Tag: Rocky Anderson

• FL-Sen: Here’s one way the rich & powerful are different from you and me: You can, if you’re GOP state Sen. Mike Haridopolos, manage to leave clients worth $100,000 of income and a house valued at $400,000 off of your financial disclosure forms and have it be judged “inadvertent.” Here’s another way: you get to have the people doing the judging be your friends. Indeed, the chair of the committee responsible for punishing Haridopolos, former FL GOP chair & state Sen. John Thrasher, had endorsed his senate bid just last month. When asked if he should have recused himself, Thrasher said, “Hell, no. I think that’s a total political bunch of crap from the Democratic Party of Florida. They’re used to losing, obviously.” And what’s half a million bucks between friends?

• MT-Sen, MT-Gov, MT-AL: A firm called NSON Opinion Strategy took a poll of all three Montana races for the a conservative radio host, Aaron Flint of the Northern News Network, and a conservative consulting firm, 47 North Communications. Note that despite our very early point in the cycle, they tested likely voters. Anyhow, they found Rep. Denny Rehberg (R) narrowly leading Sen. Jon Tester, 47-44, in the senate race. In the open house race, they have Republican Steve Daines on top of Dem Frankie Wilmer, 31-22 (and obviously a ton of undecideds). Incidentally, Rehberg just endorsed Daines, the only announced Republican candidate so far.

NSON also checked on the gubernatorial primaries for both parties, but there’s no suggestion of an oversample, and I’m not in the habit of reporting polls where the n is in the vicinity of 200, so you’ll have to click through if you want the numbers.

• NV-Sen: I, like you, had been wondering why in the hell Harry Reid would randomly start talking about outlawing prostitution in Nevada. But when I saw that John Ensign felt compelled to weigh in in response – he’s fer it! – I wondered if Reid might be playing a very clever deep game. Goading Ensign into running his mouth off about whoring is a pretty good trick, if you ask me.

• WA-Gov: This seems like a pretty unlikely move, what with AG Rob McKenna ready to pounce (and even Rep. Dave Reichert supposedly weighing a run), but another Republican might get into the mix. Businessman and Seattle Port Commission President Bill Bryant won’t even go so far as to say he’s “considering” the race; rather, he’s “listening” to people who have “urged” him to look at the race.

• CA-23: A great catch by Aaron Blake: Republican former LG Abel Maldonado filed paperwork with the FEC to run in Dem Rep. Lois Capps’ district. While it would be a hell of a feat for a Republican to win here – Obama won 65% of the vote here – the proverbial “source close to” Maldonado says the candidate is “pretty confident that redistricting will change that district enough” to make it competitive. We’ll see.

• CA-26: It looks like we’re finally getting the upgrade we need to successfully challenge Rep. David Dreier, and we have term limits to thank. Democratic Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, who is termed out in 2012, will kick off his campaign next week. As per the above, it’s pretty ballsy to start running when you can’t even know where you’ll be running, but unlike Maldonado, Portantino is getting off to a real start, complete with fundraiser.

• CA-36: Has anyone of any stature endorsed Debra Bowen yet? I have no idea, because her website is still just a freakin’ splash page. And I ask because two more members of Congress just endorsed Janice Hahn: Loretta Sanchez and Laura Richardson. Endorsements don’t typically mean a lot, but in this case, Hahn has really piled together an impressive roster in a very short time, which indicates her level of influence is quite strong. Meanwhile, I’m not even sure what Bowen is up to – search for her name on Google News (be sure to sort by date) and you won’t find much about her, but you’ll see plenty of stories about Hahn.

• FL-22: Hmm. So much for keeping his recruiting plans on the DL. Steve Israel’s in South Florida this week, talking with potential candidates about taking on Lunatic-in-Chief Allen West next year. It sounds like Israel’s met with ex-Rep. Ron Klein, whom West beat in November, as well as Palm Beach County Tax Collector Anne Gannon, and a guy named Patrick Murphy (no, not that Patrick Murphy), a construction executive. Israel also said he wants to talk to West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel, who is term-limited.

• NY-26: You can try to dump your gnarly tins of leftover Scozzafava-brand cat fud into a landfill, but the stench will forever linger on. The Albany Project has this awesome catch: Republican nominee Jane Corwin made the terrible, terrible error of donating $1,000 to Dede Scozzafava during her most ill-fated of congressional runs. Oh, the agony!

• OR-01: Two newspapers have already called for Rep. David Wu’s resignation: The Daily Astorian and the Eugene Register Guard, which is actually the second-largest paper in the state. Can the Oregonian be far behind? So far, though, while the chair of the Oregon GOP seems to be calling for Wu to step down, fellow Dem politicians have been very circumspect, and Wu himself said he has no interest in leaving.

• TX-15: This might help explain why Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D) has missed so many votes (40% so far): Earlier this month, he declared bankruptcy, on account of loan guarantees he made to his family’s meat company. The company itself declared bankruptcy in 2008, and though he was paid as a consultant from 2002 to 2007, Hinojosa has said he does not have managerial control over the firm.

• UT-02: Jim Matheson is on a bit of a sticky wicket. If the GOP cracks Democratic Salt Lake City when they draw their new maps, he could potentially survive – after all, he’s represented a brutal district for a decade now. But he could be given a super-red district which also includes a lot of new territory, setting him back to square one-and-a-half. Alternately, the Republicans could pack Dem voters into a single district that would actually be fairly blue – in which case the conservative Matheson might find himself vulnerable to a more liberal challenger, particularly thanks to Utah’s convention nomination process. (Recall that Matheson only pulled 55% at last year’s convention against Some Dude Claudia Wright.) One such challenger might be former SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson, who told Aaron Blake he wouldn’t rule out such a run, if the district were suitable.

• National Journal: It looks like the NJ’s senate ratings are out (though I’m not sure the complete list is publicly available yet). And guess who is tied for most conservative senator? The circle is now complete. When John McCain left us, he was but the maverick. Now he is the hackster.

• Tea Party Express: Open Secrets has an interesting analysis in which they show that no fewer than twenty different federal PACs sprang into being last cycle, but that fully 96% of all money raised was hauled in by just a single entity, the Tea Party Express. But even more fascinating to me are TPX’s final numbers. They donated $37K directly to candidates and spent $2.7 million on independent expenditures, but raised an amazing $7.6. That means that almost five million dollars went… where exactly?

• WI St. Assembly: Mark your calendars: Widely-beloved Gov. Scott Walker has set May 3rd as the date for special elections for three now-vacant Republican-held Assembly seats. (All three dudes just took jobs in the Walker administration.) The open seats are the 60th, 83rd and 94th. That last one could be interesting. Obama won only 38% & 35% of the vote in the first two districts respectively, but he took 55% in the 94th. The GOP has a 57-38 edge in the Assembly, though, so we have a long way to claw back.

• CT-Sen: Joe Lieberman, in a recent interview, gave some more insight into how he might approach the various ways in which he might lose in 2012. He says he’s “leaning toward” running again, and it will likely be as an independent (although he’d need to create yet another ballot line for himself, having lost control of CfL), although he says some Senate colleagues have encouraged him to run as a Democrat.

• NE-Sen, NE-02: One of the items on the agenda for the legislative session this year in Nebraska (in its ostensibly-nonpartisan but practically-GOP-held unicameral body) is fixing a small hole that could theoretically wind up costing the GOP the presidency in a close election. Nebraska is one of only two states that allocates some electoral votes by congressional district, and Barack Obama took advantage of that to win 1 EV in Nebraska by narrowly winning NE-02. It’s worth noting that if this option is taken off the table before 2012, it makes it much less likely that the Obama campaign will put any money or manpower into the Omaha market, making Ben Nelson’s re-election hopes slimmer and also making it harder to take out Rep. Lee Terry, who was vulnerable in 2008. (That same link also mentions one potential other GOP Senate candidate, despite there already being a long list of possible challengers to Nelson: Mike Simmonds, whose main claim to fame seems to be owning 73 Burger King franchises.) Speaking of Nelson, he does have one new talking point that won’t help him much in the blogosphere but may help him get a little mileage in his red state confines: CQ’s new unity scores for last year are out, and Nelson was the least likely Senator to vote with his party, doing so only 46% of the time.

• NM-Sen: This seems a little unexpected: GOP ex-Rep. Heather Wilson, after taking the 2010 cycle off (when she, in retrospect, could have pretty easily gotten elected governor), may be interested in getting back into the political game in 2012, which would have to involve a seriously-uphill race against long-time Dem incumbent Jeff Bingaman for Senate. Of course, that presumes Bingaman runs again. His fundraising schedule suggests that he will run again, but maybe Wilson’s engaging in some early saber-rattling in the hopes of scaring the 68-year-old Bingaman into retirement, which would make her task easier.

• IN-Gov: Mike Pence seems to be making the sensible choice given the options of a longer-than-long-shot presidential bid and (with Becky Skillman out of the primary and Evan Bayh out of the general) what’s looking like a lightly-contested lay-up in the Indiana gubernatorial race. Insiders are looking at his newly planned schedule of events, with Lincoln Day Dinners scheduled all over Indiana, as an indication that he’s moving pretty firmly toward the gubernatorial race.

• FL-25: Usually Representatives wait until at least after they’ve gotten sworn in before getting involved in criminal investigations, but David Rivera is a real go-getter. In the wake of inquiries into Rivera’s support for a push to bring slot machines to Miami-Dade County, Rivera is now having to disclose $137K in never-before-mentioned loans from his mother’s marketing company (the same company under investigation for receiving payments from the Flagler Dog Track).

• IN-02: Jackie Walorski may be back in 2012 for another run against Rep. Joe Donnelly, saying another run is “possible.” Her main calculation seems to be what happens to the 2nd, which could be mutated into a much more Republican-friendly district if the state’s GOP legislature wanted to experiment with strange shapes.

• Mayors: Rahm Emanuel got one more seal of approval for his Chicago mayoral candidacy today: a state circuit court judge just ruled today that Emanuel meets residency requirements and his name can remain on the Feb. 22 ballot, upholding the decision by the city’s Board of Election Commissioners. It’s not a done deal though as an appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court is imminent. Also, Salt Lake City is another one of the many cities holding mayoral elections this November; one-term incumbent Ralph Becker has announced he’s running for re-election, and, with a whopping 84% approval rating, it’s sounding like he won’t face more than a token challenge. The GOP may not even wind up running someone against him (Becker’s a Democrat, although it’s officially a nonpartisan post), and while there have been rumblings of a challenge to him from the left (with former SLC mayor Rocky Anderson a possibility), there doesn’t seem to be enough dissatisfaction with him to make that viable either.

• 2010 Leftovers: Two of the leaders of the Dems’ efforts in 2010 are in the news today, including outgoing DGA executive director Nathan Daschle, who let loose a curious tweet stating that “The purity test on display at yesterday’s RNC chair debate is one more reason why we need something other than 2 parties.” Now, given his previous aptitude at messing with Republicans’ heads via concern trolling, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s subtly encouraging some sort of full-on split between the sane Republican party and the crazy wing while the Dems remain intact, rather than him going all No Labels on us. Meanwhile, Jon Vogel, the former exec director of the DCCC, is moving to the private sector, launching a political media firm with fellow consultant Steve Murphy. (This seems like a good time to queue up the best line from Ghostbusters: “You don’t know what it’s like out there! I’ve worked in the private sector! They expect results!”)

• Redistricting: Here’s an interesting interview with Democratic redistricting guru Matt Angle, who was Martin Frost’s right-hand man during the post-2000 round. Angle’s particular area of expertise is Texas, and he has some thoughts about what we can expect there. While he seems confident that at least two of the four new districts will be Hispanic-majority, he sounds a warning about last-remaining-Anglo Dem Lloyd Doggett, who may find himself drawn into either a Republican or VRA district (although it’s worth noting that already happened to Doggett once, as he briefly had a Hispanic-majority seat in the immediate pre-litigation aftermath of the DeLayMander).

• Twitter: We’re up to 3,981 followers on Twitter, but that’s not a nice, round number with a lot of zeroes in it that we can arbitrarily feel good about. Please help us reach 4,000!

• 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.)