SSP Daily Digest: 7/2 (Morning Edition)

  • IL-Sen: That’s some good money for a nursery school teacher: Mark Kirk raised $2.3 million in the second quarter and has $3.9 million on hand. But don’t bust out the milk and cookies just yet: Reid Wilson points out that Kirk has raised $9 million to date, meaning he’s burned through $5 million already, despite having had a pretty easy primary.
  • KY-Sen: Rand Paul took in $1.1 million in Q2, but didn’t release cash-on-hand figures. Nothing from Jack Conway yet.
  • GA-Gov: Ah, this is the kind of thing every lawyer dreads: being called on the carpet by a judge you’re litigating in front of. It’s a little worse when it comes out on the campaign trail during your gubernatorial run, but GOP Ins. Comm’r John Oxendine is just going to have to take his lumps for this:
  • The transcript of McConnell’s comments read, “If I knew I could suspend you from practicing law in the state of Georgia for the rest of your life I would do so. You’re an abomination as far as I’m concerned.”

  • AL-02: John McArdle reminds us that pre-primary reports are available in Alabama, where there’s one interesting federal runoff between Martha Roby and Rick “The Barber” Barber. Roby raised $100K from May 13 to June 23 and has a similar amount left on hand, while Barber took in only $50K and has about half that in the bank. The runoff is on July 13th. Remember, you can find our sortable primary calendar here.
  • CA-37: The House Ethics Committee cleared Rep. Laura Richardson of any wrongdoing in connection with allegations that Washington Mutual gave her an improper benefit with regard to her mortgage on a home that the bank had repossessed but later returned to Richardson. However, Richardson has a history of problems with home payments, with the LA Times noting she’s defaulted on three homes. I wouldn’t be surprised if she faced a primary challenge at some point soon.
  • ID-01: Remember a little while back when Mike Simpson was claiming that Walt Minnick was ready to be part of a Blue Dog revolution that would displace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker if Dems only narrowly controlled the House in 2011? Well, he admitted yesterday that his idea was about as legit as BPGlobalPR, saying that he’s “just lobbing hand grenades.” More like spitballs.
  • Fundraising: Given all the fundraising bullets above, it’s obviously FEC report season again. Reid Wilson has a bunch more numbers we haven’t reported here – LA-Sen, ND-AL, and NH-02. Meanwhile, Steve Singiser unearths some numbers for RI-Gov. Follow the links and enjoy!
  • 10 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 7/2 (Morning Edition)”

    1. wasn’t ruthless but it just made you want to go “yuck”.  A defense of “I was clueless, but I often don’t pay mortgages” should trigger automatic retirement next cycle.

      (Maybe not accurate rant: this could be laid partly at the feet of the California dummymander.  This district could be significantly less Democratic, and therefore abusive-ish behavior less tolerable.  Safe Dems should be trailblazers, not mortgage defaulters.)

    2. No surprise in those numbers. Caprio’s fundraising is probably Chafee’s biggest obstacle to victory. As a Chafee supporter I’m somewhat worried because Caprio has lower name recognition and has the money to fix that, meaning he might bounce ahead of Chafee in the polls. Chafee would definitely win if the election were held today but if he doesn’t play his cards right, this election could become Lean D by October.

    3. It seems that all this good news for Walt has been adding up nicely.

      CQ politics switched this race from Tossup to Lean Dem effective July 2nd!!

    4. There’s also the Terri Sewell/Sheila Smoot runoff in AL-07. Sewell raised $291k in the pre-runoff period, while Smoot raised all of $36k.

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