SSP Daily Digest: 3/3

• AZ-Sen: Arizona Dems could see a big name get into the senate race: 4th CD Rep. Ed Pastor says he’s considering the race, but wants to see how Rep. Gabby Giffords’s recovery goes before making any decisions. (He also says he hasn’t spoken to the DSCC yet.)

• CT-Sen: Chris Murphy just scored a trio of big fat endorsements: state Attorney General George Jepsen, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill, and Comptroller Kevin Lembo all just gave their backing to the 5th CD rep. Notably, Merrill succeeded Murphy’s primary opponent, Susan Bysiewicz, as SoS this year.

• NM-Sen: Couple of developments in the open-seat New Mexico race. First, Dave Catanese says that Heather Wilson is starting to staff up for a potential run. Second, Steve Pearce says that he’s spoken to Republican Lt. Gov. John Sanchez and says that Sanchez is “thinking about” running. Pearce, who earlier was urging NM Republicans to reach a consensus pick, is sounding more and more like he’s interesting in playing the role of fixer rather than running himself – not too surprising, given that he’s 63 and just ran tough campaigns two cycles in a row.

• OH-Sen: Actual retail value of a Drew Carey senate run? $0, apparently. The Price Is Right host’s publicist says that Carey “does not plan to run for office,” despite a movement trying to draft him to run against Sen. Sherrod Brown. Does this remind anyone else of talk about recruiting Jerry Springer on our behalf in the 2005 timeframe? God that was sad.

• VA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Rick Boucher tells the National Journal that while he isn’t ruling out a senate run, he isn’t “giving any active thought” to one, either. Based on the linked NJ item, it sure sounds like Boucher is heading for a second career as a lobbyist. Anyhow, Boucher also says that Tim Kaine is the “obvious Democratic candidate.”

• WI-Gov: So now the RNC, like the RGA, is putting up an ad in support of Darth Walker. No Word On The Size Of The Buy (in case you aren’t familiar with that phrase, it means “NWOTSOTB”), or whether it’s cable or broadcast, but The Hill does say it will run “in Milwaukee and Madison through the end of this week.”

• NY-26: Though he met with teabagger David Bellavia for over an hour, Conservative Party chair Mike Long says he “made it very clear” that Republican nominee Jane Corwin has “a leg up on” Bellavia in terms of getting the Con endorsement. Long said his party’s executive committee may meet later this week or early next week to make a final decision. With any luck, Bellavia will pursue his plan to petition on to the ballot if he gets passed over.

• Tampa Mayor: The city of Tampa, FL had a mayoral election the other night, and Republican Rose Ferlita (26%) and Dem Bob Buckhorn (24%) will proceed to a run-off. All of the other candidates in the first round were Dems, though former Mayor Dick Greco (who was trying to return to office) was definitely more of a DINO.

• MS-Gov: Four Democrats filed for the gubernatorial race: Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree, attorney Bill Luckett (who seems to have some money), and  Some Dudes Guy Shaw and William Compton, who also ran in 2007 and took just 12% in the Dem primary. But the rest of the picture is pretty brutal. Not a single Dem will be on the ballot for the positions of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, or auditor. As for the Republicans, five candidates qualified for the gubernatorial race: Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant, businessman Dave Dennis, Pearl River County Supervisor Hudson Holiday, Some Dude Ron Williams, and teabagger James Broadwater.

• Special Elections: Unsurprisingly, in Florida’s SD-33, Dem Oscar Braynon routed his Republican opposition in his bid to succeed Frederica Wilson (who replaced Kendrick Meek in the House). Dems also lost a very Republican state house district in Maine, HD-11, where the GOP candidate got all of 697 votes to the Democrat’s 557.

• WI-St. Sen.: The Wisconsin Democratic Party is launching an effort to recall the eight Republican state senators who are legally subject to the recall process. (As you probably know, WI elects half its senators every two years, so only those who won in 2008 can be recalled right now.) The SEIU has also announced that they are backing the effort.

123 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 3/3”

  5. Our brand new, just recently elected Secretary of State was indicted on seven felony counts this afternoon — including voter fraud, theft, and perjury.  Yes, our top election offical is being charged with voter fraud.  The infuriating thing is that everyone in this state knew this was going to happen, and voted for this crook anyway.

  6. He’s up by seven, nine, ten, 12, and 19 against Huckabee, Paul Ryan(?), Romney, Gingrich, and our girl Sarah Palin.

    He’s only slightly above water in the state in his overall approval ratings and specifically in his approval ratings with Independents, yet he’s still doing fine. While 2010 wasn’t a good year for Wisconsin Democrats, I feel as Obama should ultimately win the state even if he isn’t reelected. If John Kerry can eek out a small victory, why can’t Obama? Maybe he won’t win by 14, because the Republicans pour money into the state until the middle of September and that gives them an extra point or two. But seriously, while he’s vulnerable, he’s stronger, I think, than a lot of people give him credit for.

    http://publicpolicypolling.blo…

  7. I had a dream last night that I was elected to Congress representing PA-02 after some kind of insane, Steve-Cohen-esque multiply-split AA vote, and later was approached by some kind of power broker offering to give me a majority-white district by attaching Center City to the suburbs through Northeast Philly (or something, my brain might have gotten confused and said “West Philly.”), forcing me to choose between my conscience and my political future.  Then later I had a dream where I got to have a proper New York bagel and lox, so I might have woken up craving that more than a political career.  But, yes, I actually was redistricting Philly in my sleep.

  12. I FINALLY finished my 2010 Senate numbers for my DRA map, so I will finally be able to post it here soon!

    Oh, and btw, today is my birthday. Happy B-day to me! 😉

  14. http://www.idahoreporter.com/2…

    A federal judge ruled that Idaho’s open primaries are unconstitutional, meaning that the Idaho GOP will push ahead will its long-standing plans to move the state towards closed primaries. As this is Idaho, I assume this is nothing but bad for us, as even if it makes the Republicans nominate more extreme candidates they will still win almost every time.

    As a side note, the story links to a Boise State poll showing that Republican affiliation in Idaho has declined from 41% in 2000 to 34% today, while Independents have risen from 28% then to 39% now, marking the first time in the history of this annual survey that indies outnumbered Republicans in Idaho. Democratic identification has stayed the same (22% in both 2000 and 2010), however, so it seems this is more a case of Republicans identifying as indies than anything else. The most interesting thing to me in this poll is that 73% of people strongly or somewhat supported a program “that would allow illegal immigrants to stay in this country permanently”, although 56% strongly or somewhat supported enacting an SB1070-style immigration law. Personally I would have expected the path to citizenship program support to be much lower and the SB1070 support to be somewhat higher.

  15. http://leadercall.com/statenew…

    Obviously, Mississippi Republicans would rather have a 4-0 map, but the VRA prevents that. One of the comments from the article that really struck me as ridiculous, was from this one person.

    “Lynn Cheramie, a member of the Hancock County Federation of Republican Women, applauded Wednesday as Bryant criticized the Voting Rights Act. After the speech, Cheramie said she worries that Democrats will gerrymander legislative districts to protect their turf. She also said she was puzzled that Bush signed the renewal of the Voting Rights Act.

    “Certainly, 1964 is way behind us and we’re all long past that,” said Cheramie, 71.”

  17. I came across an interesting article in The Atlantic about Obama’s chances in Nebraska, specifically Omaha. These paragraphs in particular caught my eye:

    Obamaha in 2012?

    In his book How Barack Obama Won, MSNBC’s Chuck Todd makes the point that the Obama camp played to win in Omaha. “What did the Obama folks prove: half of politics is showing up and the Obama campaign showed up in Omaha, while the McCain campaign did not.”

    Obama will surely have enough money to spend in 2012, and it will spend plenty in Omaha trying to reach Iowa voters across the river. In 2008, Obama spent over $628,000 in TV ads in this market. So from their perspective, it makes sense to target Nebraska’s 2nd again.

    But Omaha strategist Solomon Kleinsman, who founded the local grassroots group Omaha for Obama in 2007, doesn’t think he’ll win it again.

    “This district leans right, because it includes a rural area south of town (the city is pretty evenly split), so for a Democrat to win they have to get all the Democrats, make the North Omaha black community come out in droves, South Omaha Latinos show up, and also get a comfortable majority of the swing vote,” Kleinsmith says. “I just don’t see that happening this next time around.”

    African-Americans account for 9.6 percent of the district’s population while Latinos account for 8.6 percent. Assuming he wins 95 percent of blacks and 65 percent of Latinos (my own predictions), my calculations shows that he would need to win 42 percent of whites in the 2nd District to win it again.

    He won 39 percent of whites in all of Nebraska in 2008. I don’t have data for each congressional district within the state, but I imagine his share of the white vote was much higher in Omaha. Even so, he only won by a margin of 3,325 votes.

    It will, of course, be a moot point if the Nebraska legislature decides to rewrite the law that awards votes by congressional district. Or will it? I imagine Obama will have enough money to toss a few million, or perhaps even a significant sum, in Nebraska if only with the goal of helping Ben Nelson. He probably won’t win the state unless he’s winning in a massive landslide, but saving a senate seat, even one occupied by someone as annoying as Ben Nelson, is worth the cost.

    I’m of the mind that a campaign’s presence is rarely, if ever, a negative thing. The effects might be limited, but since the campaign didn’t try as hard for the state as it did for other states, diminishing returns probably haven’t kicked in. What’s giving me some pause, though, is the claim from Solomon Kleinsman that he isn’t happy with Obama. If this is the sort of unhappiness that will dissipate by the time of the election, because either his feelings will improve if the economy gets better or because the contrast between Obama and the nuttiness of the Republican candidate becomes more apparent, then it probably won’t matter. But if it’s something deeper, then he could be in trouble. He has to build on his support from last time, obviously, and since it wasn’t that strong in the first place, he can’t afford to alienate that many people.

    On another note, why does this article identify the Omaha for Obama founder as Solomon Kleinsman but then Klinesmith? How can error like that makes it way into The Atlantic?

    http://www.theatlantic.com/pol…

  18. I’m not sure I get why these associations are doubling down on FAIL.  Whatever side of the actually issue your on, objectively, Walker totally fumbled the optics of this stunt.  Why keep dumping more money of this diaster?  They need to cut him loose if they want to retain any kind of credibility.  It’s entirely possible that he gets this “budget repair” thing passed, but the tactics used have been wildly unpopular.  When you’re threatening to hunt down the WI 14, when you’ve locked down the capitol, when you get caught on tape revealing your dastardly plans, etc…you’ve already lost control of the situation.

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