Tag: Don Carcieri

Virginia and Rhode Island don’t have a lot in common, except for the fact that PPP just put out Republican primary numbers for both states this week. So we figured we’d bundle `em up into one post.

Public Policy Polling (PDF) (2/24-27, VA Republican primary voters, no trendlines):

George Allen (R): 67

Bob Marshall (R): 7

David McCormick (R):3

Jamie Radtke (R): 4

Corey Stewart (R): 3

Undecided: 18

(MoE: ±4.9)

This is disappointing news for anyone – such as myself – hoping to see George Allen get teabagged. In a one-on-one matchup against Republican Jesus (aka “someone more conservative”), Allen wins by 52-25 – impressive numbers, and far better than anyone else PPP has asked this question of. The important thing to remember, though, is that in 2010, the most important factor in whether an establishment candidate could be successfully teabagged to death was the involvement of the Tea Party Express. Though they’re a bunch of grifters who keep the lion’s share of what they raise for themselves, they’re also capable of changing elections. The Club for Growth can do this, too (and did so, in the NY-23 special), though they seem to be playing ball with the GOP bigs more often these days.

If Allen doesn’t cheese off TPX, or if they simply decide he’s too strong, then he may well just cruise to the nomination. I have a hard time seeing Bob Marshall gaining much traction (i.e., raising much money) without some outside help. (Anyhow, the most interesting news out of Virginia is just how well Obama is doing there: 48-42 over Mitt Romney and bigger margins against everyone else.)

Public Policy Polling (PDF) (2/16-22, RI Republican primary voters, no trendlines):

Don Carcieri (R): 44

Scott Avedisian (R): 12

Buddy Cianci (R): 12

John Loughlin (R): 12

John Robitaille (R): 12

Allan Fung (R): 6

Catherine Taylor (R): 2

Giovanni Cicione (R): 0

John Robitaille (R): 31

John Loughlin (R): 24

Scott Avedisian (R): 21

Allan Fung (R): 14

Giovanni Cicione (R): 3

Catherine Taylor (R): 2

Undecided: 6

(MoE: ±6.2)

As Tom notes, Carcieri, the immediate past governor, actually performs the worst of all Republicans against Whitehouse. However, no one’s actually confirmed a run, so who knows who the GOP nominee will be. (For what it’s worth, Romney, the former governor of next-door Massachusetts, unsurprisingly cleans up in the presidential race.)

• AK-Sen: Last Friday, Joe Miller finally pulled the plug on continued legal challenges to Lisa Murkowski’s win in the 2010 election, despite earlier comments that standing down was not an option. (Apparently it actually was an option if no one could be found willing to foot the legal bill for a trip to the 9th Circuit.) So now the 2010 election really, truly is over. And in case Miller was going to get any bright ideas about what do to in 2012, Rep. Don Young (no stranger to primary challenges from the right, having barely survived a CfG-led purge in the 2008 primary) is already firing some shots over Miller’s bow with his rusty old harpoon gun.

• FL-Sen: Depending on who you listen to, George LeMiuex either is or isn’t about to launch a Senate bid. Roll Call’s Steve Peoples says no, pointing to not only LeMieux’s weak poll numbers and ambivalent-sounding statements but also his new cushy job as chair of the board of directors of one of the state’s largest law firms (a decidedly different role from being there just as a part-time rainmaker/show pony). Other observers have noticed he’s been sounding out potential consultants for a run, though, including GOP ad impresario Fred Davis, fresh off such smashing successes as Christine O’Donnell’s “I am not a witch” ad and the anti-Patty Murray tennis shoe ad. Meanwhile, Rep. Cornelius McGillicuddy IV (or Connie Mack, as he’d prefer you call him) is gearing up for a run, if a recent fundraising letter citing a run against Bill Nelson sent around by Mack (and Jeb Bush) ally Jorge Arrizurieta is any indication.

• ME-Sen: Affordable-housing developer Rosa Scarcelli got some good buzz during her run in the Democratic gubernatorial primary last year, and now she’s talking a bit about a Democratic run for the Senate in 2012. However, she seems to be reserving judgment, waiting to see whether the promised teabagging against Olympia Snowe ever happens, saying any decision would depend greatly on that.

• OH-Sen: In what’s certainly not a surprise, Mike DeWine (perhaps compelled to say something after faring pretty well in one of PPP’s recent let’s-test-everyone Senate polls) says he won’t consider running for his old Senate seat in 2012, having just successfully hit the ‘reset’ button his career with an election to the state AG slot. Newly-elected Lt. Governor Mary Taylor seems to be the top GOP option here, but for now she’s simply saying it’s too early, but isn’t ruling out the possibility (and also saying that no one from the national party has contacted her about it, which stretches the boundaries of credulity).

• PA-Sen: Remember back in the spring of 2010, when the DC press corps, for a couple slow news days there, actually willingly ran with the idea that the allegation that a political job offer was sorta-kinda relayed from the Obama administration to Joe Sestak was the Watergate-esque moment that was going to bring the entire Obama edifice down? Um, yeah… now that it’s not an electoral talking point and now that Darrell Issa’s is actually in charge of Oversight, he’s admitting that that isn’t a line of inquiry that he’s going to pursue, seeing as how, in his own words, Republicans “did the same thing.” (Sighing loudly and walking away shaking head.)

• RI-Sen: Keep an eye on outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri, who while not saying anything tangible about a Senate run, said a number of candidate-ish things in a recent interview, including “I’m not going away” and “I have views, national as well, so I intend to be visible.”

• UT-Sen: Here’s an interesting take on the redistricting issues surrounding Utah’s new fourth House seat: one possible outcome would be the Republicans packing all the state’s Dems into one seat in order to avoid weakening any of the other three. And while superficially that might seem to benefit Rep. Jim Matheson, that could actually hurt him by making the district too liberal for Matheson (one of the remaining high-profile Blue Dogs) to win a primary (the article cites former SLC mayor Rocky Anderson as a potential rival). The article also suggests that could instead push Matheson into a Senate run, especially if it’s against the more polarizing Jason Chaffetz instead of Orrin Hatch (although I’d think a gubernatorial run might be likelier, seeing as how that’s up in 2012 again and Utah is one of those red states that’s more forgiving of Dems at the state level than for federal office).

• IN-Gov: Rumors are bubbling up that Democratic Evansville mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel is making moves to be the first to declare his candidacy for the 2012 gubernatorial race, mindful of the advantages that accrue to early declarers.

• MS-Gov: Today Republican Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant is finally making official his candidacy for the 2011 Mississippi gubernatorial election, an open seat as his boss hogg Haley Barbour is termed-out. While Bryant’s stiffest competition will probably occur in the GOP primary (where possible opponents include the delightfully-named SoS, Delbert Hosemann), businessman and Democratic candidate Bill Luckett also appears to be making it official today.

• WV-Gov: I’m wondering if maybe Shelly Moore Capito has let people know that she’s not running for Governor? It seems like the floodgates have suddenly opened for lesser GOPers to declare their interest in the race, starting with ex-SoS Betty Ireland last week, but now the state’s GOP party chair, Mike Stuart, is also publicly talking himself up for the role. Of course, no one has any idea yet whether that special election will happen in 2011 or 2012.

• AZ-08: Jesse Kelly, who narrowly lost to Gabrielle Giffords in November, is rumored to be moving toward a rematch. His odds would seem to be slimmer in a rematch, as Latinos and youth voters are likelier to show up in a presidential year, but he may figure he has an ace in the hole, in the form of the likely presence of a Kelly ally, Christopher Gleason, on Arizona’s ostensibly independent redistricting commission, who might be able to tinker with the boundaries in a more GOP-friendly direction.

• NV-04: Cue the hordes of screaming fans, weeping with joy and fainting from sheer ecstasy: Rory Reid, fresh off his domination in the Nevada gubernatorial race, is the subject of speculation that he might be bringing his own special brand of dynamism and excitement to the open House seat that will be created in the Las Vegas suburbs. (For his part, Reid won’t confirm or deny it yet.)

• Chicago mayor: It looks like the African-American community may actually be coalescing around a single non-Rahm candidate in the mayoral race, with the dropout of Rep. Danny Davis from the race. He (along with state Sen. James Meeks, who also dropped out several weeks ago) lent his support to ex-Sen. Carol Mosely Braun, the last one standing. (Note that this is the second time Davis has tried to run for municipal office and then done a U-turn back to his House seat in the last year.) Don’t start writing the saga of an Emanuel/Braun runoff just yet, though, as ex-schools chief Gerry Chico is a major wild card here, and now it looks like he has the money to back that up: he reports he raised $2.5 million for the race last quarter, a number that would be boffo even in many Senate races.

• History: The Univ. of Minnesota’s Smart Politics blog occasionally comes up with real historical gems like this one, using the possibility of a Russ Feingold run for Herb Kohl’s seat as a springboard for looking at Senators throughout history who’ve leapt from one state’s seat to the other. Only two current Senators (Kent Conrad and Frank Lautenberg) meet that criteria, although some other famous names have done so (including Hubert Humphrey and Barry Goldwater). However, neither Conrad nor Lautenberg did so because of a loss (the most recent example of that would be Washington’s Slade Gorton, though UMN finds nine other historical examples).

• Photos: This is one of those precious photos that’s worth a thousand words, one that Eric Cantor probably already wishes he’d re-thought. (H/t to Brian Valco for this and several other of today’s links.)

• AK-Sen: Tomorrow is now the expected date for the ruling from a state superior court judge on Joe Miller’s suit contesting 8,000 ballots (over spelling) and also alleging various instances of voter fraud. There’s an injunction in place that keeps the race from being certified until this case (which started in federal court and got moved) has been decided, although the judge is conceding that whatever he decides, it’s likely to get immediately appealed to the Alaska Supreme Court.

News also comes today that Joe Miller wound up finishing the Alaska Senate race with over $900K still in hand, an outrageous sum given how cheap the Alaska media market is. Much of that was intended to go toward post-game legal expenses, and some of that may have been the same problem that plagued other teabagger fundraising dynamos (like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle), of not being able to find any ad slots to spend the money. Also worth a read: a wrapup over at Daily Kos from the Scott McAdams campaign’s media guy, especially his recounting of the adventure he went through to find the Incredible Hulk tie that appeared in McAdams’ TV spot. Finally, we’ll let Kagro X get the last word in on the state of the Alaska race:

Joe Miller keeps fighting on, like a 90 year old Japanese commando on a forgotten island…

• FL-Sen: The Florida GOP primary is looking like it’s going to be a very crowded affair after all: Adam Hasner, the former state House majority leader, has suddenly bubbled up over the last few days as a possible if not likely candidate. If the name sounds familiar, he considered and decided against a run in FL-22 this year; he’s one of the few Republicans from the Gold Coast and, in addition to being a key Marco Rubio ally, could tap quickly into Jewish Republican fundraising circles.

• PA-Sen: It’s looking more and more like Bob Casey Jr.’s challenger is going to come not from the U.S. House but the ranks of the state Senate; the question, though, is which one? The newest name to surface is Kim Ward, who says she’s starting to test the waters. She’s from Westmoreland County, maybe the most conservative of the once-blue, now-swingy collar counties around Pittsburgh, giving the GOP hopes they might eat into Casey’s strong backing in SW PA.

• RI-Sen: Don’t rule out soon-to-be-ex-Gov. Don Carcieri (who’d probably be the only Republican who could make this an interesting race here) from Senate race consideration. The 68-year-old two-termer says he isn’t ruling it out, but wants to take some time off before thinking about it.

• VA-Sen: George Allen is definitely acting candidate-ish now; having laid down markers against possible primary challenger Corey Stewart, now he’s moving on to direct attacks on Jim Webb (who, of course, may or may not be running for re-election), over voting against the earmark ban and the horrible sin of supporting collective bargaining rights for public safety officers.

• LA-Gov: Still no word on whether a strong Dem will get into the Louisiana governor’s race, but The Daily Kingfish takes a very interesting look at the field of possible challengers to Bobby Jindal, whose numbers indicate he’s popular but not bulletproof. They handicap the odds on a collection of possible challengers; interestingly, the guy they give the greatest odds to is ex-Dem John Kennedy (who presumably would take on Jindal while still wearing the “R” badge, although I guess anything’s possible in Louisiana, where party labels seem to get taken on and off like so much laundry). They also float the possibility of a Mary Landrieu run, in that she may be eager to bail out of Washington before her next re-election in 2014.

• WV-Gov: With a pileup of half a dozen Dems interested in the 2012 (or 2011?) gubernatorial race, who’s running for the GOP? The Beltway rumor mill seems, this week, to have Shelly Moore Capito more interested in going for the Gov race than the Senate or staying in the House. While she’d be the undisputed heavyweight, a few other second-tier GOPers are making their interest known (although it’s unclear whether they’d bother if Capito got in). Most prominent is ex-SoS Betty Ireland, one of the few GOPers around who’s held statewide office, and who had briefly considered running for Senate this year. State Sen. Clark Barnes is the only Republican who has committed to the race so far.

• CO-03, VA-11: Republican Keith Fimian, who came within a thousand votes of Gerry Connolly, is publicly saying he’s interested in another run. He wants to wait and see what the district looks like after redistricting before committing one way or the other, though. One other rematch that may or may not be on the table is Dem John Salazar in Colorado’s 3rd, who narrowly lost the reddish district to Scott Tipton and “is open” to a rematch.

• House: Politico takes a quick look at the Republicans that Democrats in the House are most likely to target in 2012. I don’t think any of the names (mostly surprise victors in Dem-leaning swing districts) will surprise any devoted SSP readers: in order, they discuss Chip Cravaack, Ann Marie Buerkle, the Illinois Five (especially Bobby Schilling), Blake Farenthold, Renee Ellmers, and Allen West.

• Votes: The DREAM Act passed the House today (although it looks like, so many other pieces of legislation, its next stop is a slow Senate death by neglect). It’s an interesting vote breakdown, with 38 Dems voting no (mostly Blue Dogs, and mostly ones on their way out the door) and 8 Republicans voting yes (almost all the non-white GOPers, along with the newly-liberated Bob Inglis). Most puzzling “no” vote may be Dan Lipinski, whose safe blue IL-03 is significantly Latino, and getting more so every day.

• Census: This is a strange video to go viral, but I’ve been seeing lots of links to this new video from the Census Bureau today, a catchy little explanation of what reapportionment is and how it works. Also a helpful Census Bureau release today: a release schedule of all the various parts and pieces that will be necessary for the redistricting process. The big enchilada, of course, is the reapportionment breakdown, which will be released at some point before the end of the year, although they’re still not specifying which date. According to today’s release, state numbers on race (down to the block level) will be out in February, so I’m sure there’ll be flurry of activity with Dave’s Redistricting App at that point.

• AK-Sen: Is there anyone other than Joe Miller left who wants Joe Miller to keep contesting the Senate race? The state GOP organization is now saying it “stands ready to embrace Lisa Murkowski” as the winner of the race, despite her not having won its primary. I’m sure they were secretly ready all along to do so… recall that the person issuing the statement, state party chair Randy Ruedrich, was the guy that Joe Miller was trying to orchestrate a palace coup against, which got him fired from his Fairbanks borough job. I can’t imagine much love lost between Ruedrich and Miller.

• IN-Sen: Richard Lugar, who just announced that he’s running for re-election, is laying down a pretty big marker (and one that probably helped convince him to run again). He’s out with an internal poll from American Viewpoint that, while it doesn’t specifically poll the 2012 GOP Senate primary, shows him with huge approvals, though apparently among all voters and not just registered Republicans. He’s at 66% favorable. Two of his potential GOP opponents, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock and state Sen. Mike Delph, have faves of 14% and 7% each.

• ND-Sen, NM-Sen: This Politico article doesn’t actually contain any hard facts that are newsworthy, but it does contain one alarming sentence, that both Kent Conrad and Jeff Bingaman are “weighing retirement” (without anything beyond that). Conrad and Bingaman, though both long-timers, are still in their early 60s. Buried deep in the article is also a throwaway line that Jon Kyl is also the subject of retirement “speculation.”

• NJ-Sen: That tea party push to have a recall election for Bob Menendez (despite, of course, the universally accepted legal principle that you can’t recall federal officials) seems to have finally died, courtesy of the New Jersey Supreme Court. I’m just surprised the case rose that far through the courts before, y’know, someone thought to crack open their 1L Con Law textbook, but the bright side is that every dollar right-wingers spend on pointless appellate legal fees is a dollar not spent on actually electing somebody. Menendez is up for a regularly scheduled election in 2012, anyway.

• NV-Sen: Everyone seems in a fit of instant nostalgia for Sharron Angle today, with the revelation that in the course of the campaign she said “Sometimes dictators have good ideas” (in reference to Augusto Pinochet and privatized pension systems), and the leaked release of the ad that she cut that never got released, probably because it takes a minute to make a point that should take five seconds and because the 70s-disaster-flick-style overacting overshadows any possible message. (You can click here to see the ad, bearing in mind that it opens in Windows Media Player.) The real news that got leaked today that might impact the 2012 race, though, is that none other than John Ensign helped Sharron Angle prep for her debate by playing the part of Harry Reid. I wonder if that’ll be the last nail in the coffin for the reputed Reid/Ensign non-aggression pact?

• RI-Sen: Add one more potential name to the roster for a Republican challenger to Sheldon Whitehouse: the state’s GOP chair, Giovanni Cicione (who has been encouraging outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri to run, as well as floating his own name as a last resort), is touting John Robitaille as a possible candidate. Robitaille (Carcieri’s former communications director) performed above expectations in the gubernatorial race in which he was supposed to be a sacrificial lamb, finishing second (though helped along by Frank Caprio’s last-minute implosion).

• VA-Sen (pdf): PPP’s Virginia Senate poll had a GOP primary portion that just got released separately; right now, George Allen is the consensus pick, although that may have more to do with the ex-Gov. and ex-Sen.’s broad name rec compared with the rest of the field. Allen is at 46, with the very-unlikely-to-run Eric Cantor at 18, right-wing AG Ken Cuccinelli at 16, Lt. Gov. Bill Boling and ex-Rep. Tom Davis both at 4, and state Del. Bob Marshall (who almost sneaked into the 2008 Senate nomination) at 2.

• NY-01, NY-25: Good news in the 1st, bad news in the 25th. Tim Bishop has made up some ground, as of the second day of absentee counting. Bishop picked up 108 votes on Randy Altschuler, cutting Altschuler’s lead down to 275, and that’s with Smithtown, Altschuler’s strongest area, having almost entirely reported. Bishop’s strongest turf is East Hampton, which will begin counting tomorrow. Ann Marie Buerkle, however, gained a small amount of ground in the 25th, contrary to expectations. Her lead is up to 824 votes, after a batch of small batch (230) of challenged ballots from Monroe County got opened and counted. The county to watch, though, will be Onondaga County, which is Dan Maffei’s base and where 7,000 absentees are yet to be counted.

• Redistricting: There are three different redistricting articles out today that are worth a read. One is about Texas, where it seems like the GOP is extended about as far as it can go (thanks to victories in TX-23 and likely TX-27); compounding the problem there is something that I’ve been pointing out for years, which is that at least two, possibly three, of its expected four new seats are going to have to be VRA seats, seeing as how the vast majority of Texas’s growth in the past decade has been among Hispanics. Trying to limit the creation of new Hispanic-majority seats will only make it harder to protect Quico Canseco and Blake Farenthold.

There’s also a piece looking at Nevada, more specifically the fight within the Dem-controlled legislature about for whom to tailor NV-04 (which will probably be a Dem-leaning suburban district, conceding a GOP-leaning NV-03 to Joe Heck). Both state Senate majority leader Steven Horsford and new state Assembly speaker John Oceguera have their eyes on the new seat. Finally, there are questions in Florida about just who’s behind the lawsuit, fronted by a bipartisan coalition of Mario Diaz-Balart and Corrine Brown, to stop implementation of Amendment 6, the one bright spot from Florida on Election Day (a new initiative that makes gerrymandering more difficult). The Orlando Sentinel traces the money trail back to a number of state legislators’ groups, including one led by GOP state Sen. Don Gaetz, the guy who… big surprise… is tasked with leading redistricting for the state Senate.

• AK-Sen: The big news out of Alaska is that Joe Miller is now suing to disenfranchise bad spellers. It’s probably his only path to victory, forcing the state to adhere to a strict absolutely-spelled-correctly standard for “Lisa Murkowski” instead of a looser standard of analyzing voter intent. Miller’s lawyer is asking a federal judge for a hearing this afternoon, seeing as how the state is planning to begin the process of checking and counting the 92,000 write-in ballots cast. Miller did get a leg up from the absentee count (of 27,000 additional ballots) issued yesterday, though. Murkowski went into yesterday leading by 13,439 votes (a 7% spread) and came out leading by 11,333 (a 5% spread). That’s not the end of the absentee and early-vote count, either; another 12,000 remain to be counted, on top of all the write-in analysis.

• MA-Sen: I wonder just what the heck Marty Meehan is planning to do with his millions of dollars ($4.5 mil — compare that with likely candidate Mike Capuano’s $91K CoH!) in cash on hand, currently getting moldy in some bank vault. The ex-Rep. and current university president deferred on yet another Senate run, saying he won’t challenge Scott Brown in 2012. At any rate, even with the most-loaded potential challenger out (short of Some Millionaire showing up and swamping the race with self-funding), the Beltway CW still is still treating Scott Brown as the most endangered GOPer for 2012, and that seems to have gotten amplified with the generally-strong top-to-bottom performance of Dems last week in the Bay State, suggesting that the Senate special election may have operated in its own little unusual vacuum.

• ME-Sen: Turnabout’s fair play, I guess. With the DC press trying to drum up some drama out of (possibly non-existent) GOP overtures to get Joe Manchin and Ben Nelson to switch parties, now there’s word from, uh, somebody about Dem outreach to Olympia Snowe to get her to switch (and avoid a likely teabagging in a 2012 GOP primary).

• MT-Sen: We mentioned businessman and losing 2008 Lt. Gov. candidate Steve Daines yesterday as a potential challenger to Jon Tester, and it looks like he’s already moving full speed ahead. He’ll be announcing his bid this Saturday.

• NE-Sen: Right on cue, here’s the first Republican-sponsored poll of the 2012 cycle showing Ben Nelson in deep shit. The poll, commissioned by the state Republican party from Voter/Consumer Research, finds Nelson trailing the one announced candidate, AG Jon Bruning, by a 50-35 margin. (He also trails Generic R 42-32, and Gov. Dave Heineman 59-31, although Heineman has already said he’s not running.) Interestingly, he’s still above water on his approvals, which are 50/41… but it’s a red enough state that that may not be enough to save him.

• NV-Sen: PPP is turning its attention to 2012 already, and its first poll is a juicy place to start: the GOP primary in Nevada. This is something of a surprise, at least upending the conventional wisdom: John Ensign has significant leads over both his highest-profile potential primary opponents. He beats Rep. Dean Heller 45-37, and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki 55-27. Those leads may not hold up across a campaign, though, as Ensign has much higher name rec than either opponent. He’s at 64/23 (remember, this is only Republicans in the sample, who, if David Vitter is any indication, are firm believers in the principle of IOKIYAR), while Heller is at 56/8 and Krolicki is at 45/9.

• RI-Sen: The names are also floating up for potential Republican challengers to Sheldon Whitehouse, with so-so approvals but not considered terribly vulnerable in his blue-state perch. State GOP chair Giovanni Cicione is publicly weighing a bid (although he’s also saying that he’s pushing outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri to make a bid, though he doesn’t sound interested). Two other possibilities mentioned in the article include Warwick mayor Scott Avedisian and Cranston mayor Allen Fung.

• WV-Sen: This whole thing is getting a little too meta for me: with the perception out there of having gotten publicly burned on their attempts to get Joe Manchin to switch parties, now NRSC spokespersons are trying to say that the whole rumors of the outreach (which may or may not have actually happened) originated with the Manchin camp, so that he can bolster his bipartisan credentials. I can’t decide whether the two camps are truly playing 3-D chess with each other or it’s just devolved into high school mean-girls behavior at this point.

• CA-11, CA-20: Jerry McNerney keeps adding to his lead, making this one looking likely to get called soon. He’s now up by 2,269 votes after a batch came in from blue Alameda County. We don’t have any specific new numbers to report for you further south in the 20th, but the long-awaited dump of Fresno County ballots (where Jim Costa has led by a significant margin over Andy Vidak) is scheduled for later today, which is expected to push Costa into the lead (Vidak currently leads by only 145 right now, thanks to his home base of Kings County).

• FL-22: Allen West’s hiring of a controversial talk show host as his chief of staff (payback for her constant boosterism of his campaign) is not only great fodder for the sheer litany of terrible things she’s said (click the link for more), but it also may run into ethical and even FCC problems if she keeps her other job as radio host. The counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Ethical Conduct said the situation is “potentially problematic” because of conflicts of interest, and a different expert says it may also pave the way for demands for equal time on the air for whoever West’s 2012 opponent is.

• PA-11: You may remember Corey O’Brien, the Lackawanna County Commissioner who lost the Dem primary in the 11th to Paul Kanjorski back in May. With the elderly Kanjorski not likely to try for a rematch, O’Brien looks to be in the driver’s seat with regards to the Dem nomination for 2012 to go up against Lou Barletta in this D+4 district (though that’s subject to the redistricting pen, of course). The buzz is he’s a near-definite candidate, although he might face a primary bout with Scranton mayor (and, briefly, gubernatorial candidate) Chris Doherty.

• DCCC: In case you didn’t know, lawyers get really expensive really fast. One of Chris Van Hollen’s last acts as DCCC head is to send out a fundraising blast to donors, trying to round up $100K to cover potential recount activity in (according to him) nine different races.

• House: Nate Silver’s new piece matches what I’ve seen a lot of in the comments (and my own perceptions, as well): the idea that 2012 should be a year of happy hunting for Dems in the House (although, especially with redistricting giving a boost to the GOP, a heavy lift to get back into the majority). The balance of mismatched seats has switched dramatically: now there are 12 Dems in seats that Obama lost (down from 50), and 55 GOPers in seats that Obama won (up from 28). Even if that’s old news to you, the array of graphs is worth checking out.

• IA-St. Sen.: It looks like things have been finalized in Iowa, and the state Senate is at least one closely-decided legislative chamber that we pulled out of the fire. Democrat Tod Bowman’s 71-vote victory in SD-13 gives the Dems 26-24 control over the body. (One other outstanding race, where the GOPer is narrowly leading, could also break for the Dems.) That leaves the Oregon state Senate as the chamber that’s still probably the biggest question mark.

• Chicago mayor: We’ve been meaning for a while now to do a comprehensive who’s-in-who’s-out post about the mayoral race in Chicago, but here’s a potentially big name that deserves immediate mention… if only because he’s in the House, and if there’s one thing SSP is all about at this point in the cycle, it’s the Open Seat Watch. Rep. Danny Davis of IL-07 on Chicago’s West Side (who’d previously flirted with and decided against a bid for Cook Co. Executive) is now expressing interest in the race, saying he’s “ready to run.” In a boost to his prospects, a coalition of black religious and community leaders that had previously supported ex-Sen. Carol Mosely Braun for the job has reversed course, and is now backing Davis.