SSP Daily Digest: 2/1

MI-Sen: This looks like a tea leaf that Peter Hoekstra isn’t a likely Senate candidate for 2012: he’s joining big DC law/lobby firm Dickstein Shapiro, a popular destination for outgoing Congresspeople and certainly not the usual route for someone who wants to keep in touch with the little people back home. (Current “senior advisors” there include Dennis Hastert, Tim Hutchinson, and Albert Wynn.)

MN-Sen: Norm Coleman comes right out and says it explicitly: he’s not going to run against Amy Klobuchar in 2012 (although he didn’t rule out eventual other runs). Not that anyone rational was expecting it, but now we can check that box.

NV-Sen: Cue up some doomy soundtrack music for John Ensign: despite his having dodged the DOJ, the Senate Ethics Committee has decided to plow ahead on its inquiry of him, just in time for the cycle where he’s up for re-election. Today a special counsel in l’affaire Ensign was announced.

NY-Sen: Going up against Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012 (in the wake of her cresting 60% in the down year of 2010) seems like an unenviable task for any Republican, and the duties might fall to former Lt. Gov. turned health insurance industry astroturfer Betsy McCaughey. Speaking before a confab for New York’s Conservative Party, when asked about the race, she said she’s “considering it.”

WA-Gov: We can’t officially shut the door on a highly-unusual run for a third term by Chris Gregoire until she actually says “no” herself, but state Dem party chair Dwight Pelz is publicly saying that he’s looking ahead to electing a new governor in 2012. Don’t expect Gregoire to say anything until the end of the legislative session, though.

WV-Gov: Get out your calendars and your red pen, because it looks like things are getting switched around yet again in West Virginia. The state House passed a bill authorizing the upcoming elections (including a primary, which wasn’t considered a done deal because of the cost involved), but they’ve moved the dates around again. Now the primary date is May 14 (instead of June 20), and the general special election date is Sept. 13 (instead of Oct. 4). Of course, that’s only the House version, so the state Senate could monkey around with it even more. Meanwhile, one Republican candidate is already exiting the field: state party chair Mike Stuart, who probably saw the writing on the wall given his 1% showing in PPP’s sample of the primary. A few more GOPers that we haven’t mentioned before are thinking about getting in to replace him, though: state House minority leader Tim Armstead, and state Del. Mitch Carmichael.

CT-05: This is a bit of a surprise, and ought to create a wide-open Republican field in the open seat race created by Chris Murphy’s quest for a Senate seat. State Sen. Sam Caligiuri, who made a competitive race of it in 2010, says he won’t run again in 2012.

MT-AL: As Denny Rehberg-related rumors got ramped up over the last few days, there’s been a corresponding rise in rumors that Steve Daines (the Republican businessman who lost the 2008 Lt. Gov. race and announced a Senate bid in November) might bail out of the Senate race and drop down to the now-open House race instead. That would be a bit of a turnaround for Daines, who had already consolidated some backing from right-wing orgs for a possible tea-flavored primary rumble, but the House is a path of much less resistance for him. No confirmation from Daines today, but as of yesterday he sounded open to the idea.

State legislatures: This article about how state legislature constituencies are getting too populous for legislators to maintain effective old-school communications with their voters is most noteworthy for its neat interactive graphic. You can compare the legislator-to-constituent ratio for each state (unsurprisingly, California and Texas are the worst, while North Dakota and New Hampshire are the best).

Fundraising: We have fundraising numbers from 2010 Q4 for five different Senate Dems up in 2012, and we’ll start with the weakest link: Dan Akaka, who has $66K CoH. (Not that that should presage retirement or even encourage Linda Lingle, as he doesn’t really fundraise outside the cycles where he’s up for re-election; he had $83K at this point six years ago.) Next up: Jim Webb, who has $444K CoH but raised only $12K last quarter, a number that by itself screams retirement… but as we know, Webb marches to his own drummer and could turn that around quickly. Ben Nelson is also in camped out in the land of the mediocre (and of the potential retirees), raising only $81K, though he has a more robust $1.4 million CoH.

Jeff Bingaman, on the other hand, seems to be heading for another term, albeit in slightly lukewarm fashion, raising $216K last quarter; he has $511K CoH. Debbie Stabenow is looking pretty aggressive, by contrast: she raised $537K and has more than $2 million CoH. One Republican to report on, as well: Orrin Hatch, likely to face a serious primary, raised $400K and is sitting on $2.5 million CoH (compared with Jason Chaffetz’s $140K CoH).

Redistricting: Here’s more on the growing worries from plugged-in Republicans that they don’t have the money in place to effectively fight the legal battles associated with redistricting. The sense is that they’re victims of their own success: they spent so much money on winning state legislatures last year that they didn’t leave any leftovers budgeted for the aftermath.

SSP Daily Digest: 3/22 (Afternoon Edition)

CA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell is getting an endorsement that may boost his cred with the socially conservative right: from the man who couldn’t even beat Gray Davis, Bill Simon. Simon hopes socially conservative voters will still take a look at Campbell’s fiscal credentials.

IN-Sen: Retiring Evan Bayh hasn’t said anything specific about what he’s doing with his gigantic $13 million federal war chest. But a spokesperson gives some hints: “What he has said is that you can expect him to help the Democratic Senate nominee in Indiana and to help like-minded Democrats – people who want to get things done, who are practical and who want to reach out and forge principled compromises.”

KY-Sen: Jack Conway is pointing out an important ideological fracture line, which seems to have gotten little media attention in the Democratic primary in the Bluegrass State. Conway says he supports the health care legislation passed yesterday, while Dan Mongiardo has previously said he’d “throw it out and start over.”

NH-Sen: Speaking of HCR, Kelly Ayotte was quick to abandon her previous flavorless, position-less campaign and get on the “repeal!” bandwagon. With Paul Hodes having been a “yes” in the House, this may become one of the marquee issues in this race, and by extension, the battle for the Senate.

NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has a new poll out of the Empire State which includes a couple head-to-heads in the Senate race. They just won’t let up on the George Pataki front, finding that he leads Gillibrand 45-39 in a hypothetical race, while Gillibrand leads actual candidate Bruce Blakeman 48-24. There are a couple other names on the “actual” candidate front they might want to try out instead — Joe DioGuardi and David Malpass — and now it looks like one more is poised to get in. Dan Senor apparently has enough Wall Street support behind him to go ahead and launch his bid. One other name who’s now saying she won’t run, though, is former Lt. Gov. and malfunctioning health insurer spokesbot Betsy McCaughey, who it turns out is backing Malpass.

MI-Gov (pdf): It turns out there was a lot more meat to that Insider Michigan Politics/Marketing Resource Group poll than what got leaked on Friday. They also looked at the Democratic primary, finding state House speaker Andy Dillon in charge at 21, followed by Lansing mayor Virg Bernero at 9 and state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith at 6. They also did a whole bunch of general election permutations, all of which were won by the GOPers by suspiciously large margins (at least when compared with other recent polls): Mike Bouchard over Dillon 41-26, Mike Cox over Dillon 44-27, Peter Hoekstra over Dillon 43-27, Rick Snyder over Dillon 42-26, Bouchard over Bernero 45-23, Cox over Bernero 45-26, Hoekstra over Bernero 43-27, and Snyder over Bernero 44-24.

NY-Gov (pdf): Naturally, Siena also has a gubernatorial half to its poll. They find newly-minted Republican Steve Levy’s entry to the field to be rather unwelcome: ex-Rep. Rick Lazio is beating him 45-16 in the GOP primary. Either way, Democratic AG Andrew Cuomo (with a 63/22 approval) seems to have little to worry about; in November, Cuomo beats Lazio and Libertarian candidate Warren Redlich 59-21-3, while beating Levy and Redlich 63-16-4.

OH-Gov: John Kasich is still reaching out to teabagger nation as his core of backers, and consistent with that, he’s having Fox gabber Sean Hannity host a Cincinnati fundraiser for him on April 15. I sure hope Kasich gets a bigger cut of the proceeds than Hannity’s military charity recipients seem to.

OR-Gov: The last big union left to endorse in the Democratic gubernatorial primary finally weighed in, and Oregon’s AFSCME went with ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber rather than ex-SoS Bill Bradbury, who’d gotten the teachers’ union endorsements. The AFSCME also endorsed newly appointed Treasurer Ted Wheeler in his primary bid against state Sen. Rick Metsger, and also, in an unusual step, endorsed two Republican state Reps. in rural eastern Oregon who voted “yes” on raising income taxes, probably figuring that non-wingnut GOPers is probably the best we’re going to do in those districts.

LA-02: Republican Rep. Joe Cao probably ended any hopes of hanging onto his dark-blue (and 21.7% uninsured) seat by voting against health care reform yesterday, but just in order to emphasize the way in which he slammed the door shut on himself, he also compared abortion as a moral evil comparable to slavery. Because that’s a comparison just bound to go over well in his black-majority district.

MA-10: Former Republican state Treasurer (from the 1990s) Joe Malone made it official: he’s running in the 10th to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt. He’ll still have to get past state Rep. Jeff Perry in the GOP primary, though.

PA-06: Manan Trivedi and Doug Pike traded union endorsements in their Dem primary battle in the 6th. Trivedi got the backing of the Iron Workers local, while Pike got the nod from the local AFSCME.

PA-12: Bill Russell seems like he just can’t take a hint, despite the GOP uniting behind Tim Burns. Russell says he’ll write himself in for the special election between Burns and Democrat Mark Critz, in addition to continuing to contest the same-day GOP primary against Burns. Meanwhile, the pro-life Critz’s main opponent remaining, Navy vet Ryan Bucchanieri, got an endorsement that ought to give him a financial boost, from the National Organization for Women.

WV-01: We’ve heard rumors that the local Democratic establishment wasn’t very enthused about propping up Rep. Alan Mollohan, who faces both a credible primary challenge and a self-funding Republican opponent. Here’s some of the first public whiff of that: the state Democratic chair, Nick Casey, says he won’t be taking sides in the primary battle between Mollohan and state Sen. Mike Oliverio (although he did predict that Mollohan would be the eventual victor).

Redistricting: Cillizza has a little more background on the Democrats’ efforts to gear up for the 2012 redistricting battles, which we discussed last week in terms of the DLCC’s efforts. The DGA is getting in on the act, too, with a Harold Ickes-led effort called Project SuRGe (for “Stop Republican Gerrymandering”), also focused on maximizing Dem control of state legislatures.

Votes: Lots of slicing and dicing in the media today regarding who voted which way, and why, on yesterday’s historic health care reform vote. Nate Silver has a bunch of nice charts up, which show that district lean and Reps’ overall ideology was much more determinative than whether the Rep. is considered vulnerable in November in terms of a “yes” or “no” vote. And Some Dude over at Salon has a more concise look at Reps who most mismatched their districts with their votes. Finally, if you want to see the “(some) Dems are still doomed” conventional wisdom in full effect, they’ve got that in spades over at Politico.

Passings: Our condolences to the Udall family, which lost family patriarch Stewart Udall over the weekend. Udall, 90, was Congressman from Arizona and then John F. Kennedy’s Interior Secretary, and many of our environmental protections that we take for granted today bear his stamp.

$$$: The fundraising quarter is almost over, and Adam B. is opening up another round of “We’ve Got Your Backs” over at Daily Kos (and cross-posted here), dedicated to showing some (financial) love to the House Dems in the most difficult districts who did the right thing on health care reform.

SSP Daily Digest: 3/18 (Afternoon Edition)

NV-Sen: It’s starting to look like the investigation into John Ensign may really take off. The DOJ is actually serving subpoenas to at least six different Las Vegas area businesses, as they expand a criminal probe into the tangle of quid pro quos that arose as Ensign tried to find lobbying work for cuckolded friend Doug Hampton.

CA-Gov: Usually politicians wait to say this kind of thing privately instead of publicly, but maybe Jerry Brown, as is his way, is engaged in some sort of Jedi mind trick. Brown openly encouraged his union allies to start spending now in the governor’s race and to go on the attack against likely GOP opponent Meg Whitman, so that he can stay “the nice guy” in the race.

MI-Gov: Chris Cillizza has access to a new poll from Inside Michigan Politics/Marketing Resource Group, which looks at the Republican primary in the Michigan Governor’s race. It’s more evidence that businessman Rick Snyder’s splashy spending and catchy “one tough nerd” ad has turned this into a real three-way race. The poll finds AG Mike Cox and Rep. Peter Hoekstra tied at 21, with Snyder right there at 20. Oakland Co. Sheriff Mike Bouchard trails, at 10.

NY-Gov: Guess who doesn’t like the idea of running a Democrat for the Republican nomination for Governor (even if NY GOP head Ed Cox seems to think it’s the best idea since sliced bread)? The RNC has threatened not to put money into New York races (and note that says “races,” not just the Gov’s race) if Democratic Suffolk Co. Exec Steve Levy winds up the GOP’s nominee. Meanwhile, David Paterson‘s case just gets weirder and weirder, as now he’s saying he himself was the anonymous source for the NYT story on his interceding on his aide’s behalf.

WY-Gov: It’s still not clear that state Sen. Mike Massie is going to run for Governor on the Democratic side, but it is looking like he’s planning to move up. He confirmed he won’t run for his Senate seat again, although he’s interested in Superintendent of Public Education as well as Governor.

NY-24: Chalk Rep. Mike Arcuri up as a “no” vote on health care reform. This comes despite the threat of losing the Working Families Party line in November, which will probably imperil his chances of re-election more so than any Republican votes he might pick up (which will probably equal zero, regardless of how he might vote on HCR).

NY-29: Corning mayor Tom Reed has a bright idea on how to pay for the special election caused by Eric Massa’s resignation: make Massa pay for it, out of the money in his campaign fund (which is roughly equal to the actual cost of holding the election). Not that it’s going to happen, but it raises an interesting question: is there a legal mechanism for Massa to write a $644K check to the state of New York out of his account?

PA-12 (pdf): There’s a second poll of the 12th, from a slightly more established pollster (although one who still requires a grain or two of salt): Republican pollster Susquehanna. Their numbers are pretty close to the weird robopoll from yesterday, finding Democrat Mark Critz leading Republican Tim Burns 36-31. Bad news for Dems: by a 49/44 margin, voters want to turn away from a candidate who, in the John Murtha tradition, supports earmarks for the district. Good news for the Dems: of the undecideds, 67% are Democrats, meaning that Critz has more room to grow.

VA-11: Rich guy Keith Fimian is up with his first radio ad in the 11th, attacking Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly for saying, in reference to the stimulus, “I want to be there with all four paws and snout in the trough.” Um, yeah… except Connolly was saying that long after the stimulus passage, making fun of Eric Cantor’s hypocrisy on the issue. Too bad snark tags don’t translate to radio very well.

NY-Something: Former Republican Lt. Governor, and then unsuccessful former health care industry spokesbot, Betsy McCaughey, apparently is looking for a way into the Republican field in one of the various statewide races in New York; she’s been polling both races. (There’s one small wrinkle: she’s still registered as a Democrat, and voted in the 2009 Democratic primary. She became a Dem after George Pataki dropped her from his 1998 ticket, and tried to run against Pataki as a Dem instead.)

Votes: After all the sturm and drang surrounding the cloture vote, the final vote on the Senate jobs bill was pretty uninteresting, with 11 different GOPers crossing the aisle to vote for it: Alexander, Bond, Brown, Burr, Cochran, Collins, Inhofe, LeMieux, Murkowski, Snowe, and Voinovich.

WATN?: A must-read editorial in today’s WaPo comes from ex-Rep. Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, whose despite her two years in the House looms large in history as the decisive vote on the 1993 Clinton budget, which is usually assigned as the reason for her loss in 1994. She pushes back against the mind-numbing Beltway conventional wisdom that your electoral survival depends on bucking the party line on the tough votes, and seems to be weighing on the minds of members like the aforementioned Mike Arcuri. A wave is a wave, and it takes out those in unsafe districts who vote for or vote against; the key is to not let the wave become a wave in the first place:

Votes like this are never a zero-sum game…. While it is easy to say my balanced-budget vote cost me reelection, that assumes the line of history that followed the bill’s passage. Had I voted against it, the bill wouldn’t have passed, the Republican opposition would have been emboldened, the Clinton presidency would have moved into a tailspin . . . and all of this could have just as easily led to my undoing.

Simply put, you could be Margolies-Mezvinskied whether you vote with or against President Obama. You will be assailed no matter how you vote this week. And this job isn’t supposed to be easy. So cast the vote that you won’t regret in 18 years.

There’s still one strange contention in her piece: that “I was in the country’s most Republican district represented by a Democrat.” Sorry, not even close: that district would’ve been R+4 at the time, based on its 1988 and 1992 results, good for 51st most Republican held by a Democrat. Even though she famously got bounced out in 1994, the 13th was promptly back in Democratic hands in 1998, courtesy of Joe Hoeffel (and now, thanks to trends in the Philly suburbs and thanks to redistricting, it’s a safe Dem district). The most Republican district held by a Dem in 1993? FL-01, then held by Earl Hutto, at R+20. (Hutto retired in 1994, giving way to… wait for it… Joe Scarborough.)