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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential News Briefing - August 19, 2015
From Ballotpedia
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Ballotpedia's Daily Presidential Briefing was sponsored by the Leadership Project for America. | ||||
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Wednesday's Leading Stories
- Poll: In a CNN/ORC poll released on Wednesday, Donald Trump gained 10 points since June in a hypothetical matchup against Hillary Clinton, registering 45 percent support to Clinton’s 51 percent. In other general election matchups, Clinton defeated Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Carly Fiorina. When the gender gap was taken into consideration, women supported Clinton over her Republican rivals with 20-point margins or higher. (CNN)
- Poll: A new poll of Arizona Republicans found Donald Trump in the lead with 28 percent support. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina followed with 15 percent and 10 percent, respectively. (Arizona Daily Sun)
- Poll: Donald Trump leads the Republican field in North Carolina according a new poll from Public Policy Polling. Ben Carson came in second with 14 percent and Jeb Bush third with 13 percent. (The Washington Times)
Democrats
Joe Biden
- According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 53 percent of Democrat-leaning voters want Joe Biden to run for president. (CNN)
Hillary Clinton
- Hillary Clinton abruptly ended a press conference on Tuesday after a pointed exchange with Fox News reporter Ed Henry about whether her email server had been “wiped” clean of data. She responded in jest to the question, saying, “What, like with a cloth or something?” Henry pressed and Clinton said, “I don’t know how it works at all.” As she was leaving the press conference shortly after, Clinton was asked if she believed the email server issue would ever disappear. Clinton said, “Nobody talks to me about it other than you guys.” (Business Insider, The Washington Post)
- According to a new CNN/ORC poll, 56 percent of Joe Biden's supporters named Clinton as their second choice. (CNN)
- Clinton released a new ad on Wednesday, set to air in New Hampshire and Iowa, promoting a populist message. “When you see that you’ve got CEO’s making 300 times what the average worker’s making you know the deck is stacked in favor of those at the top. … We need to have people believing that their work will be rewarded. So I’m going to be doing everything I can to try to get that deck reshuffled so being middle class means something again,” Clinton says in the video. (The Wall Street Journal, YouTube)
Martin O’Malley
- Martin O’Malley will give a press conference on Wednesday in front of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas. Joined by some of Trump’s employees, O’Malley is expected to discuss Trump’s immigration platform. (CNN)
- O’Malley’s campaign manager, Dave Hamrick, reached out to Bernie Sanders’ campaign to discuss the limited number of Democratic presidential debates and the possibility of arranging debates outside of the DNC's control. (TIME)
Bernie Sanders
- A new CNN/ORC poll has Bernie Sanders closing the gap with Hillary Clinton. He picked up 29 percent support, a 10-point increase from the 19 percent he registered in the same poll last month. (Politico)
- According to the National Journal, Sanders’ campaign absorbed several staffers from the effort to draft Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to run for president. "It's hardly even recruitment. When Bernie announced and it was clear Senator Warren wasn't running, it was the natural thing to do,” one official said. (National Journal)
Republicans
Jeb Bush
- The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that approximately half of Jeb Bush’s $120 million fundraising haul has come from donors who contributed to his brother or father. (U.S. News & World Report)
- Bush expressed his opposition to ending birthright citizenship on Tuesday. “This is a constitutionally protected right, and I don't support revoking it,” Bush said. (KSPR)
- Bush reiterated his support for raising education standards outside of the Common Core on Wednesday at an education summit in New Hampshire. “[T]he whole objective needs to be about rising student achievement to deal with [this] skills gap that we face where a third of our kids…ends up not being college or career-ready. So in my mind, the debate needs to be broader. It needs to be about real accountability, school choice, high standards - if people don’t like Common Core, fine - just make sure your standards are much higher than the ones you had before. We can’t keep dumbing down standards," Bush said. (The Washington Times)
Ben Carson
- Ben Carson’s Phoenix rally on Tuesday night was attended by at least 12,000 people. At the event, he commented on Donald Trump’s call to end birthright citizenship, saying, “I know the 14th Amendment has been brought up recently, about anchor babies—and it doesn’t make any sense to me that people could come in here, have a baby and that baby becomes an American citizen. There are many countries in the world where they simply have recognized that and don’t allow that to occur.” (Breitbart)
- After visiting the site of a toxic mine spill in Colorado, Carson said he would not be willing to drink water from the affected river as the state’s governor had. “I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone to drink it. We don’t understand the long-term environmental impacts,” Carson said. He added that the EPA would not have been “so understanding” of the spill and its consequences if an oil company had caused it. (The Durango Herald)
- Carson’s campaign responded to criticism regarding Carson's history of referring women carrying fetuses with genetic defects to abortionists. “He believes people ought to have all the facts available to them, but he is steadfastly opposed to abortion. Referring it on does not mean he is advocating it, he’s advocating they are getting qualified medical supervision. He has always believed that the battle over abortion had to be waged in the hearts and minds of Americans, that you cannot legislate morality. But he also believes we’re winning the debate,” Carson’s communications director Doug Watts said. (Politico)
Chris Christie
- Chris Christie expressed support for “Kate’s Law” on Tuesday. The bill would institute a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for foreigners who were previously deported and reentered the country without documentation. (NJ.com)
Ted Cruz
- According to The Daily Beast on Wednesday, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump have met five times and speak occasionally by phone. “In terms of Trump’s civility, if you’re nice to him, he’ll be nice to you. And Cruz has been nice. Cruz is playing the long game and hopes that if he survives and Trump doesn’t, the billionaire will swing to him. He’s the second choice for a lot of Trump voters,” said a source with insight into Trump’s campaign. (The Daily Beast)
- In recent state polls, Cruz came in fifth in Arizona and fourth in North Carolina. (Arizona Daily Sun, The Washington Times)
Carly Fiorina
- According to polls taken after the August 6, 2015, Republican debate, Carly Fiorina is set to overtake Chris Christie and round out the top ten of the Republican presidential field. (The Washington Times, Politico)
- On Wednesday, Fiorina suggested the Common Core was too heavily influenced by companies. “Common Core may have started out as a set of standards, but what it’s turned into is a program that, honestly, is being overly influenced by companies that have something to gain - testing companies and textbook companies. And it’s becoming a set of standards not on what a kid has to learn, but instead on how a teacher has to teach and how a student should learn, and that kind of standardization is always going to drive achievement down, not up,” Fiorina said. (The Washington Times)
- While speaking at the Iowa State Fair on Monday, Fiorina rejected the federal minimum wage. “First, I believe that minimum wage should be a state decision, not a federal decision. Why? Because it makes no sense to say that the minimum wage in New York City is the same as the minimum wage in Mason City, Iowa. Secondly, we have to remember that a lot of minimum-wage jobs are jobs where people start, and in those jobs they learn skills to move forward. So we need to be honest about the consequences of raising a minimum wage too high. One of the consequences is that young people who are trapped in poor neighborhoods will have less opportunities to learn skills and move forward,” Fiorina explained. (National Journal)
- Fiorina encouraged better civic education on Wednesday through testing, saying, “I think it would be a good idea, actually, if everyone had to take the citizenship test that those who are working hard to earn the privilege of citizenship take. We need to be a citizen government, it is what makes us unique. But we cannot be a successful citizen government if people don't have common ground in the things that make us a nation." (Washington Examiner)
Jim Gilmore
- Jim Gilmore appeared on Fox News on Wednesday to support the constitutional right of birthright citizenship. Gilmore said, “The guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United State Constitution are emphatic. They were put into the Constitution to make sure that African Americans were not denied their civil rights under the Constitution. And likewise, I think to begin to talk about a government beginning to pick and choose who gets to have citizenship and who doesn’t, what disfavored class of people might not be granted citizenship is wrong. It’s dangerous.” (Fox News)
Lindsey Graham
- Lindsey Graham suggested the two women who became the first female graduates of the Army’s Ranger School should be permitted to engage in combat. “Passing that program, going through the Ranger School and coming out successful is an amazing human feat. So if these women want to go into war and protect my nation, as commander in chief, they’re ready to go, I’m ready to send them,” Graham said. (KCRG)
- Calling Donald Trump the “Wizard of Oz,” Graham said, “I think the more he exposes himself, putting forward solutions that are unworkable, the charm begins to fade after a while when you realize there's nothing behind the curtain.” (Washington Examiner)
Mike Huckabee
- Mike Huckabee rejected the words “occupied” and “West Bank” during a visit to the territory on Wednesday. Instead, according to The New York Times, Huckabee suggested “the entire occupied West Bank was part of Israel, leaving no room for a Palestinian state there.” (The New York Times)
- Criticizing the rhetoric of the Black Lives Matter movement on Tuesday, Huckabee said that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would be “appalled by the notion that we’re elevating some lives above others.” (CNN)
John Kasich
- According to NBC News, “John Kasich sought to portray himself as compassionate conservative and touted his gains in the polls in New Hampshire when he visited the Iowa State Fair on Tuesday.” (NBC News)
- The American Principles in Action gave Kasich a grade of F for his position on the Common Core, The Hill reported on Wednesday. In an interview on the same day, Kasich said, “If I were not president, but if I were King of America, I would abolish all teacher's lounges, where they sit together and worry about 'woe is us.'" A spokesman later explained his comments, saying, “He thinks teachers have far more support in their communities than they sometimes give themselves credit for and they shouldn't pay attention to the small number of pot-stirrers in their ranks who try to leverage problems for political gain.” (The Hill, CNN)
George Pataki
- On Tuesday, George Pataki said of ending birthright citizenship, “I don't support amending the Constitution to kick out kids who were born here.” (NBC News)
Rand Paul
- Although Rand Paul claimed he had transferred $250,000 to a Republican Party of Kentucky account to help finance the potential transition from a primary to caucus system, his campaign later noted that the funds had instead been set aside in a dedicated fund. Scott Lalsey, the chairman of the Warren County Republican Party, said of the announcement, "I'm disappointed that they sent a letter saying the money had been transferred when it hadn't. That confuses things. The important thing for all members of the central committee to remember is we're there to do what's best for the Republican Party of Kentucky. To do that we need as much information as possible. A more accurate, free-flow of information is helpful." (The Courier-Journal, Lexington Herald-Leader)
- Paul is expected to make campaign stops in Washington next week as part of a five-state tour that includes Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. (Seattle Times)
Rick Perry
- Rick Perry discussed his campaign finance struggles on Wednesday morning on Fox News. Perry said, “Everybody in life's had some money problems from time to time ... and whether it's in your campaign, your small business, your personal life or being the governor of the 12th largest economy in the world, you've got to make some cuts and have a smaller footprint." (Washington Examiner)
- On Wednesday, Perry took to the Soapbox at the Iowa State Fair to promote an an anti-establishment message. “Washington, D.C. has decided that they are the fount of all wisdom. Washington, D.C. has decided that all decisions need to be made there. And you know what my answer to Washington, D.C. is? I’m mad as hell and I’m going to do something about it to change it, Perry said. He also said he wanted to “free Americans from overtaxation” and called Donald Trump’s plans to build a border wall “political rhetoric.” (Radio Iowa, Washington Times)
Marco Rubio
- Marco Rubio issued a joint letter with Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) on Wednesday calling for Secretary of State John Kerry to make public letters he sent to the French, British, German and Chinese governments about the snapback provisions of the Iran nuclear deal. “These letters appear to reassure these foreign governments that their companies may not be impacted if sanctions are re-imposed in response to Iranian violations of the agreement. While Administration officials have claimed that this is not the case, we think it is important for the American public to be able to read your assurances to foreign governments for themselves as their elected representatives review this deal in the coming weeks,” the senators wrote. (U.S. Senator Florida, Marco Rubio)
- The Texas real estate developer and founding member of Club for Growth, Harlan Crow, is set to hold a fundraiser for Rubio at his home in September. (The Dallas Morning News)
Rick Santorum
- According to The Des Moines Register on Wednesday, Rick Santorum has made more stops in Iowa than any other presidential candidate this election cycle. (The Des Moines Register)
- Santorum is expected to make a major immigration policy speech on Thursday at the National Press Club. (PR Newswire)
Donald Trump
- A new Gallup poll released this week found Donald Trump’s favorability rating among women had not been impacted by his performance in the August 6, 2015, Republican debate. However, Trump had the highest favorability gender gap of any Republican candidate at -16 points. (Gallup, U.S. News World & Report)
- In an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday night, Trump said mass deportations of “birthright citizens” were possible. “I don’t think they have American citizenship, and if you speak to some very, very good lawyers — some would disagree. But many of them agree with me — you’re going to find they do not have American citizenship. We have to start a process where we take back our country. Our country is going to hell. We have to start a process, Bill, where we take back our country,” Trump said. (Politico)
- Trump defended his controversial comments about Mexican immigrants, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Megyn Kelly in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter published on Wednesday. “People say, ‘He won’t apologize for anything’ — well, I was right on illegal immigration. McCain blew it because he’s done a poor job of taking care of the veterans. And then the third element so far, you had Megyn Kelly, and I think you’ve seen what happened with that. feel quite confident in my position,” Trump said. (Politico)
Scott Walker
- According to The New York Times, Scott Walker is adjusting his messaging by adding more anti-Washington rhetoric to compete with non-politicians in the Republican field like Donald Trump. “We need to step it up and remind people that we didn’t just take on the unions and Democrats, we had to take on my own party establishment,” Walker said in a conference call with donors. (The New York Times)
See also
- Presidential election, 2016
- Presidential candidates, 2016
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Important dates in the 2016 presidential race
- Polls and Straw polls
- 2016 presidential candidate ratings and scorecards
