SSP Daily Digest: 1/26

MO-Sen: Most likely you already saw this story yesterday, but the big story in the Missouri Senate race is that Politico’s Dave Catanese seems to be the recipient of various leaks that ex-Sen. Jim Talent will announce soon that he isn’t going to run for Senate. We won’t start jumping up and down and honking our clown horn until we actually hear it from Talent, but this isn’t a surprise, based on previous rumors out of the Show Me State and Talent’s seeming decision to focus on hitching his wagon to Mitt Romney’s star instead. Without a dominant establishment candidate in the field, it looks like even more GOPers are starting to sniff out the race: MO-08 Rep. Jo Ann Emerson is now on the record as at least “considering” a run. Emerson, who’s had some mavericky moments in the House, would easily be the most moderate GOPer in the field if she ran (and may see a path there, with multiple tea partiers seeming poised to cannibalize each others’ votes). Emerson’s potential departure would create an open seat in the currently R+15 8th, an area that actually went for Bill Clinton but has fallen off the cliff for Dems in recent years, most recently with the fizzle of the touted Tommy Sowers campaign last year.

NJ-Sen: PPP, while “cleaning out their fridge” as they said, found some week-old GOP Senate primary numbers from their New Jersey sample. They find state Sen. and 2006 candidate Tom Kean Jr. in good shape, with support from both moderates (which is probably what he would qualify as) and conservatives; he leads Lou Dobbs 42-30 with Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno at 7, “someone else” at 6, and 15 undecided.

KY-Gov: Filing day came and went without any last-minute shenanigans in Kentucky. Steve Beshear will get a totally free ride in the Democratic primary (looks like that primary from the scrap metal dealer didn’t materialize), and will face one of three GOP opponents: state Senate president David Williams, teabagging businessman Phil Moffett, or Jefferson Co. Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw. The general election field in the AG race is already set; Jack Conway and Todd P’Pool didn’t draw any primary challengers. The most activity seems to be in the Ag Commissioner race (vacated by Richie Farmer, who’s running for Lt. Gov.), with 5 Dems and 2 GOPers running.

MN-08: This probably isn’t a surprise, but after his upset loss last year, 76-year-old Jim Oberstar has decided to opt for retirement rather than a rerun against new Rep. Chip Cravaack. Two other high-profile Dems, Duluth mayor Don Ness and state Sen. Tony Lourey have also recently said no. Two DFLers who are considering the race, though, are Duluth-based state Sen. Roger Reinert and Daniel Fanning, Al Franken’s deputy state director.

Omaha mayor: Omaha mayor Jim Suttle narrowly survived a recall attempt in last night’s special election. He won 51-49. Suttle vows to do a better job of communicating with voters in the election’s wake, although it remains an open question whether he runs again in 2013.

Redistricting: Here’s a new wrinkle in the fight over the Fair Districts initiatives in Florida: Rick Scott seems to be stalling implementation of the new standards (which would limit the state legislature’s ability to gerrymander districts). The state “quietly withdrew” its request that the federal DOJ approve implementation of the initiatives, which jeopardizes whether they’ll be in place in time for the actual business of redistricting. Florida, as a one-time part of the Deep South, is one of those states that requires DOJ preclearance for changes to its electoral regime under the Voting Rights Act.

Politico also has an interesting article today about the Congressional Black Caucus and redistricting, which will reshape many of their districts, seeing as how some of their members’ districts have had the biggest population losses of any districts in the nation (OH-11, MI-13, MI-14, and MO-01 in particular). These districts seem like they can absorb some suburban votes without losing their lopsided Dem advantages, but they’re probably more worried about members getting pitted against each other (as might happen with the two Detroit districts) or against another Dem (possible for Marcia Fudge and Lacy Clay). Other lingering questions are whether Sanford Bishop’s GA-02 (the only CBC-held district that’s legitimately swingy) gets shored up or made worse, and whether South Carolina can be compelled to eke out a second VRA seat.

Turnout models: I rarely get the chance to say this, but if you look at only one scatterplot today, it should be this one. It’s a remarkably-clear slope showing how predictable presidential approval is across demographic groups, and more evidence that the swing in the 2010 election was uniform across groups in response to macro factors (i.e. the stupid economy) rather than a failure of microtargeting. And here are some further thoughts on the matter from Larry Sabato’s new book, pointing out the really steep dropoffs in 2010 turnout for the groups I tend to label the “casual voters” (reliably Dem lower-information voters, mostly young and/or people of color, who turn out for presidential races but not the less compelling stuff in between), and how the 2010 model isn’t anything like what the 2012 model will resemble.

SSP Daily Digest: 11/16

AK-Sen: Nothing has really changed with the overall trajectory of the Alaska Senate race, but this is the first day that Lisa Murkowski has been able to claim a “lead” over Joe Miller (even though her victory has become increasingly clear each day). At the end of yesterday’s counting, she had 92,164 votes to Miller’s 90,448. 7,601 were subject to challenge but counted for her anyway (and, if Miller’s lawsuit succeeds, could get reversed), but based on Murkowski’s success at avoiding write-in challenges, is on track to win with or without those challenged ballots.

FL-Sen: George LeMieux, whose year-and-a-half in the Senate is about to expire, is leaving with more of a whimper than a bang, if PPP is to be believed: his approvals are 11/28 (with 61% with no opinion), including 14/24 among Republicans. He’s not looking like he’d have much impact in a challenge to Bill Nelson in 2012, which he’s threatened (which isn’t to say that Nelson is out of the woods, as a stronger Republican will no doubt come along). Among all the appointed Senators, he’s still faring better than Roland Burris (18/57) but worse than Carte Goodwin (17/22) and Ted Kaufman (38/33). (Oh, and if you’re still feeling like we lost out by not having Charlie Crist win the Senate race, guess again: Bob Dole! is reporting that Crist promised him he’d caucus with the GOP if he won the 3-way race. This comes after leaks in the waning days of the race that he’d caucus with the Democrats. Somehow, I expect any day now that Ralph Nader will reveal that Crist promised him that he’d caucus with the Green Party if he won the race.)

IN-Sen: Richard Lugar made it official; he’s running for re-election one more time. Lugar, who’ll be 80 in 2012, probably has more to worry about in the Republican primary than he does in the general election, where aspiring Democrats would probably be more interested in the open gubernatorial seat.

OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown will probably have a tougher re-election than his initial election, but it’s unclear which Republican he’ll face. The two who’ve gotten the most press are Mary Taylor, the current Auditor and newly-elected Lt. Governor, or Rep. Jim Jordan (a religious right fave from the state’s rural west), but another possibility that the article broaches is long-time Rep. Steve LaTourette, one of the House’s more moderate GOPers left. Either way, if Jordan or LaTourette were to try for the promotion, that would help the state GOP decide which of their seats to vaporize in the redistricting process (although LaTourette’s, in the northeast corner and surrounded by Dem seats, would be much harder to work with). Ohio’s losing two seats, though, and one more Dem seat is on the chopping block, especially since the biggest population losses have come in the northeast — the likeliest outcome seems to be consolidation of districts that sets up either a Dennis Kucinich/Marcia Fudge or Dennis Kucinich/Betty Sutton mash-up.

PA-Sen: The GOP feels like they have a shot against Bob Casey (who won by a near-overwhelming margin in 2006), given the state’s turn toward the red this year. The big question, though, is who? If Tom Ridge didn’t do it this year when it would have been a gimmee, he certainly isn’t any likelier to do it in 2012. Hotline mentions a couple current suburban Reps., Jim Gerlach and Charlie Dent, both of whom have tenaciously held down Dem-leaning districts that would be prime open seat battles if they left. Failing that, the bench looks pretty empty; they cite state Sen. Jake Corman as interested, as well as talk radio host and behind-the-scenes player Glen Meakem, who cited interest in running for 2010 but decided against it.

MN-Gov: Minnesota’s SoS (a Dem, Mark Ritchie) has laid out the timeline for the recount process. The race will be canvassed starting Nov. 23, and presuming a recount is necessary (which it will be unless something weird happens with the canvass, as Dem Mark Dayton leads Tom Emmer by less than one-half of a percent, triggering the automatic recount provision), the recounting will begin on Nov. 29.

MD-01: Nothing like teabagger hypocrisy at work: freshly elected with a mandate to destroy the federal government, Andy Harris’s first act in Washington was to demand all the free goodies from the federal government that he’s entitled to, so long as other people are paying for them. At freshman orientation, Harris was observed expressing dismay that his gold-plated health care plan takes a month to kick in.

NY-01, NY-25: Here are a couple more updates from overtime. In the 1st, Randy Altschuler’s lead over Tim Bishop is currently 383, but there are more than 11,000 absentees to be counted starting today, and since they’re all from one county (Suffolk), your guess is as good as mine how they break. In NY-25, Ann Marie Buerkle gained a tiny bit of ground as two GOP-leaning counties reported their absentees; she’s now up 729. Dan Maffei’s base, Dem-leaning Onondaga County, is about to start counting its 6,000 absentees. He should make up some ground, but he’ll need to average 56% among the remaining absentee ballots, while he’s only got 54% in Onondaga so far, though.

DSCC: Dianne Feinstein told the press that Michael Bennet is, despite his previous demurrals, going to be the next DSCC chair. Does Michael Bennet know this? He’s still saying no. The rest of the Dem leadership in the Senate (and the GOP, too) was elected without a hitch today, but the DSCC job still stands vacant.

CA-AG: Things keep looking up for Kamala Harris in California, after a torrent of new votes yesterday from Alameda County (where the Dem stronghold of Oakland is). That batch broke 18,764 for Harris, and only 5,099 for Steve Cooley, which may be a decisive moment in the count.

Chicago mayor: Rahm Emanuel is certainly looking like the early favorite in the Chicago mayoral race, courtesy of an Anzalone-Liszt poll commissioned by the Teamsters local (who haven’t endorsed yet). Emanuel is at 36, with Danny Davis at 14, Carol Mosely Braun at 13, Gery Chico at 10, James Meeks at 7, and Miguel del Valle at 4. Now you may be noticing what I’m noticing, that there’s significant splitting of the African-American vote here, and if you added Davis, Braun, and Meeks up into one super-candidate, they’d be in a dead heat with Emanuel. Well, don’t forget that this election uses a runoff, so chances are good we’ll see a head-to-head between Emanuel and one of the African-American challengers, and the poll finds Emanuel winning both those contests convincingly too: 54-33 versus Davis and 55-32 against Braun.

Ohio Redistricting 2012 – 13-3 GOP

Alot of people have pointed out that House losses in Ohio shouldn’t be a big deal because the GOP has already gerrymandered Ohio to their maximum advantage.

However, what that fails to take into context is that Ohio is about to lose 2 of its 18 seats once the census figures are published, which gives the GOP an opportunity to take a 13-5 House advantage to 13-3. Below are some scenarios that will enable them to accomplish that:

Lost Seat #1: Shore up Jim Renacci, combine Tim Ryan and Betty Sutton.

This scenario seems like the easiest call for the Republicans. Currently Renacci was just elected to OH-16 which contains Stark (Canton/Massillon), Wayne (Wooster), Medina (Cleveland exurbs), and Ashland (rural, very conservative) Counties.

This district was drawn in 2000 to protect GOP moderate stalwart Ralph Regula who lived in the Canton area. Canton & Stark County also happen to be the most Dem friendly parts of the district as currently constructed, voting for both Kerry and Obama in 2004 & 2008. With Renacci’s home in Wadsworth (Medina County), it will be easy for Republicans to combine parts of the current OH-10, 13, 16, 17 & 18 into two districts.

Renacci’s new district will shift north and west, abandoning Stark County in the process by swallowing the Medina & Cuyahoga County portions of OH-13 (these suburbs: Strongsville, North Royalton & Brecksville are the most reliably GOP leaning areas of Dem-heavy Cuyahoga County), the eastern Lorain County portion of 13 (Avon, Avon Lake, North Ridgeville: fast growing GOP suburbs) and the western edge of OH-10 (Bay Village, Rocky River, Westlake). Whatever portions of Wayne & Ashland counties in the southern part of his current district that won’t fit population-wise can be eaten up by Gibbs in present-day OH-18.

That leaves a new Democratic district comprised of Akron, Canton & Youngstown that draws Sutton’s home in Copley (just outside Akron) and Ryan’s home in Niles (just outside Youngstown) into the same district and forces a primary between the two most promising congressional Dems in Ohio. Taking one of these two out will be a major boon to the GOP by eliminating or weakening the strongest challengers to Portman or Kasich in 2014 and 2016.

Lost Seat #2: This is where it gets harder for the GOP to come up with another lost Dem seat. The possibilities in order of likelihood:

1. With Renacci squeezing Kucinich to the west, the Republicans could draw a new minority-majority district in Cleveland by moving Fudge and Kucinich into the same district. This would involve LaTourette scraping off the eastern edge of Fudge’s territory. The new map would basically be the city of Cleveland + inner ring suburbs.

In this situation, Kucinich would likely retire or move to the suburbs to challenge Renacci where he would lose in an R+ district.

2. Split up Columbus 3 ways. Columbus presents a problem for Republicans in the state. It is the area that is experiencing the most population growth in the state, and it is also the area that is trending the strongest towards Democrats.

Currently OH-12 (Tibieri) and OH-15 (Stivers) represent the city by drawing in as much as they can from the sparsely populated surrounding counties. Even here, both districts are perpetually threatened, with Kilroy (D) holding OH-15 for one term before her defeat this year. OH-12 is actually the bluer of the two Columbus districts, but Dems can never seem to recruit the right candidate to beat Tibieri.

To stave off flipping one of these seats permanently to Team Blue, the GOP could find a way to give Gibbs or Turner a slice of the Columbus pie and keep Dem votes divided.

3. The last scenario I could see happening doesn’t get the GOP to 13-3, but could be a prudent strategic move for them in SW Ohio.

By eliminating OH-2 (Schmidt), they could expand Chabot’s district to the east and leave him less vulnerable to a Democratic wave year like 2008. Turner and Johnson (OH-6)would take what was left of Mean Jean’s territory and help shore up their own re-election hopes.

Schmidt’s constant underperformance is likely a drag on RCCC funds as they constantly have to defend the 2nd most Republican seat in Ohio due to the relative unpopularity of Ms. Schmidt.

These are just a few scenarios and I’m sure I’m missing others. Another possibility would be to force Marcy Kaptur and Bob Latta into a showdown, but Kapur’s seat is already so gerrymandered, I’m not sure how you draw in Toledo & the islands without strengthening the Dems.

Any thoughts?

OH-11: Cuyahoga Dems Pick Marcia Fudge

Cuyahoga County Democratic leaders selected Warrensville Heights Mayor Marcia Fudge last night to run for the seat of the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Before her time as mayor, Fudge served as Tubbs’ chief of staff in Washington. Her full biography is available here.

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer has more on the somewhat convoluted process to replace Tubbs Jones, which includes both a general election (Nov. 4) and a special election (Nov. 18).