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Mayor of Charlotte Anthony R. Foxx waves as he walks on stage during day one of the Democratic National Convention.

Original post is Anthony Foxx’s High-Speed Promotion by Political Capital.

Photograph by Julie Jacobson/AP Photo

Tiger Woods walks to the practice range before playing a practice round for the Match Play Championship golf tournament, on Feb. 19, 2013, in Marana, Ariz.

Tiger Woods had some kind words for at least part of President Barack Obama’s golf game.

Woods, who partnered with the president at the Floridian National club in Palm City over the weekend,  reports that their team won (and split a $30 pot) and that “playing with the president was pretty cool.”

“He’s a pretty good athlete,” Woods reported during comments to the press at his own professional match in Arizona yesterday,  this account coming from Golf Digest.com “”We all know he played a lot of hoops. ”

Original post is Woods: Obama’s Game Needs Work — A Project for the Next Four Years by Political Capital.

Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg

A man picks up a long rifle.

That’s the percentage of married men from the South who are gun owners, according to Gallup. That’s the biggest share among 66 sub-groups measured in Gallup surveys from 2007 to 2012.

Gun ownership “varies significantly by region, with Southerners more likely to own guns than those living in other regions of the United States,” Gallup’s Jeffrey M. Jones said in a written analysis. “Marriage is also a strong predictor of gun ownership.”

Men are three times more likely than women to own guns, 45 percent to 15 percent, according to Gallup data.

Congress is weighing President Barack Obama’s proposals to curb gun violence. The president wants to strengthen a background-check policy and ban sales of semiautomatic assault-style weapons.

An assault weapons ban would be defeated in the U.S. Senate “unless some lawmakers changed their current views,” Bloomberg News reported Jan. 26. Vice President Joe Biden last week urged Democratic senators to back a ban, Bloomberg News reported Jan. 31. The Republican-led House probably wouldn’t approve a ban.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 64 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charlie Riedel/AP Photo

People photograph the Roman numerals for NFL Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 1, 2013, in New Orleans.

Greg Cosell, senior producer at NFL Films Inc. and nephew of the legendary ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell, successfully predicted the New York Giants’ upset of the New England Patriots in last year’s Super Bowl.

This year, Cosell says, the Baltimore Ravens will defeat the San Francisco 49ers:

23-20.

The Ravens are “underrated by many, many people,” Cosell said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend before Sunday night’s national championship. “This game will not be quite as high-scoring as some think.”

Cosell notes that Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco has won more games, including playoffs, than any other quarterback in his first five years. He’s also won more road playoff games than any quarterback in history.

“I think Joe Flacco has been a fine quarterback for much of his career, and he really should have been in the Super Bowl last year,” Cosell said, “if a receiver did not drop a perfectly thrown ball.”

Original post is Cosell Predicts Ravens in Super Bowl by Political Capital.

Photograph by Getty Images

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, seen speaking at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, is working with Senate Democrats on an immigration package. Photo by Getty Images.

Senate Democrats plan to put forward an immigration proposal next week, with President Barack Obama telling Hispanic lawmakers that he intends to push legislation as quickly as possible.

Obama will begin a public campaign to build support for an immigration package that will include a pathway to citizenship for the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants. A bipartisan group of six senators also plans to release a detailed framework laying out their principals for a bill as soon as the end of next week, Senate aides say.

The president “made it very clear that this is his number one legislative priority,” Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra of California, said after meeting yesterday with Obama at the White House. “In every sense of the word he is in the starting gate.”

The immigration proposal will be the centerpiece of the president’s planned stop on Jan. 29 in Las Vegas, Nevada, a state that Obama won in the last two elections and where Hispanics make up 27 percent of the population.

Passage of a comprehensive immigration bill would fulfill a promise Obama made in both of his presidential campaigns. He won 71 percent of Hispanic voters in his re-election victory. Last June, he took executive action to halt deportations of young people brought illegally to the U.S. as children and make them eligible for work permits.

Since Obama won a second term, the administration has intensified its work on a legislative plan with immigrant-rights advocates, law-enforcement officials and religious leaders who support a change.

A bipartisan group of senators is working on a parallel track to write a bill, and they may release an agreement as soon as next week. White House officials and Democratic leaders are negotiating over who will release their plan first, according to congressional aides.

The Senate proposal will cover four major areas, border enforcement, managing the future flow of immigrants to the U.S., workplace verification standards and a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants, Senate aides said. While Republicans have pushed to take a piecemeal approach, taking up the different components in separate bills, the legislation will be comprehensive, the aides say.

The group includes Republicans Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, along with Democrats Chuck Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, aides say. Rubio, weighing whether to offer his own legislation, joined the group after November’s elections. Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado and Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee have also been involved in the discussions, according to Senate aides.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings on the issue next month. The goal is for legislation to reach the Senate floor by May or June.

While many Republicans in Congress have criticized creating a system to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants as amnesty for people who entered the U.S. illegally, the party has softened its stance as Hispanic political clout has grown.

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour says the nation needs to revamp its immigration laws, including citizenship for undocumented people and is urging his party to reach out to minorities or face more electoral losses.

“We’ve got to face up to some demographic issues” if Republicans hope to win the White House in 2016, he says in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” airing this weekend.

National exit polls showed that 10 percent of the electorate was Latino in November, compared with 9 percent four years ago and 8 percent in 2004. Hispanics constitute 16.7 percent of the total U.S. population, the largest ethnic or racial minority, according to the Census Bureau.

The former Mississippi governor says allowing many of the illegal immigrants in the U.S. to stay makes economic as well as political sense.

“If we will follow what’s good economic policy, we will recognize that we are in a global battle for capital and for labor,” Barbour said. “We need the labor, not just H-1B visas for PhDs and engineering from India, but also we need agricultural labor.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney says Obama will be promoting the same set of proposals that were part of his election campaign.

In his Jan. 21 inaugural address, Obama said the immigration issue is tied to economic growth.

“Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country,” the president said.

Original post is Immigration: Obama, Senate Leaders Pushing Reforms at ‘Starting Gate’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jonathan Fickies/Bloomberg

Haley Barbour

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour is not a supporter of Republican proposals to allocate electoral votes in some states by congressional district rather than winner-take-all.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he says in an interview on “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television.
“I don’t think anybody can predict with any form of precision who it’ll help from this election to the next.”

Republican lawmakers in several states won by Democratic President Barack Obama, including Virginia, Michigan and Pennsylvania, are discussing awarding electoral votes by congressional district rather than giving them all to the candidate who wins the most votes statewide.

Since those congressional districts were drawn by Republican-controlled state legislatures to favor Republicans, such a proposal would give the Republican presidential candidate some electoral votes in states that otherwise have voted for the Democratic candidate. In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell and key Republican legislators have come out against the proposal.

Original post is Barbour: Dividing Electoral Votes Wrong by Political Capital.

“If you all both agree on that, why don’t we do that?” Landrieu said on “Political Capital With Al Hunt,” airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television. “Because when President Clinton was in office and Vice President Biden was a senator, they put cops on the streets of America and it reduced the crime rate.”

Landrieu also criticized those in Congress talking about cutting spending for programs like mental health services at a time when the debate over gun regulations involves trying to keep weapons out of the hands of the mentally ill.

“If you need mental health services, you can’t cut funding for mental health services,” he said.

Original post is New Orleans Mayor Sees One Area of Agreement in Gun Debate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

House Speaker John Boehner walks past journalists on his return to the Capitol after meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House on Dec. 13, 2012 in Washington.

No one wants to get “primaried.”

Certainly not Republican members of Congress who have seen some of their colleagues run out of office in party primaries by Tea Party-backed candidates and others who have challenged them for breaking with an anti-tax orthodoxy.

In the tortured grammar of politics, the ritual of intraparty rivarly has become a dreaded verb.

As Speaker John Boehner, leader of the Republican-run House, negotiates with President Barack Obama in a bid to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts set to take effect Jan. 1, the threat of members going along with any compromise getting “primaried” hangs in the air.

“We’re not going to do something in the dark, late at night where no one knows what the practical effect and outcome is,” Rep. Pete Sessions, incoming chairman of the House Rules Committee, said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt. “If we do that, we do get primaried.”

At the same time, Sessions told Hunt that he can accept some mix of tax increases and spending cuts, which is what the White House is seeking in the so-called fiscal cliff talks – and suggested that other Republicans will sign on to such a compromise.

Still, Republicans aren’t simply imagining the threat of getting primaried over any tax compromise.

As Bloomberg’s Julie Bykowicz reports,  a letter circulated to House and Senate Republicans warned that social conservatives will unite to vote them out in 2014 primaries if they accede to Obama’s plans to raise tax rates for the highest-income Americans.

“Let us also remind you that a great many potent conservative organizations and millions of conservative and liberty-loving voters do not believe in the divine right of incumbents to be re-nominated,” the letter says. “Conservatives know how to recruit and support candidates.”

It was signed by dozens of leaders of Republican-leaning groups, including For America, Let Freedom Ring, the Family Research Council and the Conservative Action Project. Foster Friess, a millionaire Wyoming investor and major Republican campaign donor, and Republican writers such as RedState editor Erick Erickson also appear on the list of signatories.

It’s not only the House where Republicans worry about getting primaried.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, “might be vulnerable to a primary challenge in 2014 — but it’s unclear who, if anyone, might step up to run against him,” The Hill reports. Sate Sen. Tom Davis, his name floated as the one most likely to challenge the two-term senator, downplayed the likelihood he’d run but did say that Graham “should be primaried.”

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, his opponents calling him Taxby for talking about compromise.

Public Policy Polling, in a survey of Georgia voters, talks about what would happen “if Chambliss was taken out in the primary… It could have the potential to be a race if Chambliss does get primaried.”

At NewJersey.com, one wag writes about what Boehner must be telling Obama in those “frank” meetings at the White House:

“s many as 80 percent of my guys are worried about being primaried if they cave too soon. And very few of them are worried about winning their generals, so the incentive is to resist. That’s why I’m increasingly pessimistic about getting this done by Christmas. We’re on track for December 28ish, because it can’t look like I’m caving preemptively or precipitously.”

Original post is Getting Primaried: The Dreaded Verb by Political Capital.

Photograph by Scott Eells/Bloomberg

Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, speaks at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte.

Presidential surrogates Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia both predicted their party’s nominee will win the White House on this week’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.”

“He’s going to earn this win,” Patrick, a Democrat, said on the show. ”And I think he’s going to come right back to work on Wednesday, working not just for Democrats and those who voted for him, but for everybody.”

McDonnell said Mitt Romney will win, but only by a “razor-thin” margin.

“Turnout and enthusiasm means that we win by a couple of points” in Virginia, McDonnell, a Republican, said in a separate interview. “We just need a change, and everybody knows that.”

Read the full story and watch the show below:

Original post is Political Capital: Partisan Predictions by Political Capital.

Photograph by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Mitt Romney makes a "U" with his hands next to Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a campaign rally at University of Miami on October 31, 2012 in Coral Gables, Florida.

Defense is the last position a politician should be in during the final days of a campaign, Bloomberg’s Al Hunt says in today’s “In the Hunt.”

When former President Bill Clinton campaigns for President Barack Obama in Minnesota and Republican challenger Mitt Romney runs a dishonest ad about Obama’s auto rescue, that’s defense, Hunt says.

Watch more from Hunt on Romney, Chrysler and Ohio here:

Original post is In The Hunt: Trouble in Campaign’s Final Days by Political Capital.