voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement, but they back Paladino 77 – 18 percent.

Cuomo leads 87 – 8 percent among Democrats while Paladino leads 83 – 13 percent among Republicans and 49 – 43 percent among independent voters, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University survey, conducted by live interviewers, finds.  This first likely voter general election survey in New York in this election cycle can not be compared with earlier surveys of registered voters.  

I’ve been lamenting for weeks that a bunch of strong GOP House candidates in New York were going to be hurt by the lack of top-of-the-ticket help or even a competitive statewide race among the big three: the governor’s race and the two Senate races. Well, Paladino, who’s pledging to clean up Albany with a baseball bat, looks like he’s in a competitive race.

Interesting bits and pieces from Rasmussen in the past 24 hours . . .

In Indiana’s Senate race, Republican Dan Coats leads Brad Ellsworth, 50 percent to 34 percent. That’s actually good news for Ellsworth, who previously trailed, 50 percent to 29 percent. A Coats victory isn’t surprising; what is a bit surprising is that the Democrats further endangered a House seat by persuading Ellsworth to make this Senate bid, and Coats could well help create coattails for three Republicans in House races in this state.

In New York’s governor’s race, Democrat Andrew Cuomo leads Republican Carl Paladino, last seen pledging to clean Albany with a baseball bat, 54 percent to 38 percent. While I wouldn’t bet money on a Paladino win, that’s a bit closer than I think most expected this race to be.

It’s the same margin — 54 to 38 — in Maryland’s Senate race, where longtime incumbent Barbara Mikulski leads Republican Eric Wargotz. In Mikulski’s past four elections, she has won 64.7 percent, 70.5 percent, 71 percent, and 60.6 percent. Obviously, she’s heavily favored in November, but she may be a useful indicator; well-established Democratic names in deep-blue states can expect to run six points or so behind their previous all-time worst.

Well, it’s not like the New York State Republican party can argue they’ve earned the loyalty and faith of the grassroots.

Does Carl Paladino have a steep uphill climb in New York’s governor’s race? Yup.

But in this environment, when Albany has found the ability to keep pace with Springfield, Sacramento, and the old Trenton for corruption, incompetence, immature bickering, and generally embarrassing behavior, would you want to be the state attorney general and heir to a state political dynasty?

Or would you rather be the guy running on the message, ”One wants to clean up Albany with a whisk broom. One might even use a mop. Me, I’ll clean out Albany with a baseball bat. That’s how bad it’s gotten . . . Albany is a cesspool.”

It’s been a long time since New York had an interesting statewide Republican primary, but 440,000 votes between two not-well-known candidates is pretty encouraging.

UPDATE: Dan McLaughlin reminds me that as Paladino becomes preeminent, he is expected to have enthusiasms. (Violent content warning below.)

The New York State Conservative party just unveiled this ad, featuring gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio, criticizing the Ground Zero Mosque* and criticizing Democratic gubernatorial candidate and state attorney general Andrew Cuomo, for supporting it.

* I know, I know, it has a basketball court, too.

No two ways about it, Rick Lazio is a big underdog in New York’s gubernatorial race. But I love the videos his campaign makes, this one using a bit of long-lost 1990s music with an appropriate chorus, focusing on Democrat Andrew Cuomo going to Charlie Rangel’s big birthday bash . . . through the service entrance in an effort to avoid cameras.

Catch this Rick Lazio video quick, before George Lucas gripes about the music selection, saying that the use of such material is reserved for only classy, appropriate tie-ins, like Adidas commercials.

Mario Cuomo offers a unique potential slogan for his son Andrew: “I made a lot of mistakes in my 12 years as governor. . . . He was there for every mistake.”

Hey, thanks, Dad!

I realize former congressman Rick Lazio, a GOP New York gubernatorial candidate, faces the biggest uphill battle since Edmund Hillary. But he’s got some material to work with, as shown in this recent web video: