AR-Sen: The SEIU is looking to finish the job, throwing down another $450K on behalf of Bill Halter. The union has spent almost $2 million dollars on this race so far.
AZ-Sen: Perhaps sensing some vulnerability on John McCain’s part, ex-state Rep. and former AZ health department chief Cathy Eden is jumping into the Democratic primary, where she’ll face former Tucson city councilman Rodney Glassman. Eden served in the state House in the early 1990s, then ran a brief campaign for the Dem nod for Arizona’s open Senate seat in 1994, dropping out before the primary. She’s also apparently tight with Janet Napolitano.
CT-Sen: So it turns out the NYT did have in its possession a copy of the full video of the Dick Blumenthal speech where he first said he served “during Vietnam,” only later to cloud things by saying he served “in Vietnam.” Yet despite having the entire video, the Times only posted a truncated clip showing the latter bit. Sheesh.
FL-Sen: The normally Dem-friendly Florida Education Association endorsed both Charlie Crist and Democrat Kendrick Meek for Senate on Friday, as a thank-you to Crist for his veto of a controversial teacher “merit pay” bill. Crist tried to parlay that victory by attempting to steal another endorsement from Meek, enthusiastically courting the backing of the AFL-CIO. Unfortunately for Crist, the union decided to endorse Meek and only Meek. (J)
KY-Sen: You probably saw that Rand Paul abruptly cancelled a “Meet the Press” appearance scheduled for yesterday. What you may not have known is that the only other people in recent history to do so are Louis Farrakhan and Saudi Arabia’s Prince Bandar. Also, if you check out that first Politico link, you’ll see exactly how uncomfortable Paul’s post-primary “unity” roll-out has been. Even Trey Grayson couldn’t stay on-message long enough to avoid admitting to reporters that the whole thing has been “awkward.”
NV-Sen: This is the chicken that laid the golden egg: Nevada election officials have banned people from wearing chicken suits into polling places on primary day. Though Dems have been sending people in chicken costumes to Sue Lowden campaign events, no one had any apparent plans to do electioneering while so garbed. But what this means is another day of chickens in the news. I think that calls for some Chicken Dance!
PA-Sen: Weird – Joe Sestak repeated his claim that the Obama administration offered him a job so that he’d drop his challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter. The weird part is that White House press secretary Bob Gibbs, in response, said only that “nothing inappropriate” happened, but didn’t confirm or deny Sestak’s claim.
WI-Sen: This is a surprise: One-time beer baron Dick Leinenkugel has dropped out of the race after less than a month. He endorsed teabaggy businessman Ron Johnson, which seems like an odd fit, since the Kugel had worked in Dem Gov. Jim Doyle’s administration (a pretty big and obvious knock against him in a GOP primary). Hey, Beer Man – we hardly knew ye! Meanwhile, Johnson picked up the GOP’s endorsement (by a wide margin) at the state Republican convention this past weekend. Terrence Wall and David Westlake are apparently still staying in the race, though.
FL-Gov: God bless chrome-domed creep Rick Scott. He’s blasting McCollum on the airwaves for failing to support Arizona’s new “papers, please” immigration law with sufficient gusto. Though I usually complain when tradmed accounts fail to detail the size of ad buys, since it’s Scott, we can probably assume there’s plenty of money behind it, as he’s already spent approximately eight zillion dollars on the race. You know McCollum is sitting at home with his head in his hands, just wondering, “What the hell did I do to deserve this shit?”
Meanwhile, third wheel state Sen. Paula Dockery said she wouldn’t put her personal wealth into her campaign – and also opined that she’d veto an abortion bill she voted for if she became governor. I’m not even sure John Kerry could come up with something that good.
ID-Gov: This is interesting – Dem Keith Allred raised $240K since January, outstripping Gov. Butch Otter’s $193K. Otter has $201K CoH while Allred has $130K.
WI-Gov: Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker was forced to return $44K in illegal contributions for an amazingly simple reason: a railroad exec used company money to reimburse employee donations to Walker! Talk about shady – and dumb.
HI-01: Colleen Hanabusa made it clear she’s going to run again after Saturday’s lost to Charles Djou, but Ed Case sounded surprisingly non-committal, saying only that on Monday, he planned to “wake up, go body surfing and cut the lawn. We’ll figure out the rest of it later.”
IN-03: Ala NY Gov. David Paterson and the NY-29 race, Gov. Mitch Daniels is reportedly considering holding the IN-03 special election in November, on the same day as the regular general election, in order to save the state money.
VA-09: Morgan Griffith, majority leader of the state House of Delegates, won the GOP nod at a district convention this past weekend on the first ballot. I’m not sure if there even would be a primary here on account of the convention, but in any case, it sounds like the other Republican candidates are rallying behind Griffith, who will take on Dem Rep. Rick Boucher in the fall.
NY-State Sen.: New York Dems seem to have landed a good recruit against the 78-year-old Sen. Hugh Farley in the 44th district upstate. Susan Savage, chair of the Schenectady county lege, is entering the race in this 50-48 Obama district.
Fundraising: The WaPo has a great interactive graphic illustrating corporate PAC giving to Dems vs. Republicans, dating all the way back to 1989.
Polling: A new Pew study shows that question responses in landline + cell phone surveys are starting to differ from landline-only answers, sometimes as much as four or five points (and in one case, seven). In general, landline-only surveys tend to underestimate Democratic support.
Passings: One-time GOP Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens died on Saturday at age 79. He was best known for his conviction for paying a 16-year-old girl for sex, which led to his 1990 loss in the GOP primary to none other than John Boehner.
WATN?: Former senator and general d-bag Bob Kerrey may go and head up the Motion Picture Association of America. He’d follow in the footsteps of another former member of Congress from the middle of the country, Dan Glickman.
The situation surrounding the job offer to Sestak is just really awkward for all parties involved. I am not sure if this will matter in the end and doubt it will greatly effect the race, but is not the way Sestak wants to start the general election race by the Republicans talking about backroom deals.
The convention was held in place of a primary.
The vagaries of the Tea Party intrigue me. In VA-5, it’s purity at all cost. In VA-9, it’s follow the leader. I guess there’s no reasoning with crazy.
If Daniels does decide to hold off on the special election in IN-03, that means the HI-01 special has resulted in a net gain of zero Republican seats.
I think it spells the end of the robopollsters.
Wouldn’t be an easy fight to deal with them, at all.
This goes along with the poll we saw earlier that had Allred closing the gap on Otter. Is Otter in any sort of trouble here? Or are these things just giving us false hope up there?
http://www.live5news.com/Globa…
all of these other states having similar nominating processes like MN. The Digest! Last cycle, we didnt have this beaut the whole time through so they probably all got missed reporting.
Here’s to the Digest, for making me realize my state is only a bit more instead of a lot more fucked up compared to my neighbors in picking candidates! (Guy with Leine name wouldve been better; money, not tea-baggery, extremely popular beer name.)
I am sorry but I don’t get why you keep seeming to imply the whole speech is some how exculpatory for Blumenthal.
If anything It made me more disgusted. It’s one thing that I almost could buy if he accidently left out the word “era” after saying he served in Vietnam.
But in context of the opening part of the speech where he states he served in the Marines and then never mentioned the word RESERVES it is clear that he was trying to deceived his audience into think he served in a way that he clearly did not.
If GW Bush made a speech where he claimed he served in the Air Force during the Vietnam era, shouted “Uno Ab Alto” and then claim he served in Vietnam, we would be all over that here.
No matter how much you want to like Blumethal you can’t just dismiss the slimy way he clearly tried to misrepresent his service.
Can someone explain to me why the SEIU is spending so much money in Arkansas? $2 million seems like a big investment just to make a point of forcing out an incumbent in a primary when chances are so slim of either Democrat winning in the general.
Or do some people think Halter would actually have a shot?