Photograph by David Becker/Getty Images

U.S. Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV) greets young supporters during an election night watch party at The Venetian on November 6, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

There’s no question that the reported homophobic and racist remarks of the 16-year-old son of Nevada Rep. Joe Heck are more than juvenile and offensive.

Yet the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s attempts to hang them on the kid’s father heading into the midterm congressional elections may be little better.

The DCCC release tonight relays a Buzzfeed report about the congresmann’s son and his social media habits.

None of it’s worth repeating here.

“I am extremely disappointed in my son’s use of the offensive and inappropriate language on twitter: that type of language has never been permitted in our home,”  the congressman is quoted as saying. “I apologize to everyone he may have offended. My son also apologizes for his insensitive behavior. My wife and I have addressed this family matter directly with him and he has learned from it.”

The question is how low a campaign committee will stoop to reclaim a majority of the House.

In the e-world that blurs tweets with news, it’s often difficult to discern which is worthy of serious consideration. If it’s online, it’s in play.

Yet it’s a good bet that any campaign that counts on turning a congressman’s kid against him is worthy of little consideration.

Original post is Congressman’s Kid: Campaign Bounds by Political Capital.

Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images

Undocumented Guatemalan immigrants are body searched before boarding a deportation flight to Guatemala City at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport in Mesa, Arizona.

President Barack Obama, calling the proposal for an immigration overhaul from a bipartisan group of senators “very much in line” with his own goals, says he sees “a genuine desire” in Congress to accomplish this soon.

“The good news is that – for the first time in many years – Republicans and Democrats seem ready to tackle this problem together,” Obama plans to say at an appearance in Las Vegas today. “Members of both parties both chambers, are actively working on a solution.”

The plan proposed by Sens. John McCain and Marco Rubio and two other Republicans, working with Sens. Chuck Schumer, Mike Bennet and two other Democrats, “are very much in line with the principles I’ve proposed and campaigned on for the last few years,” Obama plans to say, according to excerpts from the White House.

Congress must act on “a comprehensive approach” that deals with the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in the U.S., the president will say. The senators have proposed a “road-map” for green cards and ultimately citizenship for many of the undocumented.

The Republicans in the group say they are spurred by the 2012 elections, in which Obama took 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.

“At this moment, it looks like there’s a genuine desire to get this done soon,” Obama plans to say in Nevada, one of the states where Hispanic voters helped re-eelect him. “And that’s very encouraging.”

Original post is Obama: ‘Genuine Desire’ on Immigration by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

People attend an orientation class in filing up their application for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program at Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles.

That’s how many undocumented immigrants lived in the U.S. in March 2011, according to an estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center.

That’s down from a peak of about 12 million in 2007, according to the center’s estimates.

A bipartisan group of senators announced broad principles yesterday to govern a rewrite of immigration laws. The as-yet-unwritten legislation would include a path to citizenship for some of the 11.1 million undocumented immigrants.

“We believe this will be the year Congress finally gets it done,” New York Democrat Charles Schumer said at a news conference yesterday with four other members of the group, Bloomberg News reported.

John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee and a member of the group, called attention to his party’s struggles with Hispanics as one reason to enact an overhaul. Mitt Romney, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, won 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, exit polls show.

“The Republican Party is losing the support of our Hispanic citizens,” McCain said yesterday. “And we realize that there are many issues on which we think we are in agreement with our Hispanic citizens, but this is a preeminent issue with those citizens.”

President Barack Obama plans to travel to Nevada today to voice support for an overhaul of immigration laws. Nevada is 27 percent Hispanic, according to a  2012 Census Bureau estimate, and the state backed Obama’s re-election by 52 percent to 46 percent.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 11.1 Million 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.

“Tech certainly is a driver,” Schlossberg said of the industry feeding an insatiable global appetite for tablets and apps and everything else made of chips and code. “Just look at the rents, and the restaurants at night, it’s all being driven by tech growth and the spillover from that.”

Even though Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter help make California’s $1.96 trillion economy bigger than India’s, the Golden State can use the tailwind.

The largest U.S. state, with 37.7 million residents, has a 9.8 percent unemployment rate that’s the third highest in the country. That level also is the average since government began calculating the level for states in 1976. The U.S. average for the same period is 6.5 percent.

Western states, where unemployment was highest after the nation’s housing bubble burst in 2006, are leading the country in hiring as industries from homebuilding to technology add staff, helping erase the pain left over in places where real estate prices plunged most: Las Vegas, southern California and Arizona.

Nevada’s unemployment dropped 2.4 percentage points in the year ended November 2012, the most of any state, to 10.8 percent, though it’s still the highest in the U.S.

Joblessness in Arizona, California, Hawaii and Idaho also dropped at least 1 percentage point. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast the national unemployment rate held at a four-year low of 7.7 percent in December. The Labor Department releases the figures Friday.

Bloomberg’s Steve Matthews, Aki Ito and Amanda Crawford have the full story.

Original post is Tech Helps Give West Best U.S. Job Growth by Political Capital.

All 16 Democratic senators who sought re-election won new terms.

Five of the six Republican senators on last week’s ballot also prevailed.

The exception was Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who lost to Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren. The Republican list includes Dean Heller of Nevada, who won a full six-year term on Nov. 6 — 18 months after he was appointed to the Senate.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 95.5 by Political Capital.

Photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Photo

The hand of President Barack Obama is visible over the podium, and supporters are reflected in the TelePrompTer, as he speaks at a campaign event at Triangle Park in Dayton, Ohio, on Oct. 23, 2012, the day after the last presidential debate against Gov. Mitt Romney.

President Barack Obama’s campaign sent more than $14.4 million to state Democratic parties early this month, with most of it going to states crucial to his bid to win re-election Nov. 6.

Obama’s campaign directed the biggest chunk of the money, $3.1 million, to the Ohio Democratic Party between Oct. 1-11, according to a filing the president’s operation made last night with the Federal Election Commission. Ohio, which has 18 electoral votes, backed Obama by 4.6 percentage points in 2008, the 12^th consecutive election in which it sided with the White House winner.

Obama’s campaign transferred more than $1 million to Democratic organizations in five more so-called swing states. It sent $2.3 million to Colorado, $2.1 million to Florida, $1.4 million to Iowa, $1.2 million to Nevada and $1 million to Virginia. Florida has 29 electoral votes, the most among states that Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney are targeting.

The president’s operation directed $895,000 to North Carolina, where Romney has a small lead in most surveys, and $849,000 to Pennsylvania, a Democratic-leaning state where the president is laboring to keep its 20 electoral votes in his column.

The Democratic organizations in Wisconsin and New Hampshire, both swing states, received $597,000 and $458,000 respectively. The Obama campaign distributed the remaining $427,000 among 11 other states.

The Obama campaign also sent $1.3 million to the Democratic National Committee, which lags the Republican National Committee in available cash.

Obama led Romney by $93.7 million to $52.7 million in cash-on-hand as of Oct. 17, FEC reports showed. The pro-Romney side overall has more money because of national party organizations, super-political action committees and non-profit groups that are involved in the White House race.

Original post is Obama Campaign Sent $14 Million to State Democratic Parties: Ohio Top by Political Capital.

Photograph by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Delegates cheer during the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Tampa, Florida, on Aug. 28, 2012.

The voting public this year looks pretty much like the voting public of 2008 — except for one significant difference: It’s more Republican.

That’s the conclusion of Gallup’s analysis of the daily tracking of public opinion it has run since the start of October.

The “key elements of President Obama’s electoral coalition, such as racial minorities, women, young adults and postgraduates will likely turn out at rates similar to those in 2008,” Gallup’s Jeffrey Jones writes.

There are some subtle differences:

Women, who tend to support Obama over Republican Mitt Romney, account for 52 percent of the 2012 electorate, Gallup reports — 53 percent in 2008. Men, who tend to support Romney, account for 48 percent — 47 percent in 2008.

African-Americans, who overwhelmingly support Obama, account for 11 percent of the 2012 electorate — 12 percent in 2008.

Hispanics, who support Obama by better than two-to-one margins in most polling this year, account for 7 percent of the electorate — 6 percent in 2008.

Here’s the difference: Those who identify themselves as Republican account for 36 percent of the 2012 electorate in Gallup’s surveys — compared with 29 percent in 2008. Democrats, 35 percent of this year’s electorate, accounted for 39 percent in 2008. Those either Republican or leaning Republican account for 49 percent this year, 42 percent in 2008. Those either Democratic or Democratic leaning account for 35 percent this year, 39 percent in 2008.

All of which helps explain why Romney holds a 51-46 percent edge in Gallup’s latest track of likely voters nationally

The Washington-based Pew Research Center, which also runs large surveys, has a different reading of the electorate:

Self-identified Democrats account for 35 percent of registered voters, based on surveys of more than 13,000 people this year. That’s down from 38 percent in 2012. Republicans account for 28 percent, and that’s how it stood in 2008. Independents account for 33 percent, compared with 39 percent in 2008.

A record 23.7 million Latinos are eligible to vote this year, up by more than 4 million, or 22 percent, from 2008, when 19.5 million were eligible to vote. They account for 11 percent of the nation’s eligible voters, the Pew Research Center has found, up from 9.5 percent in 2008.

“However,” Pew reports, “the turnout rate of eligible Latino voters has historically lagged that of whites and blacks by substantial margins. In 2008, for example, 50 percent of eligible Latino voters cast ballots, compared with 65 percent of blacks and 66 percent of whites.”

All of which explains how much get-out-the-vote efforts in the several swing states where the election will be decided matter on Nov. 6. Some of those states — Nevada, Colorado and Florida — are heavily influenced by the Latino vote. Some of them — namely Ohio — will be heavily influenced by how people identify themselves politically and where they align with Obama or Romney.

Original post is Republicans: More Now Than 2008 — Gallup’s Portrait of 2012 Electorate by Political Capital.

Photograph by Charles Dharapak/AP Photo

Mitt Romney arrives to speak at an election campaign rally at the Reno Event Center in Reno, Nev., on Oct. 24, 2012.

Mitt Romney has a warning for voters worried about the economy under President Barack Obama: Things can get worse.

Seeking to maintain its recent surge of momentum in the race, Romney’s campaign today began issuing a series of dire economic predictions for what would happen if voters reelected Obama for a second term.

“The president doesn’t understand what it takes to get this economy going. He doesn’t have a plan to get jobs for Americans.,” Romney told voters in Reno, Nevada, today.

Obama, he said, will make it harder for Americans to get health care or a mortgage, worsen education, saddle students with more debt, cut Medicare for seniors, and leave home values continuing to “bump along on the basement.”

“This election is about your family,” Romney said. “And the choice we make across the country will have an enormous impact on your family.”

Romney’s fresh attack came as his top economic adviser told attendees at a conference sponsored by the Economist magazine in New York that the economy stands a good chance of facing legislated tax increases and spending cuts if Obama is reelected.

“There is a good chance, if the president wins, we go over the cliff,” said adviser Glenn Hubbard, who also serves as dean of Columbia Business School.

Original post is Obama Wins, `We Go Over the Cliff’ — Romney Campaign’s Message by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

A couple with their dog play music aimed to get tips on a foot-over-bridge along the Las Vegas Strip.

That’s the percentage-point difference between the September unemployment rates of Iowa and Nevada. The two states have the lowest and highest rates respectively among the nine states where President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are devoting most of their attention.

Iowa’s 5.2 percent unemployment rate is fourth-lowest in the nation along with Oklahoma’s. Nevada’s 11.8 percent rate is the nation’s highest.

Iowa is “an unusual battleground in a presidential election that’s focused on a weak national economy,” Bloomberg’s David J. Lynch reported last week. “With its low unemployment and sound housing market, Iowa boasts the economy that President Barack Obama once promised the entire country.”

The other battleground states are New Hampshire (5.7 percent), Virginia (5.9 percent), Ohio (7 percent), Wisconsin (7.3 percent), Colorado (8 percent), Florida (8.7 percent) and North Carolina (9.6 percent). The national unemployment rate is 7.8 percent.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 6.6 by Political Capital.