Tag: Will Espero

• 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.