SSP Daily Digest: 2/12

• AZ-Sen: The establishment is moving in to shore up John McCain’s re-election bid, as the rest of Arizona’s GOP congressional delegation endorsed yesterday (over their former colleague J.D. Hayworth): Jon Kyl, plus Reps. Trent Franks, John Shadegg, and Jeff Flake. Yesterday McCain also got a perhaps more surprising endorsement yesterday, from Grover Norquist, who’s been supportive of a lot of insurgent bids this year… but Norquist is more interested in purely economic issues and may not have much common cause with the more resentment-based social conservative politics of Hayworth.

• CO-Sen: Here’s a sign of life for the strangely low-profile Andrew Romanoff primary campaign: he just got the endorsements of two of the state’s major unions, the Teamsters and the UFCW. Michael Bennet did just vote to confirm Craig Becker to the NLRB, but the unions take issue with his lack of support for the card-check provision of EFCA. Meanwhile, Tom Wiens is offering one of the strangest excuses I’ve ever heard for his failure to get much traction in the GOP primary: there are a whole lot of Nortons in Colorado, and people reflexively will vote for any of them.

• IN-Sen: Another day, another damning revelation about Dan Coats’ lobbying past. Today, it turns out that his lobbying firm, King & Spalding, was lobbying on behalf of Bank of America at a time it was seeking patent approval for a formula that would help companies evaluate whether and how to outsource their operations to lower-overhead countries.

• NC-Sen: Richard Burr has drawn a primary challenger as he seeks his first re-election the Senate. Asheboro city councilor Eddie Burks, however, doesn’t have the kind of high-profile position that’s likely to make much of an impact. But even weirder is the nature of the challenge. You’d think he might get some traction if he reached out to the teabaggers and accused Burr of being insufficiently bloodthirsty, but instead it’s a surprisingly level-headed critique of Burr’s inaccessibility and general anonymity.

• NY-Sen: Speaking of random primary challenges, now Chuck Schumer is facing one too, from Phil Krone, an Illinois and/or Florida political consultant who was just involved in Dan Hynes’ unsuccessful campaign. Krone says he’ll dive in only if he can raise $10K in contributions before April 1; given the strangeness of his bid, even that seems kind of a high bar to reach.

• NY-Sen-B: Finally, there’s one other carpetbagging primary challenge that’s only slightly less random: that of Harold Ford Jr. against Kirsten Gillibrand. This latest discovery isn’t likely to help Ford’s case much: Ford claims that paying New York taxes has helped make him a New Yorker… except he hasn’t paid any New York income taxes. Ford has continued to maintain Tennessee residency, which is convenient, seeing as how Tennessee doesn’t have an income tax on wages. I guess what he meant is that he pays sales tax on all his New York pedicures.

• WI-Sen: Ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson sure likes keeping his name in the news. Despite his recently signing on to work for a hedge fund on agribusiness matters (and his various other private sector projects, including being a partner at DC biglaw firm Akin Gump, he’s still refusing to rule out a Senate bid. “I’m going through a process,” he says cryptically.

• NY-Gov: Looks like we will have David Paterson to kick around for at least a few months more. Despite the mounting tsunami of crap threatening to engulf him, and facing very likely annihilation by Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, Paterson has been e-mailing supporters to tell them that on Feb. 20 or 21 he’ll officially launch his bid to stay Governor. He is adopting the “outsider” mantle for his run, since, of course, nothing says “outsider” more than being the sitting Governor of New York.

• MI-03: CQ compiles a list of a truckload of different Republicans who might seek the seat opened up this week by retiring Rep. Vern Ehlers in the Grand Rapids-based 3rd. Prime contenders include state Sens. Bill Hardiman and Mark Jansen, former state Rep. Jerry Kooiman, and former state Sen. Majority leader Ken Sikkema, all of whom say they’ll decide soon. Former Lt. Gov., and gubernatorial candidate, Dick Posthumus, has ruled out a bid, and it seems unlikely that SoS Terri Lynn Land (who’d been associated with the seat when Ehlers retirement rumors popped up early last year) will run, as she might have her sights on the LG slot. While the GOP has the stronger bench here, Dems who might run include former state Reps. Michael Sak and Steve Pestka, and state Rep. Robert Dean.

• NY-20: One seat that should be attractive to Republicans, given the narrowness of Rep. Scott Murphy’s special election victory, is the 20th, but it’s proven be one of their biggest recruiting headaches. Assemblyman Marc Molinaro is the latest GOPer to decline. Jim Tedisco, who lost to Murphy in the special, shut down his account from that election but hasn’t fully ruled out another run. Murphy is already sitting on $1.4 million, which certainly acts as a deterrent.

• OH-06: The rural, Appalachian-flavored 6th (at R+2, and a negative trend from Kerry to Obama) is another district that should be a Republican target, but where Rep. Charlie Wilson hasn’t drawn a serious opponent yet. Some Dude, however, has stepped up, in the form of businessman Bill Johnson. Johnson had been considering a run next door in the 17th (where he lives) against Rep. Tim Ryan, but recently seemed to realize the 6th would be easier sledding.

• CA-LG: The confirmation of Abel Maldonado as California’s new Lt. Governor has become a bizarre clusterf@ck. First off, there’s the question of why legislative Democrats would want to keep Maldonado in his Dem-leaning, pick-up-able Senate seat instead of promoting him to the entirely harmless LG slot. Clearly the Senate Dems like the idea of getting to the magic 2/3s mark, as Maldonado’s appointment cleared the Senate easily, but then enough Dems in the Assembly voted against it that his appointment failed, with 37 voting yes and 35 voting no. Confused? Well, some would say that he needed 41 votes (a majority of the 80-seat chamber) in order to be confirmed. Arnold Schwarzenegger is claiming victory, though, and planning to swear in Maldonado anyway, claiming that there would need to be 41 votes against Maldonado for the confirmation to fail. Several election law experts say Ahnold has a good point with that, although there’s guidance from a 1988 state treasurer appointment that says otherwise. Looks like this is headed to the courts.

• Teabaggers: Ed Kilgore picks apart the recent CBS poll regarding the tea party movement, and comes to the same conclusions that I’ve been teasing out… that there’s really nothing new in the movement, and that it’s just the most conservative elements of the Republican coalition in just a particularly revved-up, radicalized mood, and with a handy new name to distinguish themselves. This is particularly seen that 62% of them have a favorable view of the Republican party, despite their vague claims to be a movement separate from the parties.