SSP Daily Digest: 4/1

• Site News: SSP is delighted to announce that we’ve just welcomed our six millionth visitor to the site. Thank you, everyone! (D)

• NY-20: The NRCC is already using the paper-thin margin in NY-20 last night as the springboard for a whole new fundraising e-mail pitch: the Dems are trying to “pull a Franken” and “steal” the election in the courts, so please send lawyers, guns, and money. Eric Kleefeld has a thought on why this is good news! For Pete Sessions!

One problem Murphy might have is that Al Franken’s lawyers aren’t available right now. And in Tedisco’s favor, Norm Coleman’s attorneys are busy, too.

The Fix has obtained some Democratic projections of how things will shake out after all absentees are counted (they’re projecting Murphy by 210). This appears to be based on performance rates in the counties where the absentees came from (in other words, there seem to be disproportionately more absentees coming from pro-Murphy counties than Saratoga).

• AK-Sen: It happened a few months too late to save Ted Stevens’ job, but the DOJ has finally dropped its frequently-bungled case against Stevens after further instances of prosecutorial misconduct arose.

• CT-Sen: One more ‘oopsie’ for Chris Dodd: he blew through a lot of his campaign war chest on his ill-advised 2008 presidential run (he transferred $4.7 million from his 2010 senate kitty to his presidential campaign). He’s currently at only $670K cash on hand, compared with $1.6 million at this same point in his 2004 re-election.

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek plays Gallant to Chris Dodd’s Goofus: he raised a whopping $1.5 million in the first quarter, as he tries to nail down frontrunner status for the Democratic nomination.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina, who was briefly sidelined by treatment for breast cancer, seems ready to get back into the political arena. She’s “seriously considering” entering the race against Barbara Boxer.

• OK-Gov, OK-04: SSP’s all-time favorite punching bag, Tom Cole, looks to be staying where he is. He’s declined to run for Oklahoma governor, leaving fellow Rep. Mary Fallin in the driver’s seat for the GOP nomination.

• TX-10: Democrat Jack McDonald, an Austin-area businessman running for the seat of GOP Rep. Mike McCaul, has announced that his campaign has raised over $300,000 in its first five weeks. Those are some pretty impressive numbers at this stage in the game. (J)

• NRCC/NRSC: Remember the brouhaha over the big NRCC/NRSC fundraising dinner where no one could figure out whether or not Sarah Palin was going to keynote, where it turned out that the governor’s office and SarahPAC had no idea what each other were doing? Well, amateur hour is continuing apace in Anchorage, as now she’s off again. In her place, Newt Gingrich (who would have ever predicted the day when Newt Gingrich would be seen, by comparison, as the GOP’s sober, rational elder statesman?).

• History: PolitickerNY takes an intersting trip down memory lane, looking at some of the greatest hits among previous close House elections, like CT-02 in 1994 and IN-08 in 1984.

4 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/1”

  1. We all know several California districts with formerly safe Republican incumbents swung hard towards Obama this past election (Lungren, Bono, Calvert, etc.) and should be challenged hard in 2010.  But there’s a bunch in Texas too that should become competitive.  Glad we’re going after McCaul again, but we also ought to hit Sessions and Marchant.

  2. The PolitickerNY discussion of this dispute is ridiculously one-sided.  Despite what the article says,on election night, Frank McCloskey led Rick McIntyre by 72 votes, but the Republican Secretary of State did not certify the result.  However, after a partial recount shifted the vote in McIntyre’s favor, a certification was issued, despite the fact that the recount was not officially completed.  It was at this point that McCloskey sought to have the House intervene.  The final result was not 34 votes, it was only 4 votes.

  3. To be completely fair, I have always thought they should have called a special election to settle it, rather than seating McCloskey. But while the charges of Democratic abuse of power are not completely off-base, you’re right, the assessment in that column is just absurd. It doesn’t sound like he did any actual research. He also got the numbers wrong in the CT-02 1994 race: Gedjensen’s final margin was 21 votes, not four.

    Note how he also made no mention at all of CA-46 in 1996, probably the clearest example in modern history of either party abusing its majority to tamper with the results of an election.  

Comments are closed.