SSP Daily Digest: 5/21

LA-Sen: David Vitter may get a serious primary challenger after all (Family Research Council honcho Tony Perkins and ex-Rep. John Cooksey have declined, and SoS Jay Dardenne has been laying low). It’s someone we haven’t seen in a while, though: former state Elections commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell, who let her interest be known last week. Terrell’s last appearance in the spotlight was the 2002 Senate race, where she lost narrowly to Mary Landrieu. Terrell is the only Republican woman to have ever held office in Louisiana.

NY-Sen-B: Like a giant game of Whack-a-mole, Kirsten Gillibrand jammed a couple potential primary challengers back into their holes last week, but now a new one popped up: Rep. Jose Serrano. The Bronx-based Serrano might be able to make a lot of hay out of the immigration issue, but he may not have the cash to make a race of it (although as an Appropriations cardinal, he’s well-connected). Meanwhile, Gillibrand nailed down endorsements from three other Reps. — John Hall, Mike Arcuri, and Scott Murphy — as well as Nassau County Dem party chair Jay Jacobs (important because he has a lot of sway over Rep. Carolyn McCarthy).

PA-Sen: Roll Call tried to pin down the Democratic House members from Pennsylvania on whether or not they’d endorse Arlen Specter in a potential Democratic primary with Rep. Joe Sestak. Interestingly, PA’s most liberal Dem, Chaka Fattah, was probably the most enthusiastic and unconditional endorser of Specter, while its most conservative Dem, Jason Altmire, was most reluctant to offer an endorsement one way or the other, although more out of admiration for Sestak than on ideological grounds. Tim Holden also endorsed Specter and Bob Brady came as close as possible to it, while Patrick Murphy took a “wait and see” attitude and the others simply punted the question.

AR-Sen: State Senator Kim Hendren (having recently shot himself in the foot by calling Charles Schumer “that Jew”) is now vacillating and may not run in the GOP Senate primary after all, despite having announced his candidacy.

IL-Sen: Here’s some confirmation on what we speculated last week: Rep. Mark Kirk isn’t lost in space; he’s just deferring any decisions on the Senate race because he’s waiting to see what AG Lisa Madigan does. He reportedly won’t run for Senate if Madigan does.

FL-Gov: Ag Commissioner Charles Bronson will announce today that he won’t run for the open governor’s seat, leaving an unimpeded path to the GOP nomination for AG Bill McCollum. Bronson is term-limited out of his job in 2010 and looking to move up, but couldn’t buck the pressure from state chair Jim Greer — I mean, the guy doesn’t have a Death Wish.

CO-Gov: Ex-Rep. Scott McInnis officially filed yesterday to enter the Colorado governor’s race, amidst sniping that he started soliciting funds before filing his campaign paperwork. State Senate minority leader Josh Penry also launched into an oblique attack on McInnis, suggesting he might be interested in a primary battle.

CA-Gov: Dianne Feinstein, occasionally rumored to be interested in what has to be the least desirable job in America (California governor), has said that she “might” run for governor next year, depending on her assessment of the other candidates’ plans for dealing with California’s seemingly perpetual budget crisis. Polls that have included Feinstein have shown her dominating the race if she got in.

IL-13: 71-year-old Rep. Judy Biggert just confirmed that she’ll be running for re-election in 2010, despite a return engagement with Scott Harper, who held her to 54%, and the district’s shift to only R+1. (Of course, her inclusion in the first round of 10 in the NRCC’s Patriots program Tuesday showed her hand already.)

AL-02: Republicans have at least one candidate lined up to go against Rep. Bobby Bright as he seeks his first re-election in this R+16 district: 32-year-old Montgomery city councilor and attorney Martha Roby. GOP State Rep. Jay Love, who narrowly lost to Bright last time, may also try again.

MI-13: Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, who narrowly won a 3-way primary in 2008, may have to face off against both of the same challengers again in 2010: state Sen. Martha Scott and former state Rep. Mary Waters. Former interim mayor Ken Cockrel also is mentioned as interested. Kilpatrick may be less vulnerable in 2010, though, as the brouhaha surrounding her son (former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick) recedes in the distance.

Maps: Here’s another interesting map for the geography nerds out there. It’s a map of which party controls all the state House seats throughout the South. (It’s a lot bluer than you might initially think.)

FL-Gov/Sen: Mase-Dix Has McCollum Over Sink, Crist Crushing

Mason Dixon (PDF) for Ron Sachs Communications (5/14-18, registered voters for general, likely voters for primaries, April 2009 in parens).

Senate primary matchups:

Kendrick Meek (D): 26

Dan Gelber (D): 16

Undecided: 58

Charlie Crist (R): 53

Marco Rubio (R): 18

Undecided: 29

(MoE: ±6%)

Senate general election matchups:

Kendrick Meek (D): 24

Charlie Crist (R): 55

Undecided: 21

Dan Gelber (D): 22

Charlie Crist (R): 57

Undecided: 21

(MoE: ±4%)

Governor primary matchups:

Jeb Bush (R): 64

Bill McCollum (R): 13

Charles Bronson (R): 2

Undecided: 21

Bill McCollum (R): 39

Charles Bronson (R): 12

Undecided: 49

(MoE: ±6%)

Governor general election matchups:

Alex Sink (D): 34 (35)

Bill McCollum (R): 40 (36)

Undecided: 26 (29)

Alex Sink (D): 37

Charles Bronson (R): 29

Undecided: 34

Alex Sink (D): 34

Jeb Bush (R): 50

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±4%)

The poll sample was 43D, 38R and 19I. I’m including the results of an early April Mason-Dixon poll as a trendline for the Sink-McCollum matchup, even though it was taken for a different client – the question wording was identical, and the sample size very similar.

FL-Gov: AG Bill McCollum (R) Announces Run

From the Sunshine State:

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum launched his fourth bid for statewide office in his hometown of Orlando on Monday, announcing he would try to keep the governor’s office in Republican hands in 2010. …

Since Gov. Charlie Crist’s decision last week to run for the U.S. Senate instead of re-election, Republican political leaders hoping to avoid a primary have rushed to throw their support behind McCollum, 64, a 20-year former Central Florida congressman who ran for the Senate twice during this decade.

McCollum is the first major Republican to announce he would try to replace Crist, although Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Bronson of Osceola County has said he will decide this week whether he would also run.

Partisans with long memories will recall that McCollum was one of the House impeachment “managers” who led the infamous witchhunt against Bill Clinton. He also got beaten by Bill Nelson for the open seat Senate race in 2000, and then lost to Mel Martinez in the GOP primary four years later.

A Mason-Dixon poll released last month showed a tie game between McCollum and the likely Dem nominee, CFO Alex Sink, who of course just got into the race last week. SSP currently rates this race a Tossup.

FL-Sen, FL-Gov: McCollum Leads Sink By 1 (for Governor)

Mason-Dixon for Sayfie Review/PowerPlay (3/30-4/1, registered voters):

Alex Sink (D): 35

Bill McCollum (R): 36

(MoE: ±4%)

It seems like not that long ago we were looking at a potential Florida senate race between CFO Alex Sink and AG Bill McCollum. With Gov. Charlie Crist sounding more and more like he’s moving to switch over to the Senate, causing the lower ranks on Florida’s political totem pole to gravitate over to the governor’s race, we may now be looking at a Sink/McCollum FL-Gov race instead, and that’s what Mason-Dixon just polled. (In fact, if those numbers look vaguely familiar to you, it’s because Quinnipiac did a head-to-head poll of a Sink/McCollum FL-Sen matchup in mid-January, and that poll also found McCollum 36, Sink 35!)

Mason-Dixon didn’t poll head-to-heads on a Crist-centered Senate race (either GOP primary or general). However, they did ask whether voters would “consider” voting for him, for which the answers were 17% definitely, 50% consider, and 26% definitely not. There is one note of caution for Crist here, though: he gets an 18% “definitely not” from Republicans (compared with a 35% “definitely not” from Democrats). That could point to a very competitive primary with a more orthodox conservative opponent. With former House speaker Marco Rubio intent on staying in the race and highlighting Crist’s stimulus-loving ways, it seems likely Rubio will be that opponent.

FL-Sen: Boyd and McCollum Are Out

Rep. Allen Boyd announced today that he won’t be running for the open Senate seat in Florida in 2010. While Boyd (fairly conservative even by Blue Dog standards) might have been a decent prospect in the general, he may not have been enthused about his prospects for making it out of the primary, where two more liberal Miami-area politicians, Rep. Kendrick Meek and State Sen. Dan Gelber, are already jockeying for position. As a bonus, this means not having to defend an open seat in the Republican-leaning FL-02 in the Panhandle.

On the Republican side of the ledger, Attorney General (and Clinton impeachment manager and two-time Senate loser) Bill McCollum also bowed out today. While he was the front-runner in the GOP field according to last week’s Quinnipiac poll, that may have been based more on name recognition as a frequent statewide candidate (and certainly not on likeability).

Politico reports that it’s still full speed ahead for two other GOPers: former State House Speaker Marco Rubio and Rep. Connie Mack IV, although neither one has formally announced anything. On the Dem side, one other name cropped up yesterday, that hadn’t been mentioned before: Tampa mayor Pam Iorio publicly expressed her interest in the race. She could make things interesting, as the I-4 Corridor becomes more of a locus of Democratic strength in Florida while Meek and Gelber divide the Miami-area vote.

FL-Sen: Wide Open Race in Florida

Quinnipiac (1/14-19, registered voters):

Alex Sink (D): 15

Kendrick Meek (D): 13

Ron Klein (D): 9

Allen Boyd (D): 8

Dan Gelber (D): 1

Don’t know: 54

(MoE: ±4.7%)

Bill McCollum (R): 22

Connie Mack IV (R): 21

Vern Buchanan (R): 10

Marco Rubio (R): 6

Allan Bense (R): 2

Don’t know: 39

(MoE: ±4.3%)

If the primary elections for the Florida senate race were held today, “Don’t know” would sweep both nominations in a landslide. At this point, this is a name recognition test, and Floridians seem to have no idea who these candidates are. At any rate, there seems to be something of a hierarchy here: statewide officials (Sink, McCollum) fare best, then U.S. Representatives, with state legislative leaders down in no man’s land.

On the Dem side, Kendrick Meek has the edge among current candidates. But assuming that he comes in with fairly high name rec from being in the state’s largest media market, and that he’s probably already consolidated the state’s African-American vote, he may not have as much room to grow as the other candidates.

Unfortunately, this poll has a major wrinkle; it was in the field when Alex Sink announced that she wasn’t going to be a Senate candidate, so presumably some respondents were operating under the assumption that Sink was a likely candidate while others knew that she wouldn’t be. In fact, the only head-to-head Quinnipiac tried out involved Sink as the Dem nominee (McCollum 36, Sink 35, with 29 don’t know). Here’s hoping they try again soon with some other permutations.