MONTANA:
Last year, Democrats worried they would lose this Senate seat after then-Sen. Max Baucus announced his intention to retire and their preferred recruit declined to run. Then the White House appointed Baucus as the ambassador to China, giving Democrats the chance to appoint someone to fill the seat. The governor picked Lt. Governor John Walsh, who was planning to run for the seat anyway. Walsh would be able to serve a period of time as a senator and then run as the incumbent—it would naturally be a boon to his campaign.
To date, Walsh actually hasn’t made the seat less of a toss-up. A recent poll found his Republican challenger, Rep. Steve Daines, leading by 7 points—in previous polls Walsh trailed by double digits. If there’s one thing that is unlikely to improve those numbers, it’s being accused of blatant and extensive plagiarism.
The New York Times reports:
But one of the highest-profile credentials of Mr. Walsh’s 33-year military career appears to have been improperly attained. An examination of the final paper required for Mr. Walsh’s master’s degree from the United States Army War College indicates the senator appropriated at least a quarter of his thesis on American Middle East policy from other authors’ works, with no attribution.
Mr. Walsh completed the paper, what the War College calls a "strategy research project," to earn his degree in 2007, when he was 46. The sources of the material he presents as his own include academic papers, policy journal essays and books that are almost all available online.
Most strikingly, the six recommendations Mr. Walsh laid out at the conclusion of his 14-page paper, titled "The Case for Democracy as a Long Term National Strategy," are taken nearly word-for-word without attribution from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document on the same topic. […]
In addition, significant portions of the language in Mr. Walsh’s paper can be found in a 1998 essay by a scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, at Harvard.
Walsh isn’t just making a couple mistakes and leaving off quotations or forgetting to properly cite here (though this has been the defense from his campaign). It’s obvious to most anyone, that he took someone else’s words and thoughts, tried to pass it off as his own, and succeeded. He received an academic degree.
People who do this, and do it on this scale, typically don’t do it once, but even if this were the only example of Walsh plagiarizing, it was in his final paper. His entire degree should be called into question, as should his standing as a public official.
It would egregious and offensive behavior for an academic student; I can’t even think of the word to describe what it is when a senator does it. Walsh was not a stupid college kid—he was an adult. This was only seven years ago. Walsh had served in the Army National Guard for decades. He knew right from wrong, but chose to cheat anyways.
What makes it worse is that his campaign somehow seems to think it's not a big deal, and that because he's been awarded for his military career this doesn't (or shouldn’t) matter. It matters.
We should expect our elected official to have more integrity than this. Walsh stole someone else's intellectual property and instead of admitting it was wrong continues to offer nonsensical rationalizations.
GEORGIA:
David Perdue, the former business executive and the cousin of former Gov. Sonny Perdue, won the Republican runoff against Rep. Jack Kingston. Perdue will face Michelle Nunn in the Senate general election.
Going into Election Day, Rep. Kingston had a seven-point lead. Kingston didn’t have a clear win lined up, but he went into it with the advantage, however slight, and as a result Perdue’s win was a bit of a surprise.
There are a few reasons Purdue was able to pull off the win, as the Atlanta Journal Constitution notes:
David Perdue’s stunning victory over Rep. Jack Kingston was both a rebuke to Georgia’s political establishment and a reminder that November will be a very unconventional race. Here are five factors that played into Perdue’s upset victory: […]
An effective grassroots network. Perdue advisers said it never got much media attention, but they built a formidable network of activists across the state who tapped an anti-incumbent streak to boost their candidate. That foundation is still intact, they say, and will come in handy against Nunn.
The Chamber was both boon and burden. The closing days back-and-forth involved the U.S. Chamber’s heavy investment in the race on Kingston’s behalf, with a flood of positive ads (and a last-minute negative that few voters likely saw). Perdue used it as evidence that Kingston secretly supported "amnesty." Talk radio host Erick Erickson tweeted that he had trouble convincing many friends to vote Kingston because of the Chamber’s backing.
Very few people like Congress. Kingston had to own 22 years in Congress. As he put it Tuesday: "You know, people are very frustrated with Washington, D.C., and I think that was a big hurdle. And my opponent capitalized on that—as he should."
The biggest boost for Perdue seemed to come from his anti-establishment message. He ran on that message from the very beginning and it proved effective. His new opponent also has made being an "outsider" the focus of her campaign.
It kind of equalizes the argument. Both Nunn and Perdue are "outsiders" in a sense, but they are also part of political dynasties in Georgia politics. They’ve both, at least partially, lost the outsider argument as a beneficial campaign tool while also smoothing out a potential dynasty attack.
This is one of the state Democrats hope to switch, and it’s important that Republicans keep it if they want to take control of the Senate.
The race seems to be on common footing, and according to the polling averages, Nunn vs. Perdue is a tie.
IOWA:
Joni Ernst received a lot of support from GOP favorites such as Sens. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R., Texas) during her primary race. A new campaign finance report shows that Rubio allocated nearly a quarter of a million dollars from his PAC, Reclaim America.
As we see the support for Ernst in monetary numbers, reports have surfaced that her Democratic opponent, Rep. Bruce Braley, is receiving criticism for an attendance problem.
The Des Moines Register reports:
Over a two-year period, Democratic U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley missed 75 percent of meetings for a committee that provides oversight over the Veterans Administration, including one meeting on a day he attended three fundraisers for his 2012 campaign. […]
Veterans affairs have been in public floodlight because of news reports about sometimes-fatal delays for veterans waiting for care at VA hospitals, and fraudulent record-keeping meant to cover up the delays. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs, of which Braley was a member for two years, is responsible for oversight over the operations at the VA.
At 10:19 a.m. on Sept. 20, 2012, the committee held a hearing on a backlog of disability claims and reports of problems with mental health care and stewardship of VA funding, congressional records show. The roll call shows Braley didn't attend.
Braley's aides said he skipped it to attend a 9:36 a.m. Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting on the "Fast and Furious" gun trafficking scandal. The congressional record marked Braley "present," but reveals that he offered no testimony during the three-hour hearing, which ran until 12:45 p.m.
Video caught no sight of Braley. His seat isn't always visible, but the multiple times it's within camera view during the window the Veterans Affairs committee was in session (10:19 a.m. to 11:54 a.m.), Braley wasn't seated, a Register review of C-SPAN 3 and committee footage found.
Braley, it seems, has not attended many committee meetings and when confronted about it, he told a bit of a lie.
Ernst and Braley are in a really close race, the news this week doesn’t help Braley.