• AL-07: Former Selma Mayor James Perkins (who was defeated in his attempt to seek a third term in 2008) is jumping into the open seat race here. He is likely to draw support away from Terri Sewell, Artur Davis’s preferred successor, also a Selma native.
• AL-Gov: Speaking of good ol’ Artur, he’s released an internal poll which shows him up 56-26 over Ron Sparks and 54-25 over Sue Bell in the Dem primary. He also purports to lead Republican Bradley Byrne by a 43-38 margin. I’m finding it hard to believe that a congressman has such high name rec (59-6 for Davis among Dems statewide!). But the best checksum: This survey has Obama’s favorables at 58%. Last month, SUSA had them at just 48%. Which do you think is more likely? In other AL-Gov news, state Sen. Roger Bedford (D) says he won’t run.
• IA-Gov: State Auditor David Vaudt, one of only two Republicans holding statewide office in Iowa, has declined to challenge incumbent Gov. Chet Culver next year.
• NC-Sen: Both Reps. Bob Etheridge and Mike McIntyre are leaving the door open to a Senate bid, with McIntyre sounding more enthused. Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton is “not considering” the race, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is “not looking at running,” and state Rep. Grier Martin claims his “decision to decline a chance to run against Elizabeth Dole was also not to run in 2010.”
• NV-Gov: Jim Gibbons’ poll numbers are just horrendous – in a new Mason-Dixon survey for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, 54% say they would “definitely vote to replace” him. Gibbons’ campaign manager claims things are lookin’ up, because his boss’s approvals were 25-69 in a January Reno Gazette poll but are an awesome 17-52 in this one.
• NV-Sen: Meanwhile, the same poll finds pretty lousy numbers for Harry Reid as well, but better than Gibbons’. Reid gets 45% “definitely replace,” but his approvals are “only” 38-50. The big difference, of course, is that the GOP doesn’t really have any strong candidates to challenge Reid, while plenty of folks are lining up to take a whack at Gibbons.
• FL-CFO: Checking in with an old friend, it looks like Annette Taddeo is considering a run to replace Alex Sink as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer.
• Redistricting: CQ has a story on five key races that could affect congressional redistricting. Roll Call has published the second half of its two-part series on the same subject (part one here). And finally, the National Conference of State Legislatures is holding the first in a series of training seminars on redistricting in San Francisco, June 11-14.
isn’t a big improvement over Shuler. He’s got a worse voting record then Allen Boyd. I’d prefer pretty much any other candidate over those two. We’ve lost our two best candidates (Martin and Cooper), how about Marshall or Blue? They’ve wanted to be Senator in the past, why not now with much better odds?
Chu seems to be seen as the slight favorite (especially given Cedillo’s, umm, issues), though anything could happen–even Pleitz coming up the middle.
Oh, and all of Gov. Hoover’s ballot propositions will be up for defeat as well. How much money could have been saved in the budget by not going through this waste of time?
I was just thinking yesterday that she would be great to follow in Sink’s foot steps. She was a great candidate for Congress and it was too bad the clowns we already have in Congress from South Florida didn’t give her and our other two South Florida candidates more support. I hope she pulls the trigger on this.
We’re lucky that he’s reduced to commenting in Roll Call.
The same Nevada poll also has favorable/unfavorable numbers for Ensign. I was extremely disappointed and surprised at how well he polled: 53-18 (net +35 favorability). Those are unbelievably good numbers, near unbeatable-like favorability numbers for an incumbent. I had thought Ensign would be our top target in 2012 (and one of our very few potential targets) considering that he didn’t perform that strongly against a weak challenger in 2006, Nevada has moved blue very fast in the last few years, and he is probably the most ideologically out of step with his state of all Republican senators. It’s still a long ways away of course and things can change, but I never imagined he is that popular. Any Nevadans that can explain this?
He’s been an ineffective majority leader. Poll numbers like this will only encourage him to be even more cautious and centrist. Also he’ll be 71 at the end of this term. Shelley Berkley would be a good candidate. I hope she realizes if she ever wants to move up 2010 is her only chance. She’s a New Dem, not a liberal bombthrower, but she’ll still be better than Reid. From now on the majority leader should be a liberal from a safe state, like Leahy.
but I missed yesterdays conversation about Michigan redistricting in the Daily Digest. 12-2 Democrat is absolutely impossible, but, inspired by IHateBush’s comments to my last redistricting Michigan diary, I think that I may have succesfully created a workable 11-3 map that, in a neutral year, would probably support all 11 Democrats. It’s really ugly (although there isnt any touch points or snaking tendrils). But its better looking that say, Florida or Pennsylvania. I’ll diary it soon.
connect Eastern Kentucky where it is Appilacian and very West Virginia like with Lexington and Frankfurt. That’d create a good Dem leaning district at the local level no doubt and should be no problem for a Dem to hold.
Dem Gov, Dem House, Rep Senate, maybe. It’d shore up both incumbents anyway.