• AK-Sen: The big news out of Alaska is that Joe Miller is now suing to disenfranchise bad spellers. It’s probably his only path to victory, forcing the state to adhere to a strict absolutely-spelled-correctly standard for “Lisa Murkowski” instead of a looser standard of analyzing voter intent. Miller’s lawyer is asking a federal judge for a hearing this afternoon, seeing as how the state is planning to begin the process of checking and counting the 92,000 write-in ballots cast. Miller did get a leg up from the absentee count (of 27,000 additional ballots) issued yesterday, though. Murkowski went into yesterday leading by 13,439 votes (a 7% spread) and came out leading by 11,333 (a 5% spread). That’s not the end of the absentee and early-vote count, either; another 12,000 remain to be counted, on top of all the write-in analysis.
• MA-Sen: I wonder just what the heck Marty Meehan is planning to do with his millions of dollars ($4.5 mil — compare that with likely candidate Mike Capuano’s $91K CoH!) in cash on hand, currently getting moldy in some bank vault. The ex-Rep. and current university president deferred on yet another Senate run, saying he won’t challenge Scott Brown in 2012. At any rate, even with the most-loaded potential challenger out (short of Some Millionaire showing up and swamping the race with self-funding), the Beltway CW still is still treating Scott Brown as the most endangered GOPer for 2012, and that seems to have gotten amplified with the generally-strong top-to-bottom performance of Dems last week in the Bay State, suggesting that the Senate special election may have operated in its own little unusual vacuum.
• ME-Sen: Turnabout’s fair play, I guess. With the DC press trying to drum up some drama out of (possibly non-existent) GOP overtures to get Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson to switch parties, now there’s word from, uh, somebody about Dem outreach to Olympia Snowe to get her to switch (and avoid a likely teabagging in a 2012 GOP primary).
• MT-Sen: We mentioned businessman and losing 2008 Lt. Gov. candidate Steve Daines yesterday as a potential challenger to Jon Tester, and it looks like he’s already moving full speed ahead. He’ll be announcing his bid this Saturday.
• NE-Sen: Right on cue, here’s the first Republican-sponsored poll of the 2012 cycle showing Ben Nelson in deep shit. The poll, commissioned by the state Republican party from Voter/Consumer Research, finds Nelson trailing the one announced candidate, AG Jon Bruning, by a 50-35 margin. (He also trails Generic R 42-32, and Gov. Dave Heineman 59-31, although Heineman has already said he’s not running.) Interestingly, he’s still above water on his approvals, which are 50/41… but it’s a red enough state that that may not be enough to save him.
• NV-Sen: PPP is turning its attention to 2012 already, and its first poll is a juicy place to start: the GOP primary in Nevada. This is something of a surprise, at least upending the conventional wisdom: John Ensign has significant leads over both his highest-profile potential primary opponents. He beats Rep. Dean Heller 45-37, and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki 55-27. Those leads may not hold up across a campaign, though, as Ensign has much higher name rec than either opponent. He’s at 64/23 (remember, this is only Republicans in the sample, who, if David Vitter is any indication, are firm believers in the principle of IOKIYAR), while Heller is at 56/8 and Krolicki is at 45/9.
• RI-Sen: The names are also floating up for potential Republican challengers to Sheldon Whitehouse, with so-so approvals but not considered terribly vulnerable in his blue-state perch. State GOP chair Giovanni Cicione is publicly weighing a bid (although he’s also saying that he’s pushing outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri to make a bid, though he doesn’t sound interested). Two other possibilities mentioned in the article include Warwick mayor Scott Avedisian and Cranston mayor Allen Fung.
• WV-Sen: This whole thing is getting a little too meta for me: with the perception out there of having gotten publicly burned on their attempts to get Joe Manchin to switch parties, now NRSC spokespersons are trying to say that the whole rumors of the outreach (which may or may not have actually happened) originated with the Manchin camp, so that he can bolster his bipartisan credentials. I can’t decide whether the two camps are truly playing 3-D chess with each other or it’s just devolved into high school mean-girls behavior at this point.
• CA-11, CA-20: Jerry McNerney keeps adding to his lead, making this one looking likely to get called soon. He’s now up by 2,269 votes after a batch came in from blue Alameda County. We don’t have any specific new numbers to report for you further south in the 20th, but the long-awaited dump of Fresno County ballots (where Jim Costa has led by a significant margin over Andy Vidak) is scheduled for later today, which is expected to push Costa into the lead (Vidak currently leads by only 145 right now, thanks to his home base of Kings County).
• FL-22: Allen West’s hiring of a controversial talk show host as his chief of staff (payback for her constant boosterism of his campaign) is not only great fodder for the sheer litany of terrible things she’s said (click the link for more), but it also may run into ethical and even FCC problems if she keeps her other job as radio host. The counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Ethical Conduct said the situation is “potentially problematic” because of conflicts of interest, and a different expert says it may also pave the way for demands for equal time on the air for whoever West’s 2012 opponent is.
• PA-11: You may remember Corey O’Brien, the Lackawanna County Commissioner who lost the Dem primary in the 11th to Paul Kanjorski back in May. With the elderly Kanjorski not likely to try for a rematch, O’Brien looks to be in the driver’s seat with regards to the Dem nomination for 2012 to go up against Lou Barletta in this D+4 district (though that’s subject to the redistricting pen, of course). The buzz is he’s a near-definite candidate, although he might face a primary bout with Scranton mayor (and, briefly, gubernatorial candidate) Chris Doherty.
• DCCC: In case you didn’t know, lawyers get really expensive really fast. One of Chris Van Hollen’s last acts as DCCC head is to send out a fundraising blast to donors, trying to round up $100K to cover potential recount activity in (according to him) nine different races.
• House: Nate Silver’s new piece matches what I’ve seen a lot of in the comments (and my own perceptions, as well): the idea that 2012 should be a year of happy hunting for Dems in the House (although, especially with redistricting giving a boost to the GOP, a heavy lift to get back into the majority). The balance of mismatched seats has switched dramatically: now there are 12 Dems in seats that Obama lost (down from 50), and 55 GOPers in seats that Obama won (up from 28). Even if that’s old news to you, the array of graphs is worth checking out.
• IA-St. Sen.: It looks like things have been finalized in Iowa, and the state Senate is at least one closely-decided legislative chamber that we pulled out of the fire. Democrat Tod Bowman’s 71-vote victory in SD-13 gives the Dems 26-24 control over the body. (One other outstanding race, where the GOPer is narrowly leading, could also break for the Dems.) That leaves the Oregon state Senate as the chamber that’s still probably the biggest question mark.
• Chicago mayor: We’ve been meaning for a while now to do a comprehensive who’s-in-who’s-out post about the mayoral race in Chicago, but here’s a potentially big name that deserves immediate mention… if only because he’s in the House, and if there’s one thing SSP is all about at this point in the cycle, it’s the Open Seat Watch. Rep. Danny Davis of IL-07 on Chicago’s West Side (who’d previously flirted with and decided against a bid for Cook Co. Executive) is now expressing interest in the race, saying he’s “ready to run.” In a boost to his prospects, a coalition of black religious and community leaders that had previously supported ex-Sen. Carol Mosely Braun for the job has reversed course, and is now backing Davis.
Do we have any hope?
He’s a good Rep. but I hope he runs for Mayor because:
1. We need an credible alternative to Rahm.
2. He’s getting old and I want a fresh face representing me in Congress.
3. Having a second black Mayor of Chicago would be good. A big fucking deal if you will.
Alaska law regarding write-ins was revised and tightened in 2000. Here are the relevant provisions:
(9) Write-in votes are not invalidated by writing in the name of a candidate whose name is printed on the ballot unless the election board determines, on the basis of other evidence, that the ballot was so marked for the purpose of identifying the ballot.
(10) In order to vote for a write-in candidate, the voter must write in the candidate’s name in the space provided and fill in the oval opposite the candidate’s name in accordance with (1) of this subsection.
(11) A vote for a write-in candidate, other than a write-in vote for governor and lieutenant governor, shall be counted if the oval is filled in for that candidate and if the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate or the last name of the candidate is written in the space provided.(12) If the write-in vote is for governor and lieutenant governor, the vote shall be counted if the oval is filled in and the names, as they appear on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor or the last names of the candidates for governor and lieutenant governor, or the name, as it appears on the write-in declaration of candidacy, of the candidate for governor or the last name of the candidate for governor is written in the space provided.
(b) The rules set out in this section are mandatory and there are no exceptions to them. A ballot may not be counted unless marked in compliance with these rules.
O’Brien isn’t going to get anything close to a D+4 district after reapportionment. I’ve been looking over the maps and I suspect the GOP is simply going to trade out Carbon and Monroe Counties (now part of the 11th) with the current tenth district. PA-10 is already R+8, and Carbon and Monroe are swingy, so Marino would still be relatively secure.
In exchange for Carbon and Monroe, the 11th district can then easily be expanded westward to include the “lower leg” portion of the current 10th – very conservative areas of Lycoming, Montour, Union, Snyder and Northumberland Counties. That would make both districts have a light but definite Republican lean.
Could West be anymore of a trainwreck? Why would he hire this woman? I am working on the theory that the reason so many of these type people got in vs. the senate Teabaggers is the lack of scrutiny on US House nominees.
I believe (hope?) that we probably would have eeked out a few more close wins if there was more scrutiny of some of these nominees. Or, am I being too hopeful?
Is it really that voters do not care enough?
1. Wouldn’t it be a little amusing if Scott Brown taking the seat that was occupied by Teddy Kennedy for so long forced the Republicans to drop a lot of money into Massachusetts only to lose the seat, possibly by double digits? This would be money, after all, that would be otherwise spent in Virginia, Montana, and Missouri, to name three states.
2. If it’s early enough to be releasing polls and announcing candidacies for 2012, it’s early enough for the DSCC to give Nelson a deadline to decide if he is running. It looks like he is, but nothing would damage the party more in that state than to give a Democrat that would already have something of an uphill climb less time to make his case. If he is going to run, he needs to figure out something to change his momentum. (I don’t know exactly what that could be, but he would know better than me.) If he’s not going to run, the Democrats need to come up with a list of plausible candidates and map out paths to victory for each one.
3. Why would Snowe switch parties now? And more to the point, do Democrats want her? She seems like a reasonable enough Republican, but she’s still a Republican. If she is given the boot by her state party, that instantly becomes, at worst, a fifty-fifty shot for the Democrats.
Sorry to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but are Democrats planting stories like this? I could imagine a theme developing where the idea that she is open to the idea and such an idea eventually making it unlikely she wins a primary. There’s a history of supposed overtures, after all.
http://kmox.cbslocal.com/2010/…
Former Ambassador to Luxembourg and former RNC Vice-chair Ann Wagner is considering a run against McCaskill, but would probably not run if Talent or Kinder did. She could raise a ton of money.
When are we going to realize that there’s a reason why Blue Dogs and people in deep red territory stay Dems? Because they are Dems, if they wanted to switch they could have done it years ago. Parker Griffith was a bit of an unknown entity was he not? It wasn’t like Mike Ross who’s been a loyal Democrat for years and comes from the Land of Clinton.
People just get mad at Ross because he believes in for profit health services. Now some say that if you believe in for profit health services that you’re not a true Dem and there we will have to agree to disagree.
December 29th, 2010. Honolulu City Council, District 1 Special Election, conducted via all-mail. Incumbent Council Member Todd Apo resigned to take a job with Walt Disney Resorts.
The only candidate in the articles is Bob McDermott (who was a State Rep, and who lost to the late Patsy Mink in 2002, and lost a special election big in 2003). Filing opened today, and ends on Friday the 19th.
Honolulu’s City Council is nonpartisan. But if anybody has a stack of 1959-1990 Hawaii election results that they want to scan and send, well… I would gladly accept that so that the results can be filtered through the internet, because Hawaii election results are more interesting than you’d think.
ttp://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/10/john-thune-is-not-running-for-president-orrin-hatch-is-retiring/
If he’s right, that’s one fewer sane candidate standing in the way of Palin’s path to victory ****crosses fingers****
New numbers from Fresno County. Costa increased his lead in Fresno county by 1345 votes, that should put him up 1200 overall.
http://www.claycountyprogress….
State senator Leland Yee throws his hat into the ring.
http://blogs.sacbee.com/capito…
Off-party Senators get re-elected all the time (often by comfortable margins) in spite of their party’s failures in preceding elections. I guess with Scott Brown, he’s not as established as many of them were and limited data like that can be useful. Still, I would put vastly more weighting on his approvals and head-to-head numbers.
There are 30,000 uncounted San Joaquin county ballots uncounted.
http://www.recordnet.com/apps/…
Assuming they break the same way the counted ballots have, Harmer picks up about 1500 votes, leaving him about 700 votes down. I doubt the Contra Costa part of the district could help much (Harmer won it by 1%). Of course, if the uncounted ballots are better than the rest of the county there could be trouble.
Beshear’s job approval is doing well at 48/34.
He leads David Williams in a hypothetical matchup 44-35.
He leads Phil Moffett in a hypothetical matchup 45-26.
http://www.publicpolicypolling…
Also, good news. The Dems in the KY state House only lost 7 seats, bringing them down to a 58-42 majority. That means they old 2/3rds of the trifecta. Redistricting is due to be completed there before the 2011 elections, so that means they are able to draw an incumbent protection map for Chandler.
http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/st…
This one is over.
like George W Bush is a moderate Republican in comparison to what the Republican party has become since he left office? These are sad times.
1. Another 7000-8000 votes counted in Orange County. And for the second day in a row, Harris overperformed. She actually won the count yesterday, and while she did not repeat that today she only lost 3600-3100. That’s much much less than Orange County’s vote up to now.
2. Also, San Francisco counted about 2,200 votes, and Harris seems to have picked-up another 1400 – about what she needs.
3. Small update from Santa Clara, with Harris picking up about 700 votes from a new batch of 2500.
4. San Diego, however: Cooley netted about 2,400 out of just 11,500 ballots. That’s big, more than he needs to.
About 200,000 from LA (Harris will have to do much better in the 140,000 counted yesterday); 74,000 from San Diego; a fair amount from Alameda and Orange… Hard to tell since unprocessed ballot #s aren’t up to date.
They’re finally here!
And for the record, my precinct has a history of being one of the most conservative in Henderson… And Harry Reid won it with 52.67% of the votes! (Angle got 44.61%.) 🙂
And btw, also for the record, Dina Titus won my precinct by 7 votes.
regarding experiences with Ranked Choice Voting in the Oakland mayoral election. I had a feeling it was PPP based on the demo questions they asked and then they said who the pollster was at the end. Hopefully, this is a public poll that they post on their web site.
A few political reporters around the Hoosier state have, over the last few days, discussed vague rumors that Republican state Treasurer Richard Mourdock is preparing for a Senate bid, not to succeed Richard Lugar in the event of his retirement, but instead as a direct challenge to him. Mourdock, a former coal and oil industry geologist, was reelected by a wide margin last week, and is closely affiliated with the so-called tea party movement. He's arguably best known for his involvement in a bizarre lawsuit which attempted to halt the sale of Chrysler assets to Fiat during the auto bailouts, a lawsuit that Mourdock himself estimated might've cost up to two million dollars in legal fees.
Mourdock is hard to take seriously, but he's no Joe Miller or Christine O'Donnell. I could see him managing to beat Lugar, and unless he's absolutely destroyed in the process (or something weird happens, like Lugar running as a Dem or some other unrealistic thing) he could quite possibly cruise through the general election.