SSP Daily Digest: 4/15

Special Teabaggers’ edition of the digest…

NY-20 (pdf): The morning update on the NY-20 absentee count finds Scott Murphy padding his skimpy lead a bit, up to 168. There was a partial report of absentees from Warren County (one of the strongholds of the Murphy clan), and the expected report from Saratoga County (Tedisco country) didn’t materialize, so this may be only a temporary surge. Democratic number crunchers, starting with Nate Silver, are sounding increasingly sanguine about the direction the absentee ballots are taking, though. Nate projects about a 500-vote margin for Murphy when all is said and done.

The Albany Project has been all over the sudden increase in ballot challenges by the Tedisco camp (who’ve moved to challenge second-home voters and student voters in the last few days). In the battle of perceptions, however, the GOP may have gone a fridge too far with their latest step, challenging the absentee ballot of NY-20’s favorite resident, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. Gillibrand visited the Great Orange Satan and HuffPo to blog about her experience.

MO-Sen: Polls have given SoS Robin Carnahan a commanding position in the open Missouri senate race, and now she has fundraising numbers to match, posting $1,048,000 in the first quarter.

OH-Sen: There’s one other SoS running for an open senate seat who didn’t fare so well, though. Jennifer Brunner pulled in a surprisingly low $200,000. That may pick up once she gets the expected EMILY’s List endorsement, but it leaves her lagging behind Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, who raised more than $1 million and is already wearing the mantle of ‘establishment’ Dem candidate.

PA-Sen: Joe Torsella, who’s never held elective office before but is well-connected in Philadelphia’s corridors of power, reported a solid $584,000 in an abbreviated Q1 (only since mid-February).

OK-Sen: Are you there, God? It’s me, Tom Coburn. I can’t decide whether or not to run for re-election. (He says he’s not playing games; it’s a “spiritual thing.”) The Club for Growth, in their first act since Chris “Count” Chocola took over, endorsed Coburn today, though.

TX-Gov: Kinky Friedman, who got 12% of the vote as an independent in the chaotic 2006 Texas governor’s race, is doing it again, and this time he’s running in the Democratic primary. It’s unclear whether this will work to Friedman’s advantage, since a lot of his support comes from Paulists, Naderites, and other assorted weirdos who may not be registered Democrats, and Tom Schieffer gives Dem voters a ‘normal’ option.

FL-10: Bill Young is always on ‘most likely’ to retire lists, but the 78-year-old is giving a little more fodder for that mill with today’s fundraising report. He raised only $7,100 in the first quarter, sitting on $412K CoH. (He only raised $15K in Q1 of 2007, though, and won easily in 2008.)

MI-09: Joe Knollenberg won’t be back for a rematch against Gary Peters, who unseated him in 2008, but his former chief of staff will. Paul Welday, who’s also a former Oakland County GOP chair, will challenge him in 2010. Welday lost a race for the state house in 2008.

91 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/15”

  1. Uggg.  What a depressing choice we face between Kinky and Scheiffer.  Presumably Scheiffer does less damage at the top of the ticket.  I’ll probably be voting in the R primary for Hutchison.

  2. I thought it was odd Cook moved that one from safe to likely R.  He must be getting the feeling Young is retiring.  He also moved DE-AL to likely R, just days before Carney officially got in the race.

  3. In fundraising!

    http://www.politico.com/blogs/

    Blunt announced that he raised $542,000 in the first quarter – about half of Democrat Robin Carnahan’s $1.04 million fundraising total. He ended March with $673,000 in his campaign account after transferring $336,000 from his House campaign account.

    Carnahan reported $928,000 in her campaign account at the end of March.

    Blunt’s transfer from his US House account (no money for NRCC) kept the pain from turning into heartburn.  

    1. Are Murphy votes being contested by Tedisco.  Tedisco’s people are launching far more frivilous challenges across the board in every county.

    2. Of those already counted in Saratoga, Tedisco is winning about 57-43.  Even assuming that all 700 ballots are counted and that they’ll break at the same ratio of those already counted, Tedisco would pick up a little less than 100 votes.  Considering that there are many, many more votes still out from counties where the absentee votes are favoring Murphy and that all the reports are that the vast majority of challenged ballots are being challenged by Tedisco (and thus likely to favor Murphy), I’m feeling very good about this one.

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