SSP Daily Digest: 4/22 (Afternoon Edition)

House:

CA-26: More eliminationist rhetoric from the right (not that they’ll ever cease): Anthony Portantino, the Democratic Assemblyman running against Rep. David Dreier, is featured on some second amendment-related Old West-style “WANTED” poster.

LA-02: Daily Kingfish says that Public Service Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III (son of a former state senator of the same name) is rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Rep. Cedric Richmond in the newly-redrawn 2nd CD. The post points out that Bossiere’s PSC district has a lot of overlap with the new borders of the 2nd, including a dog-leg up to the Baton Rouge area. (Bossiere, like Richmond, is also African-American.)

NH-02: It’s nothing like the town hall craziness of 2009, but it’s nice to see idiots like Charlie Bass take heat in public forums for voting for Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget. Pretty pathetic political instincts on the Bassmaster’s part. This vote will haunt him – and it’s already haunting several other colleagues, like Bob Dold!, Lou Barletta, and Paul Ryan himself.

NM-01: Oh no. I really had hoped we were done with Marty Chavez, but the maddening former Albuquerque mayor is apparently considering a run to replace Martin Heinrich, and is even supposedly meeting with the DCCC. The good news, though, is that ex-LG (and 2010 gubernatorial nominee) Diane Denish is also thinking about entering the race. This could be a very crowded primary.

NV-02: You know Jon Ralston is enjoying this one. After a report came out in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which Ralston not-so-affectionately refers to as a “newspaper,” in scare quotes every time) that state GOP chair Mark Amodei was planning to seek the 2nd CD seat being vacated by Dean Heller, Ralston spoke with Amodei who says he didn’t announce anything. In the LVRJ piece (which oddly quotes Amodei himself, so I don’t know how they got the story wrong), Amodei also said that Republican state Sen. Greg Brower told him he also planned to join the race (and Ralston confirms via Twitter.)

Of course, who knows what’s going to happen with this seat, given the unsettled legal questions about how a special election should be conducted if Gov. Brian Sandoval taps Heller for John Ensign’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

TN-06: I wonder what’s up with Diane Black. The GOP frosh gave her own campaign two-thirds of a million bucks in Q1 – not a loan, an outright donation. I’m guessing that she’s trying to ward off a potential primary challenge, given that she won the open-seat Republican primary last year with just 31% of the vote (her two nearest competitors both got 30%, so there must have been much gnashing of teeth).

Other Races:

NJ-St. Sen.: An administrative law judge ruled that Olympian Carl Lewis, who is running as a Democrat, does indeed meet state residency requirements. However, it sounds like Republicans plan to appeal this ruling.

WI Recall: All sorts of recall news. First up, Dem state Rep. Fred Clark says he’ll challenge Luther Olsen in the expected recall election, another strong get for Team Blue. Democrats also filed a huge 30,000 signatures against their fifth recall target, Alberta Darling. That leaves just three eligible Republicans left: Rob Cowles, Glenn Grothman, and Mary Lazich, the latter two of whom are in very red districts (so I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get hit with a recall).

Republicans also finally filed signatures against three Democrats: Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin, and Robert Wirch. Democrats, though, charged that the GOP’s petition-gathering efforts were sloppy and flawed, and vowed to challenge the signatures.

Redistricting Roundup:

California: California’s new independent redistricting commission is set to release a draft set of maps by June 10th, with final maps due on August 15th (after a period of public comment).

Colorado: Things don’t seem to be going so swimmingly in Colorado’s attempt to go back to the redistricting drawing board, with a special committee begging for more time to finish a new set of maps. The Republican co-chair says he thinks they can produce new plans in 10 days, but as Al Swearengen says, announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh.

Meanwhile, Gov. John Hickenlooper sounds like he has no intention of vetoing any map that the legislature sends him. Since Dems control one body and Republicans the other, this means they’ll have to produce a compromise map – or no map at all, and kick it to the courts. I think Hick’s hands-off approach (which is totally in-character for him) increases the likelihood of the latter, because it eliminates a key piece of Dem leverage which could be used to force an agreement.

Missouri: Utterly embarrassing: Barely more than a day after finally agreeing to a conference committee to resolve differences between Republicans in the state House and Senate, work has ground to a halt, and nothing more will happen until Tuesday. One state Rep. offered this hilariously nonsensical assessment: “I think we’re close, but obviously we’re far.” Meanwhile, the House passed a new map this morning that supposedly tries to address some Senate concerns, but given that there is no actual agreement, I’m guessing this is just a negotiating tactic.

New Jersey: Teabaggers are suing to block implementation of NJ’s new legislative map. It’s not quite clear what the grounds are, but WNYC summarizes: “The suit alleges that the commission over-packed the southern half of the state and ‘illegally split Newark and Jersey City from three districts each to two.'”

Louisiana: The state House submitted its own map to the DoJ for pre-clearance, which I believe makes it the first such plan to go before Justice this cycle. The hotly-contested congressional map, though, has yet to be sent in.

Victims: Dave Wasserman and Julia Edwards try their hand at the most likely redistricting victims this cycle, with separate lists for the 10 most endangered Democrats and Republicans.

121 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 4/22 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. She’s looking to work her way into leadership, and possibly angling for NRCC chair. That money is probably so that she’ll have plenty to loan to other candidates this cycle.

      1. … even though he was only the state attorney general. (Though, to be fair, he had also served 10 years in Congress during the ’80s.) He was considered a big rising star in the late ’90s – National Review put him on their cover at one point and called him “The Great Right Hope,” heir to Reagan, etc., etc.  

  2. My hope is that they draw Sutton into Kucinich’s district and a nasty primary ensues in which Sutton wins.  

  3. A run down of what we have so far:

    Jennifer Schilling has Declared against Kapanke, Jess King against Hopper, and Fred Clark against Olsen. Wasserman or Pasch is likely to pull the trigger against Olsen. All of them are current or former State Assemblymen/women, except for King, who is deputy mayor of Oshkosh. On the Republican side, Mary Scray, the chair of the Brown County Board of Supervisors, has expressed interest in running against Hansen.

    I terms of more speculative stuff that I can think of:

    Wirch may face Samantha Kerkman, a Republican state rep who represents most of outlying Kenosha County. Holperin has is pick of Republican State Reps: all three of the reps in his district (Dan Meyer, Tom Tiffany, and Jeffery Mursau) are Republican. Harsodrf could face Ann Hraychuck, the former State rep from the 28th and former Polk County Sheriff.

    Against Cowles, our best candidate would probably be former Assembly majority leader and lt. governer candidate Tom Nelson, but he might be ambitious enough to run for Governor instead (please don’t).

    Is there anyone I’m missing?

  4. Their map was pack-tacular, squeezes in another GOP district in the NE corner of the state, deliberately moves a Dem district further into Monmouth, and other partisan gerrymanders.

    They have little to no grounds on this and have an even lower chance of success.  

  5. I’m surprised you didn’t use this gem from the article linked;

    Scott Rupp said: “My job is to carry the football across the goal line, and it’s hard if every day you wake up and the goal line has been moved. So hopefully we’ve found the goal line, and I’m lunging in the fourth quarter with four seconds to go, and I’m trying to put 51 percent of that football across the goal line.”

    This is pure conjecture on my part, but I’m wondering if the holdup here is a faceoff between Rupp and Diehl, Diehl wants as much of St. Charles county as possible, but also very much wants to keep Wentzville (home of his senate counterpart Scott Rupp quoted above) in the old 9th/future 3rd so as to avoid a major potential primary fight. If Rupp is looking at a house run too this might explain MO-9 Rep Luetkemeyer being floated as a Senate candidate too – thus making in more logical for the house to keep Wentzville in that district instead of Akin’s…

    If I had to be I think this whole thing blows up and the courts draw the map, which would still likely doom Carnahan, but would end up with the less friendly 5th district map we discussed yesterday.

    BTW 3 time 5th CD GOP nominee Jacob Turk was meeting with Todd Akin last night to make a last chance pitch to force that “Fair” 5th CD that includes all of Jackson County.

  6. His plan to fix the economy? File bankruptcy, lay off all of the workers, and collect a golden parachute in the process. Flawless plan.

  7. dude, check out the last link (the one about Republican redistricting victims). I never knew Dan Lungren was that creepy looking. He reminds me of my heroine-addicted suitemate from freshman year (who incidentally is from LA, but not Long Beach).

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