Morning Fix: Demonizing Nancy Pelosi

National Republicans are up with an ad that seeks to link the Democratic nominee in a special election for an Upstate New York seat to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), an early window into the GOP’s strategy to use Pelosi’s heightened national profile against members of her party running in conservative areas.

The ad’s narrator says attorney Bill Owens (D) is “approved by Nancy Pelosi” and “ready to back higher taxes and Pelosi’s big spending.” The narrator goes on to trumpet the candidacy of state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, the Republican nominee for the seat; “to stop Pelosi, Dede’s the one,” says the narrator. (One Democratic source wryly noted that the narrator mispronounced Scozzafava’s name repeatedly in the ad.)

The ad, which is being paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee, came on the same day that NRCC Pete Sessions (Texas) sent out a fundraising appeal casting a contribution to his organization as the best way to stop the agenda put forward by President Obama and Pelosi.

“Every dollar you donate will go directly towards validating [Vice President Joe] Biden’s claim — every dollar will go towards retiring Nancy Pelosi,” wrote Sessions. (Biden said earlier this week that significant Democratic losses in the House in 2010 would effectively doom Obama’s plans for the country.)

NRCC communications director Ken Spain said that the ad in New York is only the tip of the iceberg, promising that Pelosi will be prominently featured in the 2010 campaign. “She has become a weight around the necks of Democrats running across the country,” argued Spain.

Republicans have long promised to use Pelosi’s liberalism and her roots in San Francisco to drag down Democratic members of Congress who represent much more conservative areas.

To date, it hasn’t worked because Pelosi has simply not been well known (or disliked) enough for voters to punish their member for being in the same party as the speaker — a point made by Democratic Congressional Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Crider. “This Karl Rove style politics didn’t work for Republicans in 2006, it didn’t work in 2008, and it won’t work in 2010,” said Crider.

Recent polling suggests that Pelosi’s profile has risen — whether as a result of the press she garnered (most of it unfavorable) from her comments about the C.I.A. earlier this year or simply because of her increased prominence in a capitol controlled by Democrats.

In a June Washington Post/ABC News survey, just 16 percent of the sample said they didn’t know enough about Pelosi to offer an opinion on her speakership. Of those that had an opinion 38 percent approved of the job Pelosi was doing as speaker while 45 percent disapproved. Those numbers were lower among independents, considered the critical voting bloc in the 2010 elections, where one-in-three approved of Pelosi’s job performance. A more recent survey conducted by Bloomberg in mid-September showed that one in five did not know enough about Pelosi to offer an opinion.

There is, of course, a major difference between Pelosi being better known nationally and that raised profile leading to the defeat of candidates with only tangential ties to the Speaker.

Regardless, Republicans appear to be banking on the idea that in 2010 they can turn Pelosi into the same sort of electoral albatross that former House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) became for the GOP in the late 1990s.

Wednesday’s Fix Picks: Name the five best albums of 2009. Go.

1. The new NBC/WSJ poll!
2. Mayor Mike isn’t the healthiest eater.
3. The stakes for Gov. Deval Patrick in the succession pick are high.
4. Senate Democrats up for re-election in 2012 brace for a bad cycle.
5. The science behind re-Tweeting.

Whitman’s In . . .: Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman (R) officially entered the 2010 California governor’s race on Tuesday making the announcement on — where else! — Fox News Channel. “I refuse to let California fail,” said Whitman about her (long planned) decision to run. “It will take a different approach.” That approach apparently includes a distancing from the current Republican governor — Arnold Schwarzenegger; asked about his tenure, Whitman sad that “Ronald Reagan and Pete Wilson did a better job.” (Wilson is the chairman of her campaign.) Whitman, who will make stops in Orange County, San Diego, Fresno and Silicon Valley before heading to the state GOP convention this weekend in Indian Wells, joins state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell in the Republican race. She is regarded by many as the frontrunner due to her massive personal wealth and a pledge to spend what it takes to win. But, California Republican observers caution that none of the three candidates is all that well known and that Whitman’s money alone won’t win her the nomination. To address that problem, Whitman is now up with a statewide radio ads touting her work with eBay and insisting: “We need to reinvent California. And that reinvention starts at the top.”
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Jerry Brown are running on the Democratic side.

. . . And So Is Carly (Sort Of): Former Hewlett-Packard head Carly Fiorina (R-Calif.) has launched a new Web site to drum up excitement about her possible challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) in 2010. “It’s day and night, it’s dogs and cats, it’s good and bad, it’s Carly versus Boxer,” reads a scroll on the site. It directs users to a Facebook and  Twitter page designed to promote Fiorina’s kind-of candidacy. (She has formed an exploratory committee but hasn’t announced she is running yet.) Fiorina has run a somewhat odd campaign to date; much of her appeal was rooted in her willingness to spend heavily from her own pocket but she has said of late that she has no plans to finance the race on her own.

New Poll Looks Bad for Paterson (Redux): The hits just keep on coming for embattled Gov. David Paterson. A  new survey from Siena College shows that seven in ten New Yorkers believe he is “well intentioned” but not getting his job as governor done while six in ten said he lacks leadership skills. Not surprisingly, just 29 percent have a favorable opinion of Paterson while 59 percent view him unfavorably. Paterson trails former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani by 17 points while state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who many Democrats are urging to run for governor, leads Hizzoner by 15. Despite being urged to reconsider a reelection bid by the White House, Paterson has been resolute that he will run in 2010. As we wrote recently, barring a miracle that candidacy is doomed.

A Campbell To Run in S.C.: Carroll Campbell III (R), the son of the legendary Palmetto State governor, is planning to challenge Rep. Henry Brown (R) in next year’s primary, according to the State newspaper. Brown was elected to the coastal 1st district once held by Gov. Mark Sanford (R) in 2000 and until last November had held it easily. But, free-spending Food Lion heiress Linda Ketner (D) came out of nowhere to nearly defeat Brown; he won 52 percent to 48 percent. That race exposed Brown’s political weakness and Campbell is now seeking to capitalize. Ketner has ruled out running again.

Say What?: “Thank you, President Clinton, for the extraordinary brief introduction which during the U.N. General Assembly week does not happen that often.” — President Obama makes reference to the (occasional) long-windedness of foreign leaders at the U.N. summit during a speech at the Clinton Global Initiative.