• CT-Sen: Economist/talking head Peter Schiff, who’s been talking himself up for Chris Dodd’s Senate seat, released an internal poll taken for him by Wilson Research Strategies. Schiff, from the Paulist wing of the party, loses the general to Dodd, 42-38; the bad news here is that, despite the AIG imbroglio falling down the memory hole, Dodd is still significantly behind ex-Rep. Rob Simmons, 47-38. One thing the poll doesn’t test (or at least release publicly): results in the GOP primary.
• OH-Sen: Car dealer Tom Ganley announced his candidacy for the GOP primary for the open Senate seat. (I thought he’d already announced on April 2, but I guess he needed to remind the media of his existence.) Ganley owns 38 dealerships, so he’s not just your average used car dealer; he vows to self-fund significantly in his uphill fight against Rob Portman.
• MN-Gov: Minnesota’s Independence Party seems determined to field a major candidate in 2010’s ultra-confusing gubernatorial race, and at the top of their wish list is ex-Rep. Jim Ramstad. Ramstad’s name has occasionally been linked to the race as a Republican, but he may be too moderate to make it out of the activist-dominated nominating process. Ramstad’s popularity would make him one to watch in the general, but he’d be laboring under the IP label, whose candidates (including moderate Dem ex-Rep. Tim Penny, who ran for Governor in 2002) have had trouble getting out of the 10-15% range this decade.
• NJ-Gov: Yet another poll of the New Jersey governor’s race, and while it still has Jon Corzine losing to Chris Christie, I’m going to file this in the “good news” column, as it has Corzine down by only 6, with Christie under 50%: 45-39. Interestingly, New Jerseyites seem to understand that the state has become fools gold to Republicans: despite their preferences, they still think Corzine will win, 46-38. Corzine also has a campaign appearance scheduled for July 16 with someone who’s actually maintaining a 62% approval rating in New Jersey (which would translate into about 105% approval in a normal state): Barack Obama. Which, I think, is the first in-the-flesh appearance Obama has made on behalf of any candidate since getting elected.
• NY-Gov: Maybe I’m feeling extra charitable today, but I’m also going to file yesterday’s Marist poll in the “good news” column, because it actually shows David Paterson beating someone: he tops feeble ex-Rep. Rick Lazio 41-40 in a potential matchup. Of course, he still loses to everyone else, whether Andrew Cuomo in a primary (69-24) or Rudy Giuliani in the general (54-37, although that’s also an improvement from May). In case you’re wondering how a Cuomo/Lazio matchup would go, Cuomo would win 68-22.
• SC-Gov: Well, maybe publicly proclaiming that your mistress is your “soulmate” and that you’ve had run-ins with other women (but never crossed “the sex line”) isn’t the best way to keep your job. After it looked like Mark Sanford was successfully digging in for the last few days, the tide seems to be turning: Columbia’s The State says that 12 (of 27) state Senate Republicans have signed a letter to Sanford asking him to resign (including state Sen. Larry Grooms, who’s running to replace Sanford and would suffer having to run against LG Andre Bauer as an incumbent), with 4 more on the record as supporting it but not signing it, or leaning in that direction; Jim DeMint also asked Sanford to pack it in. While the Columbia and Charleston papers haven’t called for resignation, the News in Greenville yesterday joined the Spartanburg Herald-Journal (the twin cities of the state’s bible belt) in publishing an editorial doing so.
• NY-23: Looks like moderate GOP Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, who has attracted the interest of both parties in the NY-23 special election, is going full-speed-ahead on the GOP side. She told supporters she’ll be “aggressively seeking her party’s nomination.”
• NY-29: Corning (pop. 11,000) mayor Tom Reed announced that he’ll run against freshman Rep. Eric Massa in 2010. Reed seems to be running as an out-and-proud moderate, with the Main Street Partnership expected to support him. The NRCC has identified him as a leading recruit but hasn’t endorsed him, with several other candidates reportedly still exploring the race. (For what it’s worth, Corning is the hometown of Amo Houghton, former Corning Glass CEO and popular GOP moderate who held this seat for decades.)
• PA-15: I’m starting to like Bethlehem mayor John Callahan more and more, as it’s come out that in 2005 he proved he can match Rahm Emanuel F-bomb-for-F-bomb. Callahan’s response to Emanuel’s needling that “Are you tired of being fucking mayor yet?” was “It’s better than being a fucking congressman.” (The only reason this is relevant today is that the NRCC is now using this incident to argue that he’s now disqualified from becoming a congressman.)
• TN-03: Former GOP state chair Robin Smith made it official, that she’s running to replace Zach Wamp in the 3rd. She had previously quit her party job to focus full-time on exploring the race, so no surprise here; Smith is the likely GOP frontrunner.
• NRCC: The NRCC wasted no time in launching ads to go after the potentially vulnerable House Dems who voted yes on cap-and-trade. Rep. Tom Perriello is the recipient of the dread TV ad this time, while they also took out radio spots and robocalls against Harry Teague, Rick Boucher, Bruce Braley, Betsy Markey, Vic Snyder, Baron Hill, Mary Jo Kilroy, Alan Grayson, Zack Space, Bart Gordon, Debbie Halvorson, John Boccieri, and Ike Skelton.
• Votes (pdf): The Hill has a handy scorecard arranged by district lean while showing how many times vulnerable Dem representatives have broken ranks on 15 important bills. The biggest defector, unsurprisingly, is Bobby Bright, who flipped 13 out of 15 times. (Compared with Chet Edwards, in an even more difficult district but who defected only twice.) The guy who stands out like a sore thumb, though, is Joe Donnelly, who defected 8 times in IN-02, a district that Obama actually won, 54-45.
• MS-St. House: Democrats held the line in a special election in Mississippi state House district 82, as Democrat Wilber Jones held the seat. This is an African-American majority seat, but attracted some attention because the GOP ran a credible African-American candidate, Bill Marcy… but he still went on to lose, 66-34. Dems hold the edge in the House, 75-47.
New York does allow cross endorsing. Do the GOP and the Dems ever go for the same person or are they like King Azaz and the Mathemagician from The Phantom Tollbooth who “agreed to disagree” (on everything)?
Conservative district but only four defections. Not bad at all.
If and when the political winds shift again, this sorry bastard will switch parties.
re: Edwards’ votes, Chet’s been reelected in his current district three times, through some of the toughest years for Democrats in recent memory. He’s got as much job security as a Dem holding that sort of district will ever have. Bright’s a newbie who hasn’t built up the sort of support base that might allow him to take more risks.
That’s what he said when asked which party’s nomination he would run for. Note the avoidance of the question.
Nonetheless, I would be really surprised if he didn’t get the Republican nomination. To me, he’s like to Minnesota’s Republicans as Charlie Crist is to Florida’s, a slam-dunk.
As for SC, I’m on my hands and knees praying that Sanford drops out, Andre Bauer takes over and reneges on his promise not to run for re-election in 2010, he clears the primary field, and then does something completely goofy and scandalous to ensure a Dem win. From what I’ve heard, the guy has plenty of opportunities to mess up on the public stage, from the simply weird to the far more “interesting”.
FWIW, Joe Donnelly also has the largest gap between his Lifetime Progressive Punch score and his Lifetime score on Crucial votes, 41.16 points (he takes the progressive vite 75% of the time overall and just 34% on Crucual votes either lost by Progressives or won by 20 or fewer votes). That ranking is the biggest spread in either the House or the Senate.
Donnelly is used by Progressive Punch as their example of a Congressman whwo votes nore conservatively than he has to.
Looks like he’s been a bad vote for a while.
preparing to establish conservative bona fides because he will be targeted in the 2012 GOP reidstricting and it will be made about a 54-46 McCain district.
Massa seems like a politician of great integrity. Do you think he could be threatened by a moderate Republican opponent? It sure would be smart for the Republicans to nominate a moderate to oppose Massa, but I hope he wins, anyway.
As far as SC is concerned, Bauer seems to be very unpopular among Republican politicians, and he was slammed pretty hard in the Greenville News editorial recommending that Sanford step down. Unless rank and file Republicans are very different from politicians in SC, Bauer won’t win a Republican primary, and I don’t think we should root for very bad Republican candidates to win primaries in deep-red states, where they’d have a good chance of defeating whoever runs on the Democratic line. A 60/40 chance at someone horrendous is not better than an 80/20 chance at someone only moderately terrible, if that ends up being the choice. (Of course, if I were in South Carolina, I’d vote for a Democrat, regardless, but I’m a liberal New York Democrat, and there are a few people as far left or further left than I in South Carolina – I actually know some, but sadly, there aren’t enough to make a difference in statewide elections.)
If the NRCC were a business then whoever was in charge of running those ads would be fired on the spot. I mean really…wasting money on Rick Boucher, Bart Gordon and Ike Skelton? Are you kidding me? And those are just 3 names.