Tag: Charles Djou

• IN-Sen: The Dan Coats rollout is turning into more of a field day for Democratic opposition researchers than the strike-fear-in-the-hearts-of-Democrats moment that Republicans may have hoped for. I’m not even sure what to lead off with… that Coats dissed his own state, saying that North Carolina, where he intended to retire, was a “better place” than Indiana (although Coats’ spokesperson is now saying that Coats intends to “do his part” and sell his $1.8 million waterfront house in Wilmington, NC)… or that Coats has been active in lobbying on behalf of foreign powers, representing India himself, while his firm was lobbying on behalf of extremist hotbed Yemen. I’m starting to wonder if the GOP would actually be better off sticking with the somewhat nuttier and flakier John Hostettler, who isn’t stepping aside for Coats. While Hostettler won’t have Coats’ Beltway money, he at least has the profile to keep the various right-wing weirdo elements (teabaggers, Paulists, the religious right) at fever pitch.

• NV-Sen: I’m not sure which is more of an overstuffed clown car: the Republican Senate field in Arkansas, or Nevada. It looks like one more GOPer may join the fun in Nevada: retired Navy commander Kirk Lippold, whose main claim to fame is commanding the USS Cole when it was attacked (in Yemen).

• NY-Sen: TV talking head and economic conservative Larry Kudlow is “80 or 90%” likely to run against Charles Schumer, according to Kudlow ally John Lakian. Even if he runs, though, it sounds like Kudlow is in no hurry to decide (he wants to keep his TV show as long as possible, which he’d have to give up if he became a candidate). This isn’t the first time Kudlow, a veteran of the Reagan White House, has been the subject of Senate speculation; he was considered a Senate contender way back in the early 90s, before getting derailed by drug and alcohol problems.

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand is taking aim at Harold Ford Jr.’s associations with Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America. Ford’s camp has had little to say after Gillibrand called for Ford to disclose details of his Merrill Lynch bonuses. Ford, in the meantime, is busy comparing himself to Robert F. Kennedy. How? Well, the liberal establishment opposed him too… or at least Eleanor Roosevelt did… or at least she would have, if she hadn’t in fact died several years before he ran for Senate.

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter got the endorsement of the statewide Democratic party committee over the weekend, winning a solid majority of the votes, underscoring his establishment support. (Of course, one of his biggest establishment supporters, Ed Rendell, lost the state party’s 2002 endorsement in the gubernatorial race to Bob Casey and went on to win the primary anyway.) Part of the proceedings was a feisty debate between Specter and Joe Sestak, with Specter going hard after Sestak’s number of missed votes in the House recently.

• WA-Sen: Republicans got at least something of an upgrade in the Senate race against Patty Murray: long-time state Sen. Don Benton decided to get into the race. (The best they had so far was ex-NFL player and current teabagger Clint Didier.) Benton has represented the Vancouver suburbs for many years; in fact, his biggest claim to fame is narrowly losing the WA-03 open seat race to Brian Baird way back in 1998. In fact, I’m a little surprised he isn’t looking to the again-open 3rd if he’s going for an upgrade, where he would have a good chance at shoving aside the other less-known GOPers in the field, whereas he faces long odds against Murray unless things go completely kerflooey for the Democrats. Unfortunately, the race is a freebie for Benton; he isn’t up for re-election in 2010, so Dems won’t get a shot at his swingy Senate seat in LD 17. It remains to be seen whether Benton got an official behind-the-scenes green light after nobody better (Dino Rossi, Dave Reichert) was interested in the race, or just that Benton decided to roll the dice regardless.

• RI-Gov: A poll by Fleming & Associates on behalf of WPRI finds that a race between independent ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Democratic state treasurer Frank Caprio is a dead heat: Chafee pulls in 31 and Caprio is at 30, with Republican candidate John Robitaille flailing at 13. AG Patrick Lynch, the other possible Dem nominee, doesn’t fare as well; he loses to Chafee 34-23, with Robitaille at 18.

• HI-01: Hawaii Democrats have avoided a potential problem with the decision of state Sen. Will Espero not to get involved in the still-not-scheduled special election in the 1st. Under Hawaii law, the special election is an all-party, winner-take-all affair, so the worries have been that with two prominent Dems already in the race, a fractured field could allow Republican Charles Djou to sneak through (although the one poll of the race seems to disabuse us of that notion). Neil Abercrombie’s resignation is now scheduled for Feb. 28.

• KS-03: Democrats are pretty much at square one in trying to find a nominee to replace retiring Rep. Dennis Moore. Joe Reardon had been pretty much everyone’s top pick, but Reardon, whose official title is “Mayor/CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas,” won’t run. With his mayoral predecessor, Carol Marinovich, also taking a pass, this R+3 seat seems on track to be one of the Dems’ likeliest losses – although Reardon’s demurral may open the door to a candidate from suburban Johnson County instead, which may still work out better since that’s where most of the district’s votes are.

• LA-03: “Entrepreneur” Chris Leopold filed to get into the GOP field in the open seat race in the 3rd, but what may be most noteworthy here is who all hasn’t filed. Attorney Ravi Sangisetty is the only Dem, and while Leopold’s entry brings the GOP field up to 4, the only elected official is state Rep. Nickie Monica. The GOP establishment still seems to be waiting on Hunt Downer, the former state House speaker and current assistant adjutant general of the state’s National Guard. The problem is that few people seem interested in a two-year stint in the House, only to see the 3rd get vaporized due to Louisiana losing a seat for 2012.

• MS-01: Here’s a strange development, considering how much effort the NRCC spent to clear the path for state Sen. Alan Nunnelee: Fox News commentator Angela McGlowan will be running in the GOP primary too. McGlowan kicked off her bid with an appearance at Teabag-o-rama in Nashville this weekend. It looks like the Republican establishment will be trying to prevent McGlowan from getting any traction, as they privately point to her various negatives: having lobbied for Steve Wynn’s gambling empire (not a popular issue in this heavily evangelical area), and claiming an opposition research treasure trove from her past interviews. There’s also a geographical problem: her base (not that a base really matters, as she’s spent little time in the state in years) is the college town of Oxford, which puts her in neither bloc in terms of the Memphis suburbs/Tupelo split in the district.

• NH-01: Former NRC committee member Sean Mahoney, who had earlier thought about and then ruled out a run in the GOP field, is starting to sound interested again. Mahoney (who lost the NH-01 GOP primary in 2002 to Jeb Bradley) dropped out when the NRCC seemed content with Manchester mayor Frank Guinta, but with Guinta’s star fading the wake of mediocre fundraising, he may sense an opening. Compounding that is the recent entry into the primary by businessman Rich Ashooh; Guinta and Ashooh are both from Manchester, so the Portsmouth-based Mahoney may think he can ride the geographical split to victory.

• PA-03: Democratic freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper keeps attracting random money bags challengers, even as none of the district’s elected Republicans seem interested in a promotion. Today it’s yet another one of those freakin’ ophthalmologists: Tom Trevorrow, who kicked off his campaign with $150K out of his own pocket and hired some expensive-sounding consultants.

• SC-01: A swap in races in South Carolina means that there’s the plausible possibility of the Republicans having their first African-American House member since J.C. Watts retired. State Rep. Tim Scott dropped his bid to become the next Lt. Governor, and instead switched over to the open seat race in the 1st, where he’ll face the scions of two prominent political families: Paul Thurmond, and Carroll “Tumpy” Campbell III.

• Minnesota: Minnesota lawmakers are moving up the primary date this fall, in order to better comply with federal law that requires overseas voters get at least 45 days to return their absentee ballots. They’re planning to move the election from September, up to Aug. 10. (This is probably good, in terms of giving the winner of the DFL gubernatorial primary more time to recover from what’s likely to be a giant clusterf@ck.)

• NRCC: The NRCC will unveil more changes to its “Young Guns” program this week, with 14 new entrants to its lowest tier (“On the Radar”) and some promotions to higher tiers as well. They aren’t releasing the full list yet, but some leaked names moving onto the list include state Rep. Scott Bruun in OR-05, former state Rep. David McKinley in WV-01, and ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in PA-08. We’ll discuss this in more detail once the full list is available.

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul makes an interesting point: he’d like SoS (and GOP primary rival) Trey Grayson to recuse himself from his secretarial duties during the May election. In other words, he doesn’t want Grayson to count the votes of the election that he’s running in. (Unsurprisingly, Grayson’s spokesperson says “no.”)

• MA-Sen: An AFL-CIO post-game poll finds that a majority of labor households in Massachusetts went for Scott Brown in the special election, by a narrow 49-46 margin. The one consolation Democrats might take from that failure is that a large majority of respondents said they were “choosing the best candidate” rather than “sending a message to Washington,” which suggests that the success (or lack thereof) of the two campaigns at defining the individual candidates is the main story here.

• NY-Sen-B: This seems to exist mostly at the level of idle speculation, but people in the know are wondering whether Harold Ford Jr.’s apparent entry into the Democratic primary may open the door for other primary candidates who considered the race and then thought better of it to get back in, out of hopes they might shoot the gap in the middle.

• PA-Sen, PA-07: Pennsylvania’s Democratic party chair, T.J. Rooney, is now publicly urging Rep. Joe Sestak to “pull a Gerlach” and bail out of his Senate primary bid while heading back to nail down his suburban swing seat instead. This isn’t that remarkable, as Rooney has been outspoken all year in his desire to avoid paralyzing primaries – but you’ve gotta wonder if Sestak, who’s stalled a bit in the polls lately, is considering it in the back of his mind.

• WI-Sen: Rarely has so much ink been spilled writing about a four-word quotation (“I’m not saying no”), but with that utterance yesterday from ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson, thus begins a whole ‘nother round of speculation as to whether the 68-year-old Thompson’s unlikely bid to challenge Russ Feingold will ever materialize.

• KS-Gov: State Sen. Tom Holland sounds willing to step up and take on the job that no one seems to want: running against Sen. Sam Brownback in the open gubernatorial race in Kansas. Holland represents one of the state’s few purplish areas, with a district that includes part of college town Lawrence, but he clearly plays to win, as seen in the fact that he’s beaten two different incumbent Republicans in his state legislative career.

• AK-AL: Between being kind of old and on everybody’s “most-likely-to-be-indicted” list, Alaska’s Don Young is a tempting target, from both the left and right. He got another primary challenger yesterday: never-before-elected telecommunications executive Sheldon Fisher. Gadflyish businessman and blogger Andrew Halcro (who won 10% as an independent in the 2006 gubernatoril race) has already said he’ll run against Young in the primary, too.

• AR-01: As we reported yesterday, Rep. Marion Berry is sounding kind of unenthused about much of anything right now. Fleshing out that interview we mentioned, Berry said it’s his “intention” to run again, but, as part of a longer excursis waxing philosophical about his own mortality, wouldn’t make an absolute commitment to sticking around.

• HI-01: A fourth entrant (and a third Democrat) seems likely to get into the special election to replace retiring Rep. Neil Abercrombie: state Sen. Will Espero is starting an exploratory committee. Because of the weird all-parties, winner-takes-all nature of the election, the fear is that a Democratic pileup could open the door to a victory by lone Republican Charles Djou – but a recent Mason-Dixon poll of the race finds Djou a distant third behind well-known Democratic opponents Ed Case and Colleen Hanabusa, and it’s unclear whether Espero has the name rec to make much of a dent one way or the other on that.

• MA-10: Republicans in the Bay State are taking a renewed interest in competing in House races there, usually something that gets completely neglected. In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory, former state Treasurer Joseph Malone is now saying that he’s planning to run against Rep. William Delahunt in the 10th, which is probably the least secure district for Democrats in the state; covering Cape Cod and much of the South Shore, it’s at D+5, but the source of some of the darkest red on this week’s map. Delahunt was unopposed in 2008. The GOP is also interested in fielding candidates in the 3rd and 5th against Jim McGovern and Niki Tsongas, two other blue-collar Catholic districts that gave big margins to Brown.

• MS-01: Here’s a surprise: after painstakingly clearing the GOP field for state Sen. Alan Nunnelee and getting him off to a good fundraising start, the NRCC is now meeting with Fox News talking head Angela McGlowan about a run against Rep. Travis Childers in the 1st. McGlowan hasn’t been elected before, but she does have experience as a staff member to Sen. John Ensign.

• NJ-03: In addition to being an NFL player, NJ-03 Republican candidate Jon Runyan is apparently also a gentleman farmer in his spare time. He owns a 20-acre spread in rural New Jersey, but pays only hundreds of dollars in property taxes each year on 15 of those acres thanks to using them as farmland – in order to raise four donkeys. (I’m sure the irony of raising donkeys is lost on no one, although the land probably isn’t zoned to allow for elephants instead.)

• NY-23: The Doug Hoffman camp is touting an internal poll showing him with a big lead over potential rivals for the GOP nomination this year, including the more establishment figure of Assemblyman Will Barclay. Hoffman, still benefiting from a lot of name rec after gaining national attention from the special election, leads Barclay 56-22 in a hypothetical 4-way contest also involving would-be-picks from last time Matt Doheny and Paul Maroun.

• MA-St. Sen.: The good news is that Democrats may have a shot at picking up Scott Brown’s Senate seat in a special election (date TBA). The seat covers parts of Middlesex, Bristol, and Norfolk counties in Boston’s southwestern suburbs. 21-year state Rep. Lida Harkins says she’ll run for the Democrats; physician Peter Smulowitz also intends to run. State Reps. Richard Ross and Elizabeth Poirier may run for the GOP. The bad news? They don’t really need a pickup, as the Dems already have a 34-4 edge now (with one other vacancy in a safe Dem seat to be filled, thanks to the resignation of prison-bound Anthony Galluccio).

• Supreme Court: As you probably know, the Supreme Court opened the door yesterday to a flood of special interest money into the election process with their decision in Citizens United. The case allows corporations, labor unions, and other similar entities to make unlimited independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, although they still can’t make direct contributions to the candidates’ warchests. Rich Hasen’s Election Law Blog and How Appealing have roundups of links to many different discussions as to what all it means. (Everyone seems to agree it’s a big deal, but just how big a deal seems up for debate.)

• Census: Census Director Robert Groves is out with a timetable for all the movements that will occur over the next few months to get the Census up and running, seemingly to be executed with military precision. And if just can’t get enough Census discussion, Groves even has his own blog now.

Mason-Dixon for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin/KITV (1/8-12, registered voters):

Neil Abercrombie (D): 43

Duke Aiona (R): 34

Undecided: 23

Mufi Hannemann (D): 41

Duke Aiona (R): 35

Undecided: 24

(MoE: ±3.5%)

I expected Abercrombie to be a bit more formidable than this, although these are by no means bad numbers. Aiona, however, has stockpiled a lot money for this race, and he’s pretty well-liked: his favorable rating is 41-19, quite a bit higher than Abercrombie’s 36-29 and a shade better than Hannemann’s 38-22.

The Democratic primary, too, looks like it will be a very competitive affair:

Neil Abercrombie (D): 37

Mufi Hannemann (D): 34

Undecided: 29

(MoE: ±4.5%)

I wonder if Abercrombie expected to face such a stiff fight — but in any case, I’m sure he’s relieved to be done with all the plane rides to and from DC. SSP currently rates this race as Lean Democratic.

Now, for some good news (and bad news) from the 1st District race to fill Abercrombie’s seat:

Ed Case (D): 37

Colleen Hanabusa (D): 25

Charles Djou (R): 17

Undecided: 21

(MoE: ±5%)

The good news, of course, is that the highly-touted Charles Djou is lagging in third place in a race against not one, but two Democrats (Hawaii has a pretty strange special election situation, where everyone runs against everyone with no runoffs). The bad news, of course, is that the extremely unacceptable Ed Case has the early lead. It’s too bad we can’t see crosstabs, here, because I would love to see how many Republicans and independents Case is taking away from Djou. I’m suspecting that Case is sucking up a lot of oxygen on the right-leaning side of the political equation here.

RaceTracker Wiki: HI-Gov | HI-01

Add one more special election to the list:

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie announced today that he is resigning from Congress to run for governor full time….

The resignation will trigger a special election to fill the remainder of Abercrombie’s current congressional term which ends January 2011. The seat will also be up for grabs in the general election in November for the next two-year term.

This may not be too much of a surprise (although Abercrombie in April said he wouldn’t resign his seat), as Abercrombie needs to spend a lot of time in Hawaii to win the race, and that’s a rather long commute from Washington DC. This decision doesn’t affect the overall electoral calculus much, as Abercrombie was already in the middle of his last term, as he can’t run for House and Governor at the same time. On the Democratic side, state Senate president Colleen Hanabusa and ex-Rep. Ed Case are already running to succeed Abercrombie; Honolulu city councilor Charles Djou is running for the Republicans. Assumedly, they will all choose to participate in the special election, although they could choose to run only in the regularly scheduled election.

Abercrombie hasn’t set his final day in office, so the date of the special election won’t be known for a while. (I’m wondering if we could have a weird circumstance like Abercrombie’s first election to the House, where on the same day he won the special election to take over the House seat but lost the Democratic primary for the full term.)

UPDATE: If the special election held in 2003 to replace Patsy Mink (which is how Ed Case won) is any indication, it looks like Hawaiian special elections are just one big pool of people from all parties, with the first-past-the-post winning the whole thing (instead of a primary and then a general). If so, that could set up a weird scenario where Djou narrowly wins the special election because Hanabusa and Case split the majority of Democratic votes (say 40% Djou, 35% Hanabusa, 25% Case).

LATER UPDATE (James): In the comments, local SSPer skaje makes the case that the special election will only hurt Djou’s chances by splitting the right-of-center vote with Ed Case. It’s an interesting argument, and I have to admit that this thought crossed my mind. There’s no denying that Case has based a lot of his appeal on his position on the rightward side of Hawaii’s political equilibrium, but whether or not we see Republican-leaning voters splitting may end up hinging upon the type of campaign that Case chooses to run.

LATE LATE SHOW UPDATE (David): When would a special election occur? Essentially, whenever the Chief Election Officer wants to. According to Hawaii statutes, the only requirement is that the “CEO” must conduct a special election within sixty days of making a proclamation that there will be a special election. But the law is silent as to how soon such a proclamation must be issued. Indeed, CEO Kevin Cronin says that his department is strapped and that there may not even be a special election, or may be delayed until the September primary. Another wrinkle is that Cronin recently announced he was stepping down at the end of this month, so the decision may not fall to him.

RaceTracker Wiki: HI-01

• MN-Sen: Our long national nightmare is finally over: Senator Al Franken was sworn in today, without any weird last minute gambits by Norm Coleman. Harry Reid announced he’ll be on the HELP, Judiciary, Aging, and Indian Affairs Committees.

• KY-Sen: Jim Bunning, via his regular teleconference with reporters, reminds us that he’s still running for Senate. Bunning also thinks that he won’t outraise SoS Trey Grayson (who raised $600,000 in the 2nd quarter) for the quarter, but it doesn’t matter because Grayson won’t stay in the race if Bunning stays in too.

• OR-Gov: Here’s a surprise: Democratic rising star state Rep. Brian Clem suddenly made his presence known in the Oregon governor’s race, launching an exploratory committee and filling up his coffers with a $500,000 loan from his mother-in-law. The 37-year-old Clem, who has represented part of Salem since 2006, implied that he wouldn’t pull the trigger on a run, though, if former Gov. John Kitzhaber got into the race.

• SC-Gov: Mark Sanford may get to keep his job after all (thanks in part to Sarah Palin creating a distraction). The state GOP voted yesterday to censure Sanford over his doomed tango, rather than call for his resignation.

• HI-01: Roll Call takes a quick look at who might run for the seat being left behind by Rep. Neil Abercrombie. Top of the list is Ed Case, a Blue Dog who used to represent HI-02 but gave up his seat for an ill-fated primary run against Sen. Dan Akaka and pissed off a lot of the Democratic base along the way. They also cite state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, former state House majority leader Kirk Caldwell, state Democratic Party chair Brian Schatz, and also Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, who’s currently exploring the governor’s race but conceivably could switch races if he doesn’t get any traction in the primary against Abercrombie. Also, we can’t rule out Republican Honolulu city councilor Charles Djou, who seems well-thought-of but faces a steep climb given the state’s lean.

• IL-07: CQ provides a similar laundry list of potential candidates in IL-07, assuming Rep. Danny Davis leaves an open seat to run for President of the Cook County Board instead. Davis’s former Chief of Staff Richard Boykin tops the list, but there’s also state Reps. LaShawn Ford and Karen Yarbrough, state Sen. Rickey Hendon, and Aldermen Dorothy Tillman and Ed Smith. (No mention of any Republicans here, unsurprising since it’s D+35.)

• NY-03: Here are some folks who’d especially like Rep. Peter King to Beat It, following his Off the Wall remarks disparaging the nonstop coverage of Michael Jackson. They’ve started “Michael Jackson Fans Against Peter King” on ActBlue and have already raised several thousand dollars for whoever steps up to run in the 3rd.

• NY-14: With Rep. Carolyn Maloney looking more likely to follow through on her Senate primary challenge, state Sen. Liz Krueger, whose turf closely overlaps the 14th, has been getting a lot of encouragement to run for the open seat. Krueger sounds politely interested, saying “I’ve never been in Congress so I don’t know if it’s less frustrating. But I suspect pretty much any job in the United States of America would be less frustrating than Albany in the last three weeks.”

• NY-23: A potentially strong candidate for the GOP nomination in the upcoming NY-23 special election has taken himself out of consideration: Assemblyman Will Barclay. Unfortunately for us, this may make the primary path easier for moderate GOP Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who would be a tougher general election foe; the more conservative Barclay, remember, was the loser of the state Senate special election to Darrel Aubertine last year. Two other minor GOPers added their names to the list as well: YMCA director Andrew Bisselle and businessman Bart Bonner.

• OH-15: His candidacy was already well in the works, but GOP former state Senator Steve Stivers made it official today that he’s seeking a rematch against Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy, who barely won the open seat in 2008. Stivers may have an opening in 2010 if there’s less Obama-driven college turnout in this district dominated by Ohio St., and no pro-life independent candidate siphoning votes from his right flank.

• TN-09: Burned-out Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton seems to have a pattern and practice of delaying his planned resignations whenever things don’t quite go right for him. Herenton, who’d planned to resign in order to devote himself full-time to his primary challenge to Rep. Steve Cohen, pushed back his resignation date (planned for July 11) to July 30, citing some unfinished items of business.

• House: The Hill throws together an interesting catch-all of ten “dark horse” House races, one of which is already threatening to be top tier (TX-10), one of which features an intriguing Dem primary (FL-02), and some of which are interesting because of changing demographics (TX-32) or changing political tides (all three Dem seats in Arkansas).

• DGA/RGA: In keeping with the sense that the real battlegrounds in 2010 are going to be the gubernatorial races, the DGA and RGA are both raising like gangbusters. The DGA raised $11.6 million in the first half of the year, a record for them, but the RGA nosed ahead of them, raising $12.2 million.

• Census: A coalition of Colorado local governments joins New York’s legislature in laying out its own funds to help assist the Census Bureau in putting together an accurate count by reducing undercounting. While Colorado isn’t likely to gain or lose a House seat in 2010, it’s still important in terms of securing federal funds, and with much of the state’s growth coming among Latinos, the risk of undercounting is high.

• Campaign Finance: Florida’s Republican SoS, Kurt Browning, has decided not to appeal a federal court’s ruling that found a state law regulating 527s was unconstitutional. With major implications for the Florida governor’s race, now 527s can operate without disclosure requirements on who they are and who funds them. (Florida has strict $500 limits on individual contributions, so 527s are especially important there.)

• Trivia: Wondering who the last Governor to resign in mid-term to focus on a presidential run was? New York’s Nelson Rockefeller, in 1973. He never made it to the presidential run, although he did wind up briefly serving as Gerald Ford’s fill-in vice-president.

• DSCC: Friend of SSP and once-and-future DKos editor Arjun Jaikumar (f/k/a brownsox) is not just the DSCC’s new media guru – he’s also up for The Hill’s 50 Most Beautiful in DC. Vote for the good-looking bastard by sending an email. (D)

We’re going to try out a new feature for weekday afternoons here at Swing State Project: four or five links to various items that we want to get out there but don’t feel like investing a diary’s worth of effort on. Enjoy the bullet points! (We encourage you to add your own bullet points in the comments, and otherwise treat this as an open thread.)

• UT-Sen: Daily Kos polls the 2010 Utah Senate race, where the action appears to be in the primary, but Bob Bennett looks safe for another 6 years. Bennett beats David Leavitt 44-23 in the primary, and, in the general, manhandles Rep. Jim Matheson 55-32 and Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings 57-21, not that we should expect either of them to run.

• OH-Sen: A third Dem has jumped into the primary field for the 2010 Senate race: state representative Tyrone Yates. He doesn’t have the stature of Fisher or Brunner, but as the only African-American and only Cincinnati-area candidate, he may well complicate things.

• WA-08: The first Dem challenger has announced, and it’s another wealthy ex-Microsoft executive, Suzan DelBene. Don’t look for her to have the field to herself this time, though.

• MN-Sen: In an indication that the Coleman camp has exhausted every possible legal argument that can win in court, he’s moved onto arguing that it was basically a tie so let’s just have a do-over election. Not the kind of thing that someone who has a hope of winning in court ever says.

• Census: The Congressional Black Caucus is pushing the White House to keep the Census within its portfolio even though reliable Dem Gary Locke will now be taking over at Commerce.

• Blogospheria: Blogger brainpower (including Jane Hamsher, Glenn Greenwald, Markos Moulitsas, and Nate Silver) and union bucks come together in the new Accountability Now PAC. The goal is to pressure (and where there’s a good target, primary) bad Dems and create more space for good Dems to maneuver on the left.

• RI-01: Republican state representative John Loughlin is strongly considering a suicide mission against challenge to Rep. Patrick Kennedy. Kennedy got 69% against no-names in his last two elections, but apparently his approval ratings are softening.

• HI-01: In another district where you might be surprised to know there’s an elected Republican, Honolulu city councilor Charles Djou has announced his candidacy for HI-01, which is expected to be vacated by Neil Abercrombie as he goes for governor. Djou claims the endorsement of every Republican in Hawaii’s legislature (all 7 of them).

• NC-Sen: Former state treasurer, and gubernatorial primary loser, Richard Moore won’t be getting involved in the Dem primary to take on Richard Burr in 2010. The field looks clearer for AG Roy Cooper.