SSP Daily Digest: 6/10

HI-Gov: Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann looks like he’ll be running against Rep. Neil Abercrombie for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination; he launched an exploratory committee yesterday. Hannemann and Abercrombie actually faced off once before; Hannemann defeated Abercrombie in the 1986 primary for HI-01 (but lost the general to GOPer Pat Saiki). Either one would seem to have an edge over Republican Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona in the general, based on the state’s lean, although Aiona’s fundraising has been impressive so far.

NJ-Gov: Quinnipiac may be finding a bit of a post-primary bounce for Republican challenger Chris Christie; he leads Jon Corzine 50-40 in their newest poll. (Last month was 45-38 for Christie, although this poll is a switch from registered voters to likely voters.) Corzine’s favorables are his worst-ever at 35-53; Christie’s are 36-16, but with 46% “haven’t heard enough,” allowing some room for Corzine to define him if he hits hard with his new ad blitz.

NY-Gov: How’s this for an unsurprising headline: “Poll Finds Paterson Deeply Unpopular.” The NYT polled Paterson’s favorables (no head-to-heads, though) and found that Paterson has an approval of 21%, compared to a finding of 26% approval of ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in the same poll.

MN-Gov: CQ comes the closest I’ve seen to consolidating the name of every single person planning to run for Minnesota governor in one place. I count 10 Democrats and 11 Republicans, which I won’t bother trying to reproduce here.

IN-08: Rep. Brad Ellsworth finally has a Republican opponent, auto worker Dan Stockton. Stockton hasn’t held office, but he is active in community theater and “heavily involved in motorcycle rights.” Well, I’m glad someone is willing to take a courageous stand for those oppressed motorcycles.

MD-01: State Sen. Andy Harris may not get a clear path to the GOP nomination in his rematch with Rep. Frank Kratovil. State Sen. E.J. Pipkin is considering a face off with Harris again in the primary. (Pipkin finished third in the 2008 primary, getting 20% of the vote to 43 for Harris and 33 for then-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest. In fact, Pipkin may have thrown the election to BaltCo resident Harris, by vacuuming up more conservative votes on the Eastern Shore that may have otherwise gone to Gilchrest on the basis of geography.) Pipkin has the advantage of self-funding; he spent $2 million of his own money en route to racking up 34% against Sen. Barb Mikulski in 2004. While Pipkin isn’t as conservative as Club for Growth favorite Harris, he isn’t as moderate as Gilchrest. Other Republicans interested in the primary include Anne Arundel County Exec John Leopold and former state House minority leader Al Redmer.

NH-02: The field to replace Rep. Paul Hodes got a third Dem contestant: former state Senator Mark Fernald got into the race yesterday. Fernald may retain a bit of name rec from his 2002 loss in the governor’s race (he lost to Craig Benson, who then lost in 2004 to John Lynch).

NY-23: One GOPer is already launching his “campaign” for the nomination to replace John McHugh (in the sense that he’s publicly saying that he’s going around and talking to the right kingmakers on all the county party committees). It’s a guy who wasn’t on anybody’s list: Franklin County legislator Paul Maroun, whose day job is counsel to state Senator Betty Little (who doesn’t sound likely to run, especially since she lives in NY-20).

Census: We’re less than a year away from the 2010 Census, and we’re still short a Census director, as the GOP has put a mystery hold on Obama’s nominee for the job, Robert Groves. The Census is also facing an appropriations fight in coming weeks, as it requested a 135% increase in funding for next year (seeing as how 2010 is the year when it does most of its work, but try explaining that to a Republican). A leaderless, underfunded Census isn’t likely to put together an accurate count, and an inaccurate count is likely to undercount traditionally Democratic harder-to-count groups.

DC Voting Rights: The bill to give the District of Columbia a fully functioning representative in the U.S. House (and give an extra seat to Utah, increasing the size of the House to 437 and the Electoral College to 539) seems to be stalled for now, according to Steny Hoyer. Nobody seems to know how to get around the GOP-added poison pill attached to it that will strip DC’s gun laws, so it’s just going to sit.

SSP Daily Digest: 3/4

NY-20: The Troy Record, one of the major papers in the district, calls out GOP candidate Jim Tedisco in an angry editorial for not living in the district and for sticking to the Republican negative campaigning playbook.

OK-Gov: Former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts says he’s weighing a run for governor and will make a decision in 45 days. (Mark your calendars for April 17th.) But how will Watts, who made tentative pro-Obama noises last year, play in a GOP primary? (D)

CA-19: More R-on-R fun: A wealthy Republican fundraiser in California is itching to recruit a primary challenger for GOP Rep. George Radanovich. Assemblyman Mike Villines might be interested. Radanovich’s district supported Bush by monstrous margins, but only went for McCain by 52-46 last year. (J) (UPDATE: Villines’ office writes in to say that he will be supporting Radanovich in 2010.)

CA-Sen: Best wishes to Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO who moved on to Republican politics and had been mentioned as a possible candidate against Barbara Boxer in 2010. She’s been diagnosed with breast cancer, which may put her political activism on hold.

DC Voting Rights: The House vote on the DC Voting Rights Act has been pushed back until next week, as leadership figures out how to prevent the GOP from adding language that strips most of what remains of DC’s gun laws (after the Supreme Court partially struck them down last year).

2010 House: The Hill has a nice preview of some of the hot House races in two years, and candidates bubbling up to fill those slots.

DC-AL? UT-AL? UT-04? DC Voting Rights Bill Clears Cloture

A fascinating – and long overdue – development today:

The District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act overcame a major hurdle Tuesday, passing a Senate cloture vote by 62-34. …

The bill would give the Democratic-heavy District a voting Representative in the House and Republican-leaning Utah an extra seat that it just barely missed adding in the 2000 census. …

If the House and Senate versions pass each chamber as is, the bill would have to go to conference in order to iron out some differences – mainly, the fact that the Senate bill gives Utah a new district seat, while the House gives the state an at-large seat.

In practical terms, if this bill passes and survives constitutional scrutiny, DC will undoubtedly elect a Democrat. As for the Utah “sweetener” (necessary to ensure Republican votes), the question is whether the state legislature would use the opportunity to screw Jim Matheson out of his seat. The House solution neatly avoids this problem and would be my preferred outcome. Note that while no state with more than one representative utilizes at-large districts, there’s nothing forbidding it, and many states have done so in the past.

In any event, an at-large seat would probably only be temporary, as Utah is almost assured of gaining a new seat after the 2010 census. The enlargement of the House to 437 seats, however, would be permanent. And, bizarrely enough, this would mean the likely end of potential ties in the electoral college:

[T]he Constitution says that each state gets the same number of electoral votes as it has seats in Congress (in both the House and the Senate). So, you’d think that two more members of Congress would mean two more electoral votes, increasing the Electoral College from 538 members to 540.

However, the 23th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which granted the District voting rights in presidential elections, stipulates that the District only gets as many electoral votes as the state with the fewest. Even if this legislation is enacted (and upheld by the courts), Washington, D.C. will still only have three electoral votes.

As a result, the Electoral College will only increase by one vote, not two. That means that the Electoral College’s members would add up to 539, which, tragically, is an odd number. When you have an odd number of voters, it’s always tricky to end up with a tie vote. Unless a third-party candidate took some electoral votes, one candidate would have a majority.

Incidentally, Election Data Services’ latest study (PDF, p. 14) variously shows CA, NC, OR, and WA in the 436th and 437th slots, meaning one of those states would likely pick up an extra seat (or in the case of California, not lose a seat) in 2012.

UPDATE: A CRS report (PDF) suggests that Congress might have outlawed at-large districts – but because Congress has the power to set such rules (under the Constitution), it can do as it pleases vis-a-vis Utah. The same report also says that such a district would not violate one person, one vote jurisprudence.