• WV-Gov: I’ve complained at length before about the sheer haziness of West Virginia’s succession laws, and they aren’t going to get any clearer: Joe Manchin, as one of his final acts as Governor, isn’t going to call a special session to clarify. The law is clear that Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin becomes Acting Governor upon Manchin’s resignation (which will probably happen as soon as the election results are certified, as Manchin is able and ready to serve in the lame duck session in place of temp Carte Goodwin), but all it says is that a special election must be held to fill the vacancy, without saying, y’know, when. Legislative counsel have made the best guess that two elections should happen in Nov. 2012 (one special election for the remaining two months of the term, the other regularly scheduled one for the following four years), but that doesn’t have the force of law yet.
• AZ-07: This was one where victory was pretty clear yesterday, but today it’s officially been called for Raul Grijalva. He’s up more than 6,000 now, as friendly Pima County precincts have kept reporting.
• AZ-08: Looking right next door, things are also looking up for Gabby Giffords. She’s up by about 3,000 votes. 30,000 votes remain to be processed in Pima County, although it’s unclear how many of those are in the 7th or in the 8th. The local paper says it’s expected the race will be called in her favor today.
• CA-11: J-Mac looks to be coming back, if today’s news is any indication. Jerry McNerney’s lead over David Harmer has edged up to 568 votes (although potentially that could erode a bit in today’s further counting as there are still some San Joaquin Co. votes outstanding). California doesn’t have an automatic recount provision, but Harmer seems to already be laying groundwork: he’s filed a suit in Contra Costa County saying his team should be able to stop the vote-by-mail signature-verification process in order to challenge signatures.
• KY-06: Ben Chandler is declaring victory, despite Andy Barr’s plans to pursue a recanvass. The final count is Chandler up by 649, although that’s not SoS-certified yet, and the recanvass may change that (although probably not to the extent that Barr could win).
• NV-St. Sen.: 84-year-old long-timer Bill Raggio won’t be the Republican leader in the Nevada state Senate for the first time in ages. He pulled his name from consideration for another stint as minority leader after it was clear that he wasn’t going to win the internal struggle against Mike McGinness. Raggio’s sin? Endorsing Harry Reid over Sharron Angle (who, you might remember, ran and lost to Raggio in a 2008 GOP primary battle in his Reno-area seat).
• Leadership: The big news on Capitol Hill today, of course, is that Nancy Pelosi has made clear that she will seek to become minority leader. One more indication how quickly the daily CW (which had a quick transition to Steny Hoyer penciled in yesterday) can change on a dime. Hoyer is likely to stay in place, so Pelosi will probably only face a minor challenge from Heath Shuler. Only a few other surviving conservadems are publicly opposing Pelosi so far (no surprises: Altmire, Boren, Matheson). Chris Van Hollen, unsurprisingly, is also out as DCCC chair… although it’s hard to tell how much his star has dimmed for future leadership endeavors, as a third term at the DCCC would have been unlikely even if the Dems had salvaged a majority. (There’s plenty of other discussion on this topic, including the GOP leadership ladder and committee chairs, underway over in MassGOP’s diary.) UPDATE: Here’s some last-minute tension: Dems are less one leadership slot, having to drop down to the minority, and it looks like that’s going to be resolved with a battle for minority whip between Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn. That could produce some fireworks.
• Polltopia: Nate Silver went there: his newest post is called “Rasmussen Polls Were Biased and Inaccurate.” His graph of major pollsters’ performance finds Rasmussen both off by the widest average margin, and with the most greatest amount of bias in a particular direction (the Republican direction, natch). (Quinnipiac had the smallest average error, and PPP was the closest to having no bias. He also has kind words for SurveyUSA and YouGov.) PPP’s Tom Jensen also has some interesting divining from Tuesday’s entrails: if you were wondering whether the dropoff was from Obama voters staying home, or Obama voters voting for Republicans this time around, he finds it was almost exactly half-and-half of each.
http://www.nj.com/hudson/index…
Anyone buy into the crazy notion that Carte Goodwin should run for governor? The idea behind appointing him to the senate in the first place was to build on an already impressive Democratic bench in WV. Goodwin seems like a legit contender for the governor’s mansion.
When the music stops. Doubt he’ll beat Clyburn. Very clever of Nancy. I think one of the reasons she stuck around was to make sure that Hoyer did not become leader. Now she can get him out of leadership entirely.
over SurveyUSA being out of whack in the last couple months. And while some earlier summer polling did seem that way, it looks like they closed extremely well. Even in CA-20, where they showed Andy Vidak (R) getting 52% of the vote, and he now has 51.5% of the vote.
Pelosi is doing her party no favors by staying in and I’m not at all sure she won’t be able to keep some of the remaining Blue Dogs from voting with the GOP when they feel the need to appear moderate. But as a GOP supporter, of course, I’m happy to see it as I think it helps my party. Hoyer was a blank slate, but Pelosi, like Gingrich before her, is known and disliked by many in the center.
post on how the Progressive Caucus as a group did a lot better than Blue Dogs or New Democrats, I decided to see how Bruce Braley’s Populist Caucus did on Tuesday. They lost five out of 33 members, including one vice chair. As a group, they still did better than the Blue Dogs and New Democrats, though. There’s some overlap between the Populists and the other caucuses.
dug up this commercial of Ben Nelson and Jon Bruning collaborating together to pass some sort of Amendment in 2008. How things change so quickly…
Costa is going to win.
There are 79,000 ballots out in Fresno County and 62,000 out in Kern county. Only about 20% of them will probably be from CA-20 but that should be enough since Costa is winning both those counties by over 20%. Vidak’s stronghold, Kings county, only has 500 ballots outstanding.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/election…
Doesn’t Nevada require a 2/3rds vote for budget or tax-related bills? If I remember right, Raggio was the one who negotiated with Democrats to get past that mark. I hope Nevada doesn’t end up with CA-style budget showdowns because of this.
I hope Sharron Angle runs for Raggio’s seat again. If nothing else, it would provide us with another cycle of comic relief.
I interpret the WV law as making State Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin Governor for life. Hah. Since it doesn’t specify when the election is to be held…
Anyway, Capito will certainly. People are just being silly saying she won’t. She’s always wanted to be Governor, she’s just been biding her time. She would have beaten Manchin had she run for Senate, however she knew she couldn’t get past a self-funding teabagger like Raese in the primary, especially with her moderate views on social issues and her openness to dealing with labor and making compromises. That will open her seat up though, and Democrats would have a good shot at it; though I feel State Senator John Unger would be in the best position, representing as he does a heavily Republican area at the district’s edge.
http://www.chron.com/disp/stor…
And lo and behold, the check mark is back next to Malloy’s name at:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/f…
I like her as much as most liberals do, but really this is a horrible idea. I understand no matter who is in charge will be demonized, but Pelosi is a pretty bad public speaker and she already has high negatives amongst those who know her.
I know a lot of people will argue that most people don’t know her and they will demonize anyone, but still, I think its obviously time for someone new.
Hoyer is obviously not the answer though, not sure who is.
http://blogs.ajc.com/political…
Thought y’all might be interested in reading that. Kind of surprised me, I thought he’d call for new leadership.