• CO-Sen, PA-Sen: Need some quantification that people just don’t care about the job-offer so-called-stories in the Colorado and Pennsylvania races? It comes from Rasmussen, of all places, perhaps the pollster you’d think would have the greatest vested interest in finding that people do care. 44% of those sampled say this is business as usual for politicians, with only 19% saying it’s unusual. And 32% say it’s an issue that will be “very important” in their decisions in November (and what do you want to bet most of that 32% wouldn’t think it was important if it was a Republican offering a job to a Republican?), Scott Rasmussen points out that’s quite low compared with other issues in importance.
• DE-Sen: It’s been confirmed: Joe Biden will be heading back to Delaware to stump on behalf of Chris Coons. Biden will appear at a June 28 fundraiser in Wilmington.
• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP is out with another look at the North Carolina Senate race, where the Democratic field has yet to be settled via runoff. Today’s results focus only on the general election, though, where Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham both lost a little ground against Richard Burr as the bump wore off in the middle of the lull between the primary and the runoff. Burr is still at an unenviable approval of 35/37, but he leads Marshall 46-39 (up from a 1-point margin in the poll immediately post-primary) and leads Cunningham 46-35.
• AL-Gov: The final count of all ballots in the too-close to call Republican gubernatorial primary is scheduled to be released today. The issue isn’t who won, but who made second place and makes it into the runoff. Businessman and gubernatorial progeny Tim James, who was in third on election night by 205 votes, says he’ll seek a recount regardless of what happens with the final count of provisional ballots, so it’ll be a while before we know whether he or Robert Bentley faces Bradley Byrne in the runoff.
• MI-Gov: One more big union endorsement for Virg Bernero in the Michigan Democratic primary; the Lansing mayor got the nod from the state AFSCME (not surprising, considering that public employee unions have little use for his rival, Andy Dillon).
• MN-Gov: The good news: there’s a new poll out showing all three potential DFL nominees handily beating GOP nominee Tom Emmer in the Minnesota gubernatorial race, contrary to the recent SurveyUSA (where Emmer was winning) and Minnesota Public Radio (super-close) polls. The bad news: it’s a pollster I’ve never heard of, and I can’t tell at whose behest they took the poll, so I don’t know how much weight to give this one. At any rate, Decision Resources Ltd. finds that Mark Dayton leads Emmer and Independence Party nominee Tom Horner 40-28-18. Margaret Anderson Kelliher leads 38-28-17, while Matt Entenza leads 34-27-19.
• MS-Gov: Hey, I know we haven’t even gotten through the current election, but it’s only a year and a half till Mississippi’s off-year gubernatorial election. The mayor of Hattiesburg, Johnny Dupree, will seek the Democratic nomination. If he won, he’d be Mississippi’s first African-American governor. (H/t GOPVOTER.)
• TX-Gov: It turns out that it was too early to conclude (as the media did yesterday) that the Greens were actually going to get a ballot line in Texas this year, which could make a difference in a close gubernatorial race. An Arizona political consulting group collected the 92,000 signatures and, for campaign finance purposes, delivered them as “a gift” to the Greens. But while an individual could do that, a corporation can’t, according to an election law expert.
• VT-Gov: One other state where organized labor is starting to weigh in to the Democratic primary is Vermont, where the state AFL-CIO and the Vermont Education Association both have decided to back former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine. The good news here may be that the AFL-CIO isn’t backing Anthony Pollina like they did last time, splitting the liberal vote (although there’s no indication yet that Pollina will be running this time).
• FL-24: One day after snagging Mike Huckabee’s endorsement, Karen Diebel got the boom lowered on her by RedState (who don’t have a candidate they’re backing, but suddenly seem spooked about her electability issues). They reiterated the (already a known piece of oppo research that’s been floating around for the last year, although perhaps not known to all readers here) story about Diebel’s 911 call in 2007 where police were called to her house over reports of a dead snake in her pool and she subsequently told police she was afraid she was being monitored through her phone and computer.
• NJ-04: With the exception of his hard-core anti-abortion stances, Chris Smith has usually been one of the most moderate House Republicans, so it’s strange to see him enlisting the help of bomb-thrower Michele Bachmann in a re-election bid (in the form of robocalls). In fact, it’s strange to see him sweating a re-election bid period, but facing a teabagger primary challenge from Alan Bateman in today’s climate, he’s not taking any chances.
• WA-08: It’s also see strange to see the Seattle Times going after their pet Congresscritter, Dave Reichert. But they also lambasted him in a weekend editorial for his cynicism, after he was caught on tape telling a Republican audience how he takes the occasional pro-environmental vote in order to throw a few bones to moderate or liberal voters in order to make himself safer in his Dem-leaning swing district. I suppose his brief moment of transparency upset their Broderite inner compasses and trumped even their need to keep him in office.
So, I guess this means Diebel loses the primary? Huckabee makes some crappy endorsement. Let’s see, tonight alone, atleast 3 of his backed candidates are going to lose, 1 of those will come in last place, possibly 2. Vander Plaats, DeVore, and Bauer. What other losers has he endorsed, and any winners?
BTW, thanks for the h/t!
Boyd is a blue dog from Florida. Does this have anyhting to do with reelection?
Castle will win, but I think Biden is trying to prevent any attacks on his effort to help Coons.
I have friends in the New Castle county police department and they hate Coons for various reasons, so I do not think Coons is such an optimal pick. The only reason why Coons won the elections for New Castle County executive was that he was a generic D facing a state Republican party that has not recruited a strong candidate for anything since Mike Castle (except maybe Ferris Wharton in 2006 for Attorney General).
Smith represents the reddest district (R+6) of any Republican who voted for cap-and-trade, so he’d be theoretically vulnerable to a challenge from the right.
It’s going to be a wild ride in AL. The Secretary of State has sent out a letter stating that the law doesn’t provide for recounts in primary elections, only in general elections. If you remember the mess from 2002 when Bob Riley barely beat Don Siegelman, it was against the law to open the ballot boxes once they had been counted to do any sort of recount. When they changed the law, they either didn’t think about runoff situations or didn’t care, but apparently they didn’t change the recount law for primary elections. I think it’s because the parties themselves run the primaries in AL, and not the state government. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays out.
Enh, the thing is that in a state like Vermont that has a tiny population with minimal union membership, who the labor unions back has never really made much of a difference. The only union that has any political clout at all in Vermont is the teachers’ union, and even they struggle sometimes. The AFL-CIO can endorse whoever they want, but in Vermont, it’s a completely meaningless distinction – probably the only state where that’s the case.
Chuck DeVore supporters are so stupid its not funny. They are screaming about an exit poll showing him with 75%, Fiorina with 25% and Campbell with 0%.
Just to clarify any question you have on the matter, Anthony Pollina isn’t running for Governor of Vermont, and the Progressives aren’t planning on competing for the position.
He announced today that he is running for one of the three State Senate seats in the Washington County district.
http://www.wcax.com/Global/sto…
As an even better piece of news, he is going to try to win the Democratic nomination for that seat and run as a “fusion” Democratic/Progressive candidate for the seat.
(This is a growing tendency in the state, where State Senator Tim Ashe, a former Burlington Progressive City Council member was elected last time using the same approach, and where Doug Hoffer is seeking both the Democratic and Progressive nominations for State Auditor, to challenge Democrat turned Republican erratic incumbent Tom Salmon. There are some ballot law challenges to doing it this way — under Vermont law a candidate can only file in one primary, but if they win another party nomination as a write-in, they can be listed in November as the nominee of both parties.)
As for the Progressives plans for the gubernatorial race, state Progressive Party Chair Martha Abbott is running in the primary for the party nomination – but she told the AFL-CIO this weekend that she is only doing it to prevent anyone else from taking the nomination, and that she intends to withdraw after the primary to “prevent Brian Dubie from getting elected.”
So it looks like whoever wins the Democratic nomination won’t have a Progressive candidate in the race to worry about splitting the vote with (although there are still plenty of minor party and independent candidates running – always good for some entertainment here in the Green Mountains.)
Its kind of sad that it looks like the streak of that seat switching parties will end with a Burr re-election. He is eminently beatable in most any climate (and still may be) but I really like the idea of a consistently competitive Senate seat each and every cycle. Its such a rarity.