Jennifer Duffy Quotations

Until you get a viable opponent, ... I consider it a third-tier race.

This race is more than uphill. At this point, for a team to come in and try to right the ship is going to be very tough. It's going to be difficult as long as the candidate insists on being the candidate, the campaign manager and the strategist.

When this (the presidential) race gets under way, favors will be cashed in and collected, ... They'll hope the favors they did are returned.

Lott's re-election is something close to a sure thing, but if he had vacated his seat, the contest to replace him would have been very competitive, giving Democrats a boost in their efforts to pick up seats in November.

So far, there's nothing to hang a rejection on.

She wants to build a database of donors she could use in a presidential run, although I'm sure her campaign will deny that.

Burns has mounted a pretty strong defense of himself, but according to a poll released last week, voters don't seem to be buying it.

God help anybody who has to debate with Byrd.

I think it's one of these issues that every candidate is going to have a position paper on it and it's going to be a question in every debate.

I think that the (Democratic) party and their allies understand he has not had to run a campaign in a long time.

I see Democrats picking up a couple of states. I think there is a slim chance they can pick up the Senate.

I see a storm coming, it's forming. But since it won't hit land for seven months, it's hard to know what it's actually going to look like.

The problem with having a state as expensive as New Jersey in play is that it might divert resources from other races. National Democrats would prefer not to spend money in New Jersey. But they may have to if this race gets close.

The trend in Virginia has merit. It says more if Kilgore wins because it means Bush wasn't the albatross everyone predicted.

The trend in Virginia has merit, ... It says more if Kilgore wins because it means Bush wasn't the albatross everyone predicted.

Is it poor recruiting or a bad environment? Probably both.

They all talked about it. It was a standard part of their pitch.

The bottom line is, Democrats will pick up seats. The question is how many.

This is the marquee race in 2006. We hear all kinds of stories of people who are telling donors, 'Hey, he's not with you on all the issues, but he's running against Rick Santorum.

They're angry at him for putting her there.

It is true, they don't face the same threat. All industries go through cycles.

It's not likely, but I can see the math.

Democrats have no incentive to come to the table, really. Not getting anything done is a victory for them, to be able to talk about the do-nothing Senate.

Considering they didn't see it coming, it probably threw them off stride quite a bit. This was a shot out of the blue.

It was a factor. Winning friends by helping them out, giving them money, is always a big deal.

The joy of being in congressional leadership and never having a competitive race is it lets you keep stuffing money in the bank.

The joy of being a battleground state is that you get presidential hopefuls in 2006.

I'm not terribly swayed by polls at this point.

In the end, the judgment is going to be rendered by the families themselves. What the people who were in the room say is ultimately how he will be remembered in this crisis.

This is one of those things that strikes to the core of real people; it is something that they understand. There are some scandals that people do not understand. I don't know if people understood Iran-Contra. But this, involving losses in a fund for injured workers, goes to their pocketbooks.