The Top 10 Moments Of Election 2014 In 171 Seconds
From Fangage to the Wobble, 2014 has been a hoot.
— -- intro: From Rick Scott’s #fangate to Mary Landrieu’s “wobble,” this campaign season has yielded some viral gems.
Here are some of Election 2014’s most memorable moments:
quicklist:1 title:“Mark Uterus” text:Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, running for reelection against Republican Rep. Cory Gardner, really, really cares about women’s issues.
On the stump, he’s discussed contraception and abortion so much that critics dubbed him “Mark Uterus.”
Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels even joked that “if Colorado's U.S. Senate race were a movie, the set would be a gynecologist's office, complete with an exam table and a set of stirrups.”
“Reproductive rights are important to millions of Coloradans,” Udall commented. “We’ve waged this campaign on a lot of other issues … immigration reform… energy… the economy … If you look at the traffic in my campaign, over half of our ads have discussed those kind of topics.”
quicklist:2 title: Call the Lawyer text: Democrat Bruce Braley, who’s competing against Republican Joni Ernst for retiring Sen. Tom Harkin’s open seat in Iowa, basically dissed farmers in a video leaked online in March.
“You might have a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school, never practiced law, serving as the next chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee,” he scoffed.
If Republicans take over the Senate, the senior senator from Iowa, Republican Chuck Grassley, could become the next Senate Judiciary Committee Chair.
Many of the state’s agricultural workers weren’t pleased.
Braley later apologized to Grassley “ and anyone I may have offended,” but not before critics had begun to draw parallels between his gaffe and Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remark.
quicklist:3 title:Bruce Who? text: Michelle Obama may have called Braley her “friend,” but she couldn’t quite remember his name.
The first lady mistakenly referred to Braley as “Bruce Bailey” seven times.
“I’m losing it,” she quipped when supporters finally corrected her.
(Bill Clinton also got Braley’s name wrong.)
quicklist:4 title:How to (Not) Play Nice. text: When the moderators of a Kansas Senate debate asked the candidates to say something nice about their opponent, Independent Greg Orman thanked Pat Roberts for his service in the Marines and called the senator “a gentleman with a great sense of humor.”
Robert’s compliment was not quite as complimentary.
“I would say that you are a very well dressed opponent. I admire your accumulation of wealth. I have a little question about how you got there from here, but I think it’s the American dream, “ he said.
Ouch.
quicklist:5 title: Where is Brown Running? text:Former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, now vying for incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen’s seat in New Hampshire, has been called a carpetbagger.
He didn’t exactly help himself with this comment:
“They’re thankful that I’ve been around for a year, helping them … raise awareness as to the issues that are affecting not only people here in Massachuse—uh, in New Hampshire – but also in Massachusetts, obviously, and in Maine.”
Brown does have New Hampshire roots as he has pointed out, he was born in Kittery, N.H.
quicklist:6 title: Swamp Romptext:Sen. Mary Landrieu, fighting to hold onto her seat in Louisiana, did the wobble at a tailgate party. ‘Nuff said.
quicklist:7 title: Vote for Obama? text:Mitch McConnell’s Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes respects the “sanctity of the ballot box“ – like a lot.
Citing her “constitutional right for privacy” and her responsibilities as a Kentucky’s chief elections officer, Grimes refused three times to say whether she had voted for Obama, a president who’s been pretty unpopular lately on the stump.
quicklist:8 title: Obama on the Ballottext:Republicans immediately pounced after Obama announced that his policies were on the ballot.
"I am not on the ballot this fall ... Michelle’s pretty happy about that,” Obama said during a speech to business students at Northwestern University. “But make no mistake, these policies are on the ballot -- every single one of them."
Republicans repeatedly quoted Obama in ads and debates that his policies were on the ballot.
quicklist:9 title: Fangate text:Charlie Crist’s aversion to sweating in public spurred what moderators called an “extremely peculiar situation” at the Florida governor’s debate.
We’ll let moderator Eliott Rodriguez explain:
“Governor Crist has asked to have a fan, a small fan, placed underneath his podium. The rules of the debate that I was shown by the Scott campaign say that there should be no fan. Somehow there is a fan there and for that reason, I am being told that Governor Scott will not join us for this debate.”
Scott, a Republican, eventually made it on stage eight minutes later.
quicklist:10 title: Squealtext:Joni Ernst’s ad, Squeal, touts her experience “castrating hogs on an Iowa farm.”
Complete with barnyard sound effects, the $9,000 ad buy helped transform a little-known state senator lagging in the polls into a ballsy (excuse the metaphor), take-charge candidate who promised to “cut pork” in Washington.