• CT-Sen: I guess I wasn’t dreaming when I thought I heard economist and talking head Peter Schiff say he was still looking into the GOP primary for the Connecticut Senate race Tuesday night on the Daily Show… apparently he’s making a full-court press all week gauging his support for a run. Schiff is a favorite of the Paulist wing of the party, and true to anarcho-libertarian form, he shrugs off the fact that he can’t remember the last time he voted.
• FL-Sen: The Club for Growth doesn’t get involved in Senate primaries very often (RI in 2006 and NM in 2008 being the exceptions), but the fact that Marco Rubio met this week with the CfG and they admitted to being “impressed” suggests that they might get involved here. The CfG may still be reluctant to get involved, though, simply given the unlikely return on their investment with the long odds Rubio faces against Charlie Crist.
• NY-Sen-B: Writer Jonathan Tasini, who got 17% in a challenge from the left to Hillary Clinton in the 2006 Senate primary, announced that he’s going to run against Kirsten Gillibrand in the 2010 primary. It’s still as unclear as ever if Rep. Carolyn Maloney will officially join Tasini in the hunt (and Tasini getting in may make it more difficult for her, seeing as how Tasini would eat into her share of the purer-than-thou vote), but Maloney seems to be testing out various attack lines against Gillibrand in a prerecorded interview with NY1 that will air tonight. Meanwhile, Gillibrand got another prominent endorsement today, although this one may help her more in the general than with the liberal base: former NYC mayor Ed Koch.
• UT-Sen: Somehow Bob Bennett has become flypaper for wingnuts lately. He’s pulled down his fourth primary challenger, businessman and conservative activist James Williams.
• NJ-Gov: The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a new conundrum for both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie: picking running mates. (This is the first New Jersey gubernatorial election since the creation of the Lt. Gov. position, a need made apparent by the resignations of both Christie Todd Whitman and Jim McGreevey.) This looks like an exercise in ticket-balancing, both in terms of gender and geography. State Senator Diane Allen from the Philly burbs in Burlington Co. (who declined the chance to run in NJ-03) may have the inside track for the GOP nod, although (paging open seat fans) one other name that gets a mention is NJ-02’s Rep. Frank LoBiondo.
• OK-Gov: No surprise here, but AG Drew Edmondson today officially launched his exploratory campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. Edmondson faces Lt. Gov. Jari Askins in the primary, giving the Dems two strong candidates facing a steep climb uphill against Oklahoma’s ever-darker shade of red.
• DE-AL: Rep. Mike Castle said today that he won’t seek the newly-open position of ranking member on the Education and Labor Committee, saying he wanted GOP stability on the panel. While this doesn’t help us know whether he’s planning to run for the Senate or retire, it does send a pretty clear signal the 69-year-old Castle isn’t staying in the House.
• FL-24: This race is barely a couple days old, and already it’s one of the most heated in the nation. Once Winter Park City Commissioner Karen Diebel announced her run, some local Democrats (although not the Kosmas camp) began pointing to a 2007 Orlando Sentinel article discussing some of her odd actions and outbursts. That brought on a counterattack from state GOP chair Jim Greer, who attacked freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas directly for gutter politicking.
• NV-03: The NRCC hasn’t had much luck on the recruiting front in this D+2 district in the Las Vegas suburbs to take on freshman Rep. Dina Titus. Local banking executive John Guedry looks willing to step up to the plate, though, saying he’s “seriously considering” it. Other possible GOPers include former Clark County GOP chair Brian Scroggins and former state Controller Steve Martin.
• SC-01: With Linda Ketner turning down the rematch against Rep. Henry Brown, all eyes have turned to state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis as a potential Dem nominee. He said he’ll make a decision “sometime in July.”
• TN-09: Rep. Steve Cohen is getting fundraising help from an interesting source, and still one of the most powerful forces in Memphis politics: former Rep. Harold Ford Sr. At first this seems odd, since Ford campaigned against Cohen and in support of his son, Jake Ford, in the 2006 general election (where Ford was running as an independent). However, Ford Sr. is a long-time foe of Cohen’s 2010 primary opponent, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, so that would tend to explain it all.
almost certainly has get involved here.
To them, Crist is a RINO of the first order. If I were CfG, this might be the highest priority target of next year. It’s their one and only chance. They’d certainly prefer he not be around in office for the 2012 & 2016 presidential races.
I figured Cohen would win, but I thought it might be uncomfortably close. But boy howdy did he demolish Nicky Tinker something fierce. While Herenton may have more of a machine and therefore do somewhat better, I still expect Cohen to beat him handily. Herenton is going to have egg – yellow AND white – come next year.
It passed 79-17. That was like the only thing I had ever seen Burr in the news for in the past six years, literally the most invisible Senator in the chamber. Probably doesn’t do much political damage by itself to him, but it does illustrate how useless he is to North Carolina, that his only accomplishment was being a speedbump in the passage of the tobacco bill.
I’m still hearing Elaine Marshall’s and Mike McIntyre’s names being mentioned. Marshall I’m not too big on, but McIntyre on paper sounds like he’d be a very strong opponent to Burr. He’s a Blue Dog, but it is North Carolina…
More crap from Swing State Gillibrand. But at least Gillibrand has nailed down the DINO vote.
was i the only one who was incredibly unsettled by jon stewart’s pathetic fawning interview with schiff? it was honestly worse than his pickens interview.
i mean, the guy predicted an economic collapse concomitant to the housing bust. so did a thousand other fucking economists. i was glad though that stewart asked out of nowhere a question about CT-Sen, at least that was newsworthy.
On MN-Sen:
PWNED
I always thought of it as a mere joke that both Republicans and “commie bastards” shared that color. What do you know…