Photograph by Mark Kauzlarich/The Janesville Gazette/AP Photo

Wisconsin Congressional candidate Rob Zerban speaking at campaign event in Janesvilles, Wis., on Oct. 3, 2012.

The Wisconsin Democrat who tried to unseat Rep. Paul Ryan in 2012 is eyeing a rematch with the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Rob Zerban, a former county supervisor, filed paperwork establishing an “exploratory” bid in Wisconsin’s 1^st District, which includes Kenosha, Racine and other territory in the southeastern part of the state.

“Since the election, I have been inundated with phone calls and emails from people all over the First District urging me to come forward again to give the people of Southeast Wisconsin a viable alternative to Paul Ryan,” Zerban said in a statement first shared with Political Capital today announcing an exploratory committee, often a precursor to a full-fledged campaign.

Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, beat Zerban by 55 percent to 43 percent in 2012, when Ryan was Mitt Romney’s running mate and closely linked to the national Republican Party. The Romney-Ryan ticket carried Wisconsin’s 1^st by 52 percent to 47 percent in the 2012 election, according to Political Capital calculations.

Unseating Ryan may be more difficult in 2014, when voter turnout will dip at the midpoint of President Barack Obama’s second term. The White House’s party rarely gains ground in Congress in midterm elections.

Democrats including Zerban have attacked Ryan’s fiscal blueprint, which calls for balancing the budget through about $4.6 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.

“My hope is that, over the next few months, we will begin to have a conversation about what the people of Wisconsin’s First District really want: a secure future, not federal austerity,” Zerban said.

Balancing the budget “helps us get a healthier economy, stronger growth,” Ryan  said yesterday on Bloomberg Television’s “In the Loop.”

Original post is Paul Ryan’s Wisconsin Opponent Explores 2014 Rematch by Political Capital.

Photograph by Andrew Link/Winona Daily News/AP Photo

Voters fill the booths on Nov. 6, 2012, at the Stockton Community Center in Stockton, Minn. After a grinding presidential campaign, Americans are heading into polling places across the country.

Minnesota is the nation’s undisputed champion when it comes to voter turnout.

About 76 percent of Minnesota residents who were eligible to vote in the 2012 election cast a ballot, leading the nation for the eighth time in the past nine presidential elections, according to a report from Boston-based Nonprofit VOTE.

One reason: Minnesota allows voters to register on Election Day. The state began offering same-day registration in 1974 and more than 500,000 voters typically avail themselves of the privilege, according to the state elections office.

Seven of the 10 states with the highest voter turnout in 2012 allowed for Election Day registration were so-called swing states where President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney devoted most of their time, or both, according to the report.

Minnesota was on the periphery of competitive states in the 2012 election, backing Obama by eight points and siding with the Democratic presidential ticket for the tenth consecutive election.

The four states with the next-highest voter turnout rates were closer. Wisconsin, the home state of Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, had the second highest turnout rate at 73 percent; it went for Obama by 7 points. Colorado (Obama by 5), New Hampshire (Obama by 6) and Iowa (Obama by 6) rounded out the top five.

About 59 percent of eligible voters nationwide turned out to vote in 2012, compared with 62 percent in 2008.

Original post is Minnesota Tops in Voter Turnout (Again) — Obama Carried Top-Five by Political Capital.

Photograph by Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama departs the White House on Feb. 4, 2013 to Minneapolis to tout his gun control proposals.

The release of the White House photo showing President Barack Obama shooting skeet at Camp David comes two days before Obama travels to Minneapolis to promote his agenda for curbing gun violence, following the Dec. 14 shootings of 20 schoolchildren and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut, by a young gunman wielding his mother’s semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle.

The photo of the president, recorded Aug. 4, 2012 at Camp David, was taken on a summer Saturday — his 51st birthday — two weeks and a day after a young gunman walked into the Century 16 multiplex theater in Aurora, Colo., and opened fire with a Remington shotgun and a Smith & Wesson M&P 15 semi-automatic rifle and a 100-round drum ammunition magazine that jammed, forcing him to move on to his Glock handgun. The attack during the midnight showing of “The Dark Night Rises” claimed 12 lives and injured 58 other people.

The day after the president was shooting clay targets at Camp David, a gunman with a Springfield 9 mm semi-automatic pistol who had recently bought the gun and three 19-round ammo clips walked into a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., and killed six people.

This picture was taken in the heat of a presidential campaign in which, despite the mass shootings that summer, neither Obama nor his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, were pressed to confront an issue that has haunted American society for years.

The release of the White House photo today clearly is an attempt by a president pressing for tougher gun controls to show that he understands the aims of law-abiding gun owners. Yet in many ways, the photo of the first gun-owner underscores something about the pervasiveness of firearms in American culture.

The president’s gun-promoting critics will not accept him as one of their own.

The Washington Times was quick to suggest that the commander-in-chief is no ordinary gun-owner. The paper quoted the CEO of Browning, Travis Hall, as saying of the shotgun pictured in the Camp David photo: ”I am fairly sure it is a Browning Citori.” The Times writes: “As the president is left handed, it could be the 12 gauge Citori 625 Sporting Golden Clays, adjustable comb, left hand. It features a gold engraving of a game bird transforming into a clay target on the receiver and retails for $4,799. ” (Various Browning Citori shotguns run between $3,200 and $7,000.)

And the Associated Press quoted a top official with the National Skeet Shooting Association as saying the White House photo suggests Obama is a novice shooter. ”This isn’t something he’s done very often because of how he’s standing, how he has the gun mounted,” said Michael Hampton, executive director of the San Antonio-based association.

The National Rifle Association, for its part, whose membership reportedly has boomed since the Newtown shootings, wasn’t offering the president any membership card today. The AP quoted  Andrew Arulanandam, NRA spokesman, as saying: ”One picture does not erase a lifetime of supporting every gun ban and every gun-control scheme imaginable.”

And then there was the photo itself. At a White House whose occupant suffered years of questioning about his citizenship and the authenticity of his Hawaiian birth certificate, officials today attempted to forestall all the likely Photoshop conspiracy theorists — likening a new breed of “Skeeters” to those nagging “Birthers.”

From David Plouffe (#whereistrump), manager of the first campaign and author of “The Audacity to Win:”

Attn skeet birthers. Make our day – let the photoshop conspiracies begin! m.flickr.com/photos/whiteho…

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) February 2, 2013

Day made. The skeet birthers are out in full force in response to POTUS pic. Makes for most excellent, delusional reading. #whereistrump

— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) February 2, 2013

From Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director-turned senior adviser:

For all the “skeeters”: POTUS shoots clay targets on the range at Camp David on Aug. 4, 2012. bit.ly/WlDMYG

— Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) February 2, 2013

The picture is real.

We know Pete Souza, the White House photographer, a professional’s professional.

The president’s affinity with gun-owners remains a question, yet probably averts the real question here.

This photo of a sporting shoot two weeks after one massacre and the day before another, released as the president sets out to rally public support for gun controls following the most shocking mass shooting of all, isn’t likely to make any real connection between Obama and a gun-owning public. It’s simply another reminder that there’s probably nothing to worry about with guns in the hands of the right people. It’s the rest of them — and their high-powered weapons — that are the problem.

Original post is Obama’s $5,000 Shotgun Real McCoy, Wrong Question in Gun Control Debate? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin and chairman of the House Budget Committee, at the Capitol.

Every four years, the announcement of a vice-presidential nominee yields significant speculation about how the candidate might boost the political fortunes of the party’s White House candidate.

The talk of a No. 2 delivering this state or that state for the ticket almost always is off the mark.

Rep. Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice-presidential nominee from Wisconsin, agrees.

“Everybody kept telling me, ‘The running mate doesn’t make a huge difference. It helps define issues, but it doesn’t bring states, it doesn’t do a lot,’” Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel yesterday.

“Most of these so-called experts told me, ‘Don’t have high expectations for what you can do electorally.’ And I think that proved to be true,” Ryan said.

Ryan surely helped the Republicans slice President Barack Obama’s winning margin to seven points from 14 points in 2008 in Ryan’s home state. Yet Wisconsin didn’t turn out to be as competitive as it may have seemed last summer or fall, after Mitt Romney picked Ryan and Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s victory in a recall election also galvanized Republicans. Wisconsin voted Democratic for the seventh straight presidential election.

Original post is Paul Ryan: ‘Running Mate Doesn’t Make a Huge Difference’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Daniel Acker/Bloomberg

Representative Paul Ryan arrives for a town hall meeting outside the Clinton County Courthouse in Clinton, Iowa.

Paul Ryan is not going anywhere anytime soon.

There has been speculation that the former Republican vice presidential candidate might resign his seat in Congress, maybe to decamp to a think tank or university in preparation for a 2016 run for president.

That would allow the Wisconsin congressman and House Budget Committee chairman to safeguard his image, maybe write a book and avoid having to decide whether to support any messy deficit compromises that might include tax increases.

Ryan scotched that idea today in a brief interview.

“Yes,” he said, when asked if he will serve out what will be his eighth term in office starting in January.

“I just got renewed at Budget,” Ryan said, referring to party leaders excusing him from their term-limit rules so he may remain as Budget  chairman. “I’m focused on the here and the now.”

Original post is Ryan Remains: `Focused, Here, Now’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally at Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on Nov. 1, 2012.

President Obama, resuming his re-election campaign after spending the last several days tending to Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts, kicked off  his final sprint of the 2012 election making closing argument to voters through three states and three time zones.

Wearing a brown leather bomber jacket in the frigid Wisconsin air — a token of the commander-in-chief’s office — Obama modulated between hitting Republican Mitt Romney and striking a hopeful and optimistic tone that harked back to the tenor of the closing days of the 2008 race when he was the “change” candidate. With Romney closing his campaign telling voters that he’ll bring the change they’re seeking, Obama said his Republican challenger would only institute the same policies that voters sought to change four years ago.

“We know what change looks like, and what the governor is offering sure ain’t change,” Obama said. “After four years as president you know me by now. You may not agree with every decision I’ve made, you may be frustrated at the pace of change but you know what I believe, you know where I stand.”

Obama cast himself as the “champion” for the Middle Class. Saturating his remarks with the words “we” and “change,” he repeatedly told the 2,600 supporters gathered on the airport tarmac that fighting for the needed change would take time and pledged that if they awarded him with another four years in office, he’d continue to work to change the nature of politics.

“Their bet is on cynicism, but Wisconsin my bet is on you,” Obama said. “As long as there’s a single American who wants a job but can’t find one, our work isn’t done.”

“We have everything we need to thrive in this new economy in this new century and there’s not a country on earth that wouldn’t trade places with the United States of America,” Obama said.

Obama began his remarks on a somber yet uplifting note, discussing the ongoing efforts to recover from Sandy’s devastation. He honored the courage of all those affected, saying it demonstrates that people can rise above politics during such a bitterly divisive period, just a few days from the election.

“For the past few days all of us have been focused on one of the worst storms of our lifetimes,” he said in Green Bay, Wisconsin. “We’ve also been inspired these past few days because when disaster strikes we see America at its best. All the petty differences that consume us in normal times all seem to melt away. There are no democrats or republicans during a storm, there are just fellow Americans.”

Original post is Obama in Bomber Jacket on Road: Romney `Sure Ain’t Change’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Barack Obama steps off Air Force One on Oct. 29, 2012 upon arrival at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

President Barack Obama, who scuttled campaign plans in Florida today to return to Washington, plans a 12:45 pm EDT statement about Hurricane Sandy, a wide-ranging storm aiming for a mid-Atlantic landfall overnight.

Republican Mitt Romney, campaigning in Ohio, also has called off an appearance in Wisconsin today and all of his and running mate Paul Ryan’s planned campaign stops tonight and tomorrow in Iowa, Ohio and Florida.

While both forfeit a couple of campaign days one week from Election Day, the president has an incumbent’s advantage of being presidential. The president’s duties come first, as senior political adviser David Axelrod put it today.

“He has real responsibilities and those responsibilities come first,” Axelrod said. “We’re obviously going to lose a bunch of campaign time, but that’s as it has to be and we’ll try to make it up on the back end.”

“It’s not a matter of optics, it’s a matter of responsibility,” Axelrod said, adding: ”I don’t want to be ambiguous about this at all, we’re winning this race.”

Romney communications director Gail Gitcho announced the Republican’s cancellations after the White House scheduled a noon-hour statement by the president, monitoring storm preparations and planned recovery efforts after an expected landfall along the coast of New Jersey.

“Out of sensitivity for the millions of Americans in the path of Hurricane Sandy, we are canceling tonight’s events with Gov. Romney in Wisconsin and Congressman Ryan in Melbourne and Lakeland, Florida,” she said. “We are also canceling all events currently schedule for both Gov. Romney and Congressman Ryan on Tuesday. ”

“Gov. Romney believes this is a time for the nation and its leaders to come together to focus on those Americans who are in harms way,” Gitcho said.

For the record, they say they’re winning, too.

Julianna Goldman and Lisa Lerer contributed. 

Original post is Sandy’s Campaign Brake: President’s `Responsibilities’ First by Political Capital.

Photograph by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney attends a campaign rally at Ida Lee Park on Oct. 16, 2012 in Leesburg, VA.

The Republican National Committee sent more than $14 million this month to its affiliates in 28 states led by Wisconsin and Virginia, both key states in the Nov. 6 presidential and U.S. Senate elections.

The RNC sent more than $3.3 million to Wisconsin, according to a filing to the Federal Election Commission that listed donations and expenditures for the first 17 days of October.

Wisconsin, the home state of Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, is one of about nine states that will decide the White House race. Republicans are helping former Gov. Tommy Thompson in a Senate race against Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin that polls show is close.

The RNC sent more than $2.8 million to Virginia, another presidential swing state where Republican George Allen, a former governor and senator, is running against Democrat Tim Kaine, a former governor, for the Senate seat of retiring Democrat Jim Webb.

The RNC sent about $2.7 million to North Carolina, where Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has a small lead over President Barack Obama in most surveys. The party also is trying to win up to four Democratic-held House seats following Republican-controlled redistricting.

The RNC transferred funds to 25 other states led by Ohio ($1.54 million), Florida ($850,000), Michigan ($515,000), Pennsylvania ($405,500) and Colorado ($327,000). Ohio, Florida and Colorado are presidential swing states, while Republicans are making the Obama campaign work hard to keep Michigan and Pennsylvania in the Democratic column. Also in Pennsylvania, Democratic Senator Bob Casey is facing an unexpectedly close race against a wealthy Republican challenger.

North Dakota ($214,000), Indiana ($200,000) and Utah ($184,000) are all holding elections for governor and senator. North Dakota and Indiana also have close Senate races. Utah Republicans want to unseat Democratic Representative Jim Matheson.

Original post is Wisconsin, Virginia: Most RNC $ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Kabik/Starlitepics/PictureGroup via AP Images

Paul Ryan at a rally on Oct. 23, 2012 in Henderson, Nevada.

Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, as he seeks re-election to Congress as a fallback, is echoing policy arguments he and Mitt Romney are making in their quest to unseat President Barack Obama.

Ryan emphasizes the importance of overhauling the U.S. tax code in an ad that shows him casually dressed and wearing safety goggles as he talks to workers on a factory floor.

“Simpler, fairer and lower tax rates” would make the nation “more competitive,” Ryan says in the ad.

In their White House campaign, Romney and Ryan have said they would pay for tax cuts by scaling back deductions, credits and exemptions for upper-income taxpayers.

“Fairer means eliminating loopholes and handouts that go to high-income earners and the politically connected,” Ryan says in the ad.

Ryan’s congressional ads are helping the national Republican campaign in Wisconsin, one of nine states where the White House hopefuls and allied groups are spending more of their money and time.

Ryan’s re-election campaign has run seven ads, all of them focused on national issues. The spots ignore Democratic opponent Rob Zerban and don’t mention parochial accomplishments that members of Congress sometimes brandish in their re-election campaigns.

Wisconsin law allows Ryan to run concurrently for re-election and for vice president. Ryan had $2.9 million in his congressional campaign account on Oct. 17.

Original post is Ryan Talks Tax Overhaul in Ad for his Other Campaign by Political Capital.

Photograph by Oshkosh via Bloomberg News

An Oshkosh Corp. M-ATV vehicle.

Alarm bells aren’t ringing at Oshkosh Corp. over automatic spending cuts set to begin early next year, the head of the company’s defense unit says

“We’re not overconfident, but we’re not panicking either,” John M. Urias, president of Oshkosh Defense, said during an interview today at an annual Army conference in Washington.

The company, based in the Wisconsin city of the same name, has already felt the pinch as military demand for its blast-resistant trucks has slowed. The budget cuts, known as sequestration, would take about $500 billion from national-security programs over a decade.

Urias’s division is focusing on existing military contracts and finding new business opportunities in the U.S. and abroad, especially in the Middle East.

“Oshkosh is here for the long haul,” said Urias, who spoke at the Association of the U.S. Army event.

Another threat may be looming larger for Oshkosh: Carl Icahn.

The billionaire activist investor is Oshkosh’s largest shareholder and has offered to buy the manufacturer for about $3 billion, or $32.50 a share.

Urias declined to discuss Icahn or his proposal.

Icahn, who has criticized the firm’s executives for poor performance, plans to release his full slate of director nominees this week.

Original post is Oshkosh Unfazed by Defense Cuts — Icahn’s Bid is Another Story by Political Capital.