Tag: IL-08

2:00am: We’ve crossed the threshold into 99% of the vote reporting; Quinn’s lead over Hynes is 5,400, while it’s a little thinner for Brady, who’s up on Dillard by 1,484. Even if we hit 100% reporting at some point tonight, both sides may head to recounts.

1:15am: Still waiting on more numbers, but here’s an interesting bit of trivia: despite winning only 21% of the vote, it looks like Brady won 61 of the state’s 102 counties.

12:50am: Things are still stalled at 98% reporting in the governor’s race. Quinn’s up by about 5,000 on the Dem side, 50.3% to 49.7%. On the GOP side, it’s Brady has a 1,700 vote edge over Dillard, 20.6% to 20.4% (with McKenna in 3rd at 18.9%). Who would’ve ever thought Brady, who’d polled in fourth place for the most part, would pull it out? Looks like he consolidated the Downstate vote while everyone else tore each other apart in the Chicago metro area.

12:07am: It looks like Dillard should be able to pick up about 1,300 votes in the oustanding precincts (most of which are in Cook County). But that won’t be enough.

11:53pm: What a wild ride — with 97% in, Bill Brady is back up over Kirk Dillard by over 2100 votes. How many times did the lead for this race change hands tonight?

11:44pm: Over in IL-10, Julie Hamos has conceded to Dan Seals.

11:39pm: 96.3% in now, and Quinn has expanded his margin over the past few minutes to a bit under 5200 votes. With a lot of the outstanding precincts coming from Cook, Quinn looks like he’ll end up on top — but just barely. For the GOP, Dillard leads Brady by a cool grand.

11:30pm: Ethan Hastert has conceded to Randy Hultgren. Aaron Blake says Hastert has pledged to help Hultgren, unlike the helpful Oberweis/Lauzen debacle. Sigh.

11:25pm: The kids down at the SSP Labs Skunkworks have been furiously scribbling on the backs of envelopes. They tell us that if the remaining precincts follow existing trends, Quinn is likely to pick up about 2,000 more votes on Hynes.

11:20pm: 93.9% of the vote is now in, and Quinn leads by 0.6% (or 5,400 votes). The problem for Hynes is that half of the outstanding precincts are in Cook County — I’m not really sure if the outstanding votes downstate will give him enough juice to overcome that deficit.

11:10pm: With 93.1% now in, Quinn’s lead is now at 0.6%. For the GOP, Dillard has leap-frogged ahead of Brady by 2,200 votes.

11:07pm: Looks like Dan Seals has pulled out a squeaker in IL-10. With 99.2% of votes counted, he leads 22,267 to 21,605.

11:04pm: Note to Patrick Hughes and Adam Andrzejewski: The Illinois filing deadline for independent or third-party candidates is not until June 21st. You still have a second chance!

11:01pm: 91.3% of the vote is now in, and Quinn still leads by 0.8%. Note that the slightly Quinn-friendly DuPage County is now 86.5% in, and 8.3% of the vote is left uncounted in the more Quinn-friendly Cook.

10:56pm: For the GOP, Brady leads Dillard by about 3000 votes. (McKenna, in turn, trails Dillard by another 3000.)

10:54pm: With 87% in, Quinn’s lead over Hynes is down to 0.8%. DuPage is now half-in, and 9.6% of precincts are outstanding in the marginally Quinn-friendly Cook County.

10:53pm: Shira Toeplitz of Roll Call says that Hoffman has conceded.

10:51pm: Randy Hultgren seems to have this one sewn up – 54-46 lead with only 12% outstanding.

10:47pm: The Hill’s Aaron Blake says Beth Coulson has conceded IL-10 – Bob Dold! wins.

10:41pm: 82.6% of the vote is now in, and Quinn’s lead has been whittled down to 1.2%. For the GOP, Brady leads Dillard by almost 4000 votes.

10:36pm: With 81% of the vote in, Quinn holds stead at a 1.4% lead, but he’s only stemming the bleeding now that more votes are being counted in Cook (where just over 10% of the vote is outstanding). For the GOP, Brady now leads, and McKenna has slipped behind Dillard to third place. Plenty of time for that to flip around, though.

10:29pm: Photo finish? With 79% in, Quinn leads Hynes by 1.4%. For the GOP, McKenna, Brady, and Dillard are in a three-way race for the gube nod — the trio are separated by just 2000 votes.

10:23pm: They spark a fast joint in the 10th CD: Dan Seals is now up by almost 700 votes with just 2.5% remaining. And Randy Hultgren is now up 7 points.

10:22pm: Some more MN-Gov news: On the GOP side, Marty Seifert is cleaning up in the precinct caucuses, 55-34 over Tom Emmer. This will be hard for Emmer to claw his way back from… Seifert probably has to be seen as the favorite for the Republican nomination now.

10:20pm: 75% of the vote is now in, and Quinn’s lead inches down to 1.6%. And it looks like they’re taking a ganja break in IL-10.

10:17pm: 73% of the vote is now in, and Quinn leads Hynes by 1.8%. Alexi’s looking a lot more comfortable with a 4.2% lead.

10:12pm: More non-Illinois news: In Minnesota’s precinct-level caucuses, Margaret Anderson Kelliher and and RT Rybak have about 19% apiece. “Uncommitted” is in third with 14%.

10:08pm: 67% in, and Quinn’s lead has been cut down to 2.4%.

10:04pm: With 64% in (and 86% in Cook County), Quinn leads Hynes by 2.8%. Hynes is counting on the outstanding downstate votes to give him a win, but Quinn is also leading in the early DuPage county returns — and less than 10% of the vote has been counted there.

10:01pm: Sadly, in IL-03, Daniel Lipinski is winning his primary with about 77% of the vote. Not that anyone expected his unknown opponent to put up much of a fight. Still, Jorge Mujica is getting 22%… not much worse than the well-funded and somewhat-highly touted Mark Pera got in 2008 (26%).

9:56pm: It’s time for a new thread. Hultgren is up 52-48 over Hastert, with 40% reporting.

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RESULTS: Associated Press | Chicago Tribune | Sun-Times | Politico

9:57pm: Please join us in our new thread.

9:54pm: The Dem gov race is also tightening – Quinn is now up just 3.2% with 58% in.

9:53pm: Alexi’s lead is back down to 3.5% with 59% of the vote in – but is there any way for Hoffman to catch up?

9:50pm: IL-10 just got a lot tighter – Seals’ lead has shrunk to 48.1-46.5. But only 12% of precincts are left to count.

9:45pm: The GOP gov race is really, really tight. Andy McKenna is at 21.5, Kirk Dillard at 19.2, Jim Ryan at 17.2 and Bill Brady, also at 17.2 Adam Andrzejewski, the favorite of teabaggers and Lech Walesa, is all the way back in fifth place. My advice to him: Run as an independent this fall.

9:42pm: In non-Illinois news, Democrats have actually picked up an open seat in the Kentucky state House tonight, winning the seat that Republican Jimmy Higdon left behind after winning a special election to the state Senate. Nice score!

9:37pm: Quinn now leads by 4.6%, and Alexi by 4.3%.

9:35pm: Check out IL-14, where Randy Hultgren is ahead of Ethan Hastert by 51-49 with 9% in.

9:34pm: In IL-10, Seals now leads Hamos by 4.1% with 66% in. Bob Dold! leads by 9.

9:32pm: It looks like Alderman Toni Preckwinkle has won the Cook County Board Presidency.

9:31pm: Alexi is up by just 3.8% now, with 43% in. Quinn is up 5.

9:28pm: In the open-seat SoS Dem primary, it’s a dogfight between Miller and Krishnamoorthi – Miller is up 47-46.

9:25pm: In IL-10, Seals now leads Hamos by 5.3%, while Bob Dold! is cruising by over 8% with 54% in.

9:23pm: Quinn now leads by 5.6%, and Alexi is up by 4.2%. For the GOP, McKenna and Dillard are now both ahead of ex-AG Jim Ryan.

9:17pm: In IL-14, Ethan Hastert has a mere 51-49 lead over Randy Hultgren, with just 3% reporting. Brothers and sisters, let us all pray for a protracted, nasty recount.

9:15pm: In IL-11, Adam Kinzinger is cruising with 62% of the vote. Is that low? Is that high? You tell me.

9:13pm: In IL-08, Some Dude Joe Walsh leads the pack with 34% with about 42% of votes counted. The winner here gets the privilege of taking on Melissa Bean.

9:11pm: In IL-07, Danny Davis, who had vacillated between running for re-election and seeking the Cook County Board Presidency, is taking about two thirds of the vote. Not terrific for an incumbent, but the remainder is split between several candidates.

9:05pm: As for the gube race, Quinn leads Hynes by 6.8 points on the nose, while Alexi leads Hoffman by 4.5%. Hoffman has widened his lead in Lake County, but that’s more than offset by Giannoulias’ strong performance downstate. With almost 39% reporting in IL-10, Seals leads Hamos by 51.5-43.1. For the Republicans, Bob Dold! leads Coulson by about 10 points.

8:55pm: The thing is, it seems like most of the big names on tonight’s ballot call Chicago home… so it’s hard to say who, if anyone, ought to be cleaning up in the Windy City.

8:52pm: Dave Wasserman tweets that Hoffman is only up narrowly in Lake County, a place where he should have expected to do well, and suggests it’s a good sign for Alexi.

8:49pm: In IL-10, Dan Seals is up 51-44 over Julie Hamos with about 8% reporting. Bob Dold leads Elizabeth Coulson for the GOP nod, 38-30.

8:47pm: To no one’s surprise, Mark Kirk is running away with the GOP nomination. My advice to Patrick Hughes: Run as an independent this fall.

8:45pm: So with 16% of the vote in on the Dem side, Quinn has a narrow 53-47 lead. For the GOPers, Andy McKenna leads with 27%, while Ryan, Dillard and Andrzejewski are at 20, 19, and 17 respectively.

8:42pm: Politico has much quicker results. In the Senate race, it’s 37A-30H-26C, while Quinn is up 54-46 in the gov contest.

8:39pm: I don’t know why the AP is being so slow – Lake County has already counted a bunch of votes. FWIW, they have Hoffman and Hynes up.

8:27pm: Congrats to the folks in DeKalb County, who clock in with the first precinct (out of 11,215) of the night.

8:24pm: Pass the dutchie ‘pon the left hand side….

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Polls are now closed in Illinois, where we’ve got hot Democratic and Republican primaries up and down the ticket. (For a full review of the biggest races to watch, check out DavidNYC’s preview.) We’ll be using this thread to track the results as they come in.

RESULTS: Associated Press | Chicago Tribune | Sun-Times | Politico

The 2010 primary season kicks off on Tuesday in Illinois. In 2008, the state moved its presidential primary to the new super-early “Super Tuesday,” and also moved its regular primaries, which used to be in March, up as well. They haven’t been moved back for the midterm elections, so Illinois gets play New Hampshire and host the “first-in-the-nation” primaries this year. (For a complete, sortable calendar of 2010 primaries, click here.) Below is a roundup of some of the key races to watch for:

• IL-Sen (D): Democrats have a three-way race to nominate a successor to Barack Obama (well, technically, to Roland Burris’s mausoleum). State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias leads in the polls, but his numbers are only in the 30s. It’s possible that a late surge by former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman (or, somewhat less likely, Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson) could up-end this race. Giannoulias is getting pounded for his family’s involvement in a failed bank – a particularly toxic piece of baggage in this environment. A recent Rasmussen poll had him up 31-23 over Hoffman (Jackson was back at 13), so an upset is within the realm of possibility.
• IL-Sen (R): The Republican contest is, sadly, much less interesting. “Moderate” Rep. Mark Kirk compiled a voting record over the years which ought to enrage any full-blooded teabagger, but he successfully pirouetted to his right during the primary. This seems to have kept real estate developer and wingnut Patrick Hughes from gaining any traction – polls show Kirk cruising. The real question at this point is whether Kirk’s rightward shift will come back to haunt him in the general.
• IL-Gov (D): Last summer, when state Comptroller Dan Hynes decided to challenge incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn in the primary, it seemed like a weird choice. Quinn had just ascended to office in the wake of Rod Blagojevich’s impeachment and seemed pretty popular. And as the year chugged along, polls kept showing Quinn with healthy leads. But Hynes turned the volume way up over the last couple of months, going sharply negative on Quinn on a range of issues, including crime. Now polls have the race a tossup, though Hynes is almost certainly peaking at the right time and could very well knock off a sitting governor. That’ll be one hell of a long lame-duck period. Ouch.
• IL-Gov (R): The GOP nomination is truly up for grabs – at least four guys probably have a legit shot at the nod (take a look at the crazy Pollster.com graph). Former state AG Jim Ryan was the early favorite, but he seemed to be relying heavily on name recognition. That’s given former state GOP chair Andy McKenna a chance to raise his profile via a massive TV ad campaign, and it looks like he may have the late mo’. Kirk Dillard and Billy Brady probably have a chance to sneak through as well.
• IL-08 (R): Six different Republicans are vying to challenge Dem Rep. Melissa Bean. Despite the seemingly favorable environment for GOPers, no one of any stature wound up getting into this race, probably because of how handily Bean dispatched well-funded opponents in both 2006 and 2008. With any luck, this won’t be a race to watch come November.
• IL-10 (D): Mark Kirk’s swingy suburban Chicago district is the only open seat in Illinois this cycle (so far), and it’s attracted a lot of interest on both sides. Marketing consultant Dan Seals, the Dem nominee in 2006 and 2008, has the edge in name rec, but he lost to Kirk twice, in back-to-back strong Dem cycles. Rep. Julie Hamos might therefore have an opening, if 10th District Dems want to give a new face a shot. In a possible sign of Seals fatigue, Hamos has outraised him 2-to-1 (a mil to about half a mil). Still, the only released poll of this race was a Seals internal which gave him a 50-point lead. Don’t scoff: He won his last primary, against the well-funded Jay Footlik, by about 60 points.
• IL-10 (R): The race to be the next Mark Kirk has come down to state Rep. Beth Coulson, businessman Bob Dold and another businessman, Dick Green. (I love that super-vague epithet, “businessman.”) Coulson’s moderate profile seemed to make her a good fit to inherit Kirk’s mantle, but Dold has raised a lot of money and seems to be exciting conservatives. Green has also spent a lot, but it’s mostly been his own campaign cash. There haven’t been any polls of this race, so to me the question is whether Coulson will get Scozzafava’ed, or will Green and Dold split the winger vote and let her escape? We’ll see soon enough.
• IL-11 (R): Iraq veteran Adam Kinzinger was annointed by the establishment early on as the favorite to take on freshmen Dem Rep. Debbie Halvorson, and that predictably means outsider conservatives have been gunning for him. Still, his opponents in the primary are a joke – Kinzinger’s raised some $400K, his nearest competitor, $1K. I’ll be curious about his final tally at the polls, though, just to see how warmly (or coldly) the teabaggers really do feel about him.
• IL-14 (R): The Republicans are hard at work smashing each other on the head in the battle to take on Dem Rep. Bill Foster. Foster, as you’ll recall, snatched this seat in a special election two years ago. It was held by none other than former Republican Speaker of the House Denny Haster, whose son Ethan is one of two contenders trying to win this district back for the GOP. The other is state Sen. Randy Hultgren, who is more or less running as “not-Hastert” (several other candidates dropped out in favor of Hultgren so that the anti-Hastert vote would not get split). The campaign has turned extremely nasty: Hultgren was recently forced to launch an apologetic robocall after he sent out a mailer accusing Hastert of supporting human trafficking. Dems are hoping for a repeat of 2008, where a vicious GOP primary ultimately helped Foster at the polls. (This year, though, there’s a lot more time for wounds to heal before the general.)

There are, of course, plenty of other primaries at all levels taking place in Illinois on Tuesday. If you know of any other interesting races, please let us know in comments.

• VA-Gov: It’s grown exceedingly hard to see a path to victory for Creigh Deeds in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. The polls aren’t closing (if anything, the gap may be widening), and there’s less than two weeks until election day. What’s more, the highest echelons of the Democratic Party are now distancing themselves from Deeds, saying he rejected Barack Obama & Tim Kaine’s “road map to victory.” The Swing State Project is therefore changing its rating on this race from Lean R to Likely R. (D)

Also, while the second-guessing has begun, PPP suggests that it’s just a bad year for Dems and/or a strong opponent in Bob McDonnell: they found that if Tim Kaine had been able to run for re-election, he’d be losing too, 51-43. Nevertheless, 57% think that governors should be able to run for re-election in Virginia (which is the only state left that doesn’t allow gubernatorial re-elections), with 35% opposed. Still, Kaine probably wouldn’t be running anti-cap-and-trade ads as Deeds is doing in the state’s southwest; with the public option already with the Deeds’ bus treads all over it, it’s one more reason for the Democratic base to lose interest in him.

• CA-Sen: The war between movement conservative candidate Chuck DeVore and the NRSC just keeps building. DeVore is calling attention to a seemingly loose-lips quote from Carly Fiorina that “the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee has encouraged me to enter the race, reaffirming my belief that Chuck DeVore cannot beat Barbara Boxer,” which he says contradicts the NRSC’s claim they haven’t endorsed in the race. Of course, that’s not really an endorsement per se, but his camp also claims that the NRSC has rebuffed his attempts to dialogue with them.

• IA-Sen: Wealthy attorney and one-time Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roxanne Conlin seems to be moving closer to a matchup with Chuck Grassley. She’s says she’s “more likely than not” to step up. While Grassley would start out with the edge, it would push one more competitive race onto the map for 2010.

• MA-Sen: Rep. Michael Capuano pulled down the endorsement of the state’s biggest union in his Democratic primary bid in the special Senate election: the 107,000-member Massachusetts Teachers Association. Capuano has a 96% rating from the MTA’s national affiliate, the National Education Association.

• NV-Sen: Former Assemblywoman Sharron Angle has made it official: she’s getting into the Nevada Senate race. She had sounded hesitant earlier, but she’s emboldened either by her fundraising or by the general climate for conservative candidates right now to jump in. This sets up a confusing and potentially bloody 5-way primary in the Nevada GOP primary (although there’s likely to be some field winnowing before then), and potentially, Angle could sneak through with, say, 33%, if she consolidates the hard-right/Club for Growth/teabagger vote (remember that she was the CfG’s candidate in the open seat primary in NV-02 in 2006, where she barely lost to Dean Heller). With the opposition consisting of an establishment-backed but empty-suitish candidate in Sue Lowden, a random rich guy (John Chachas), a random name-recognition guy (Danny Tarkanian), and Mark Amodei as seemingly what passes for a moderate in the race, she seems likeliest to become the standard-bearer on the movement conservative right, especially if she somehow gets a CfG endorsement again. And the hard-right Angle would be a rather less imposing general election candidate for Harry Reid than, say, Lowden.

• NY-Sen-B: Former Governor George Pataki seems to be taking note of polls showing him competitive with Kirsten Gillibrand in the Senate race, although he doesn’t sound enthusiastic about it. His spokesperson tells the Daily News that he’ll make a decision about the race in the coming weeks, but “friends” say that he’s leaning toward “no.”

• UT-Sen: The name of Tim Bridgewater (the former Utah County GOP chair who’s lost several primary elections) surfaced earlier in the year in connection with a GOP primary challenge to Bob Bennett in the Senate race, but faded away as AG Mark Shurtleff seemed to gobble up all the oxygen to Bennett’s right. Suddenly, Bridgewater’s back, saying he’ll join the primary field.

• GA-Gov: Rasmussen has another poll of the gubernatorial primaries in Georgia; the only news is that Thurbert Baker seems to be gaining on ex-gov Roy Barnes. Barnes still has a big lead on the Dem side at 43 (42 in August), followed by Baker at 19 (up from 9 in August), David Poythress at 4, Dubose Porter at 4, and Carl Camon at 3. On the GOP side, Insurance Comm. John Oxendine is in command at 27, with Karen Handel at 12, Nathan Deal at 9, and Eric Johnson, Ray McBerry, and Austin Scott all at 3.

• IL-Gov: Rasmussen also looked at the Illinois governor’s race, apparently as part of their IL-Sen sample from last week; since nobody seems to know who any of the Republicans are, they just ran a Generic D/Generic R ballot, which Generic D won, 43-36. Incumbent Dem Governor Pat Quinn clocks in with approvals that are much lower than any other pollster has seen, at 45/53.

• ME-Gov (pdf): PPP polled the Maine governor’s race as part of its poll on Question 1, and finds what R2K found a few weeks ago, which is that nobody has any idea what’s going on. As with R2K, they found “not sure” dominating the head-to-heads and even the favorability questions. Unlike R2K, though, they found that moderate GOP state Sen. Peter Mills matches up well against the Dems, beating state Sen. President Libby Mitchell 34-31 and ex-AG Steve Rowe 33-25. Mitchell beats rich guy Les Otten 34-26, but Otten beats Rowe 28-26. Meanwhile, one more sorta-prominent Republican now says he’s seriously considering the race: Steve Abbott, who’s currently Susan Collins’ chief of staff.

• NJ-Gov: Two more polls split the difference between Jon Corzine and Chris Christie in New Jersey. Democracy Corps, who’ve usually been Corzine’s most favorable pollster, finds a 3-point race, with Corzine at 42, Christie at 39, and Chris Daggett at 13. SurveyUSA, on the hand, has tended to lean toward Christie and continue to do so, giving him a 2-point lead, with Christie at 41, Corzine at 39, and Daggett at 19. Christie, for his part, is turning for help to the one Republican in New Jersey that most people still like: ex-Governor Tom Kean, who just cut a TV ad on Christie’s behalf.

• RI-Gov: Businessman Rory Smith has announced his candidacy on the Republican side for Rhode Island governor. Insiders are comparing him to current GOP Gov. Don Carcieri, who was also a little-known businessman before winning in 2002; unlike Carcieri, though, Smith is socially liberal. He may have the field to himself; little-known state Rep. Joe Trillo, who was viewed as the default frontrunner after former Senate candidate Stephen Laffey declined, recently said that he too is leaning against the race.

• AK-AL: Trouble just keeps following Republican Rep. Don Young around, and there’s more of it today. A retired oil industry exec from VECO, Bill Allen, told the Justice Department that his company gave paid for fundraising events for Young to the tune of $130K to $195K, and also gave gifts to Young which didn’t get disclosed. This provides the first hard evidence linking Young to the same VECO scandal that took down Ted Stevens last year. Young has not been charged in the matter, although suspicion was cast his way in previous VECO-related testimony. Young, who narrowly won in 2008, faces another competitive race in 2010 (assuming he’s still in office at that point) from Democratic state Rep. Harry Crawford.

• IL-08: On the “some dude” front, businessman (and apparently, not the former Eagles guitarist) Joe Walsh (who ran unsuccessfully against Sidney Yates in the 9th back in the 90s) announced that he’ll run against Melissa Bean in the 8th.

• NY-23: Now that all the cool kids are endorsing Doug Hoffman, the floodgates are starting to open among the cognoscenti of the conservative movement: Rick Santorum endorsed, and so too did former presidential candidate Michael Steve Forbes. Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, who seems like he’s still trying to decide whether to be establishment or movement in 2012, has his finger in the air but said he’ll probably endorsed and gave a clue by saying he had issues with the way Scozzafava got the nomination.

• VA-05: Also on the “some dude” front, businessman and first-time candidate Ron Ferrin got into the overstuffed Republican field to go against freshman Rep. Tom Perriello. State Sen. Robert Hurt seems to have the inside track, though.

• VA-St. House: One other worry for Democrats in Virginia is that Creigh Deeds’ seeming negative coattails could cost them some seats in the state House of Delegates (where the GOP has a 53-43 edge, with 2 R-caucusing indies and 2 vacancies). Not Larry Sabato gives a preview of the hot races there, helpfully breaking it down into Tossup, Lean, and Likely for us. They see 2 GOP seats and 3 Dem seats as leaning toward takeovers, with 5 true tossups, but a strong McDonnell performance could push things more in the GOP direction.

• Campaign Finance: Here’s an interesting development on the campaign finance arena, although experts are still trying to sort out just what it means. The FEC won’t appeal an appellate court decision that would allow outside groups to spend significantly more money on elections. The case was brought by EMILY’s List; the decision allows them and other 527s to use soft money (in addition to hard money) to pay for ads and GOTV. The Obama administration’s Solicitor General, Elena Kagen, however, can still appeal the case without the FEC’s involvement.

• 2010: It sounds like some of the more timid members of the House Democrats were in need of a pep talk, so Chris Van Hollen of the DCCC sent around a memo with a nice list of bullet points on why 2010 won’t be 1994.

• FL-Sen: Is ex-Rep. Mike Bilirakis, under official consideration from Gov. Charlie Crist to serve as an interim placeholder in the Senate, taking the appointment process seriously? The St. Petersberg times digs up Bilirakis’ submitted questionnaire (.pdf) and says that the hand-scribbled document looks “like he filled it out while driving”. He also left some key questions, like “Have you ever been party to a lawsuit?”, blank.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias may claim to be Barack Obama’s BFF, but look who just signed up Obama ’08 guru David Axelrod’s consulting firm to work for his campaign: newly-announced candidate David Hoffman, who yesterday resigned as Chicago’s Inspector General.

• LA-Sen: Now that Charlie Melancon has made his Senate bid official, state Sen. Eric LaFleur, who was previously courted as a potential Democratic candidate for the race, says that he’ll be supporting Melancon for the race.

• GA-Gov: Strategic Vision has dipped its barometer back into the Georgia gubernatorial primaries, and finds little meaningful change since last month’s poll. For the Republicans, Oxendine leads with 39%, followed by 13% for Nathan Deal and 12% for Karen Handel. In the Democratic primary, ex-Gov. Roy Barnes leads the pack with 45%, followed by AG Thurbert Baker with 29%. Poythress and Porter are still mired in the low-single digits.

• NJ-Gov: Chris Christie’s once-vaunted rep as a Corruption Fighter™ has taken a pounding this month. Yesterday came another roundhouse kick to the jaw: Back in 2005, Christie was pulled over for speeding and (it turns out) driving an uninsured and unregistered sail barge automobile. Despite the officer writing “NO DEAL” on the ticket, Christie was allowed to drive home and later got some of the charges dropped – it seems he may have scuzzily tried to pull rank as US Attorney. And guess who was with him at the time? None other than former aide Michele Brown, who resigned two days ago. (D)

• NM-Gov: Bill Richardson is breathing a sigh of relief with the news that the investigation into allegations of pay-to-play politics under his watch at the governor’s office is now officially over with no indictments. Meanwhile, actor Val Kilmer’s flirtation with the open seat gubernatorial race is now officially over.

• VA-Gov: Creigh Deeds is out with a new radio ad in which one of the narrators anoints him as “that underdog guy”, while the Republican Governors Association’s Common Sense Virginia PAC is launching TV and radio ads hitting Deeds on wasteful spending. Of course, as Steve Singiser points out, the RGA only a month ago attacked Deeds and the DGA when they formed a similar PAC, calling it a “shadow organization”.

• CA-02: GOP Rep. Wally Herger, at a recent town hall meeting, praised an attendee who called himself a “proud right-wing terrorist”. “There is a great American,” Herger said of the man, named Bert Stead. Now Herger is doubling-down, refusing to apologize for praising the man and taking the opportunity to trash liberals for calling their political opponents “political terrorists”. The only problem, though, is that HuffPo has the video of Stead identifying himself as a proud terrorist!

• CA-45: Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson resigned over the weekend due to health reasons, and last night passed away. After Wilson’s resignation but before his passing, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, running as a Dem against GOP Rep. Mary Bono Back, recommitted his focus to the congressional bid, saying that a run for the supervisor seat is “not at all” being considered.

• IL-08: The NRCC is hoping to wrangle Maria Rodriguez, the Village President of Long Grove (pop. 6,735), into a run against now-established Dem Rep. Melissa Bean. Rodriguez says that “it’s an interesting proposition” that she’s taking under consideration, but Bean is still riding high off a 60-40 win over briefly-touted GOP businessman Steve Greenberg in 2008.

• IL-10: The NRCC may be happy to have moderate state Rep. Beth Coulson in the race to replace Mark Kirk, but she’ll have company in the GOP primary. Businessman Dick Green, the CEO of Briefing.com, made his candidacy official today, and took the opportunity to lash out at “career politicians”.

• KS-02: Frosh Rep. Lynn Jenkins, to fellow travelers at a town hall event: “Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope.” Jenkins’ spokesbot shoved foot in mouth even further with this “apology”: “There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope. What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They’re bright lights within the party.” Good luck with that. (D)

• MT-AL: Here’s something that somehow slipped our notice. Research 2000, dipping its toes into Montana for Daily Kos, tested GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg’s approvals and re-elects. Rehberg’s sitting on a 46-45 approval rating — lower than either of the state’s Democratic Senators — and has a 39% re-elect rating (27% say they will definitely vote to replace him, and another 34% say they will consider voting for another candidate). Those aren’t particularly formidable numbers.