Author: Crisitunity

• AK-Sen: Joe Miller lost yet another courtroom round yesterday, although this one was kind of inconsequential from a legal standpoint: he’d wanted his court challenges to the election to be held in his town of Fairbanks, but the venue will be the state capital, Juneau, instead. In most states that wouldn’t be a big deal, but given the difficulty of getting from one town to the other, that provides one more logistical disincentive for Miller to continue his lost cause.

• FL-Sen: After having spent every day for the last two years laboriously typing out “Alexi Giannoulias” over and over, now I’m going to have to get used to “Mike Haridopolos.” The newly minted Republican state Senate President is already acting Senate-candidate-ish, doing the DC circuit today, including a visit to the all-powerful US Chamber of Commerce.

• ME-Sen: Maine-area tea partiers are breathlessly telling everybody that they’ve found a primary challenger to Olympia Snowe who is “credible” and has the financial resources to become an “instant contender.” The problem is, they’re stopping there and not saying specifically who the mystery person is, although an announcement allegedly will happen in early 2011. (UPDATE: There’s one useful piece of news buried deep in the article, actually: Chellie Pingree says she won’t run for the Dems for this seat in 2012.)

• MO-Sen: This may be the most interesting news of the day: despite a likely run from a former one of their own (Jim Talent), the NRSC is actively encouraging Sarah Steelman’s interest in the race, with John Cornyn assuring her that they’d stay neutral in a Talent/Steelman primary. As a former state Treasurer, she seems to have more credible chops than the Sharron Angle/Ken Buck axis that cost the GOP a couple seats this year, but still has enough credibility with the tea partiers so that it looks like the NRSC isn’t trying to shove them back in the attic; they probably also think a female candidate might match up better against Claire McCaskill.

• MN-Gov: The numbers didn’t budge much during the first full day of the Minnesota gubernatorial recount (where Mark Dayton leads by just shy of 9,000): Dayton gained 20 votes, while Tom Emmer lost four, after 44% of the ballots were recounted yesterday. Emmer challenged 281 ballots; Dayton challenged 86. While there weren’t any write-ins for “Lizard People” this time, there was one vote cast for “Who Farted?”

• MO-Gov: Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder’s interest in running against his boss, Dem Jay Nixon, has been pretty clearly telegraphed for years already, but he’s starting to make that look more tangible. He now says he won’t run for another term as LG, and he also appeared at last week’s RGA conference in San Diego.

• NY-01: Tim Bishop lost some minor ground with the counting of military ballots in the last House race still undecided. There weren’t very many of them, but they broke pretty heavily in Randy Altschuler’s way: 44-24. Bishop’s lead is now apparently 215.

• WA-08: Maybe this one is better filed as “WATN?” Suzan DelBene, who narrowly lost to Dave Reichert, has landed on her feet; she was just appointed by Chris Gregoire as the new director of the state Dept. of Revenue. It’s unclear, though, whether this is intended to raise her statewide profile and give her some governmental experience for future runs, or if this takes her off the table for a 2012 run in WA-08 (or hypothetical WA-10).

• NY-St. Sen.: Democratic state Sen. Antoine Thompson conceded to GOP challenger Mark Grisanti yesterday in the Buffalo-based SD-60. That means there are 31 GOP-held seats in the New York Senate; to get to a 31-31 tie, the Dems will need to hold both Suzi Oppenheimer’s SD-37 (looking likely) and Craig Johnson’s SD-7 (not looking likely, as he trails by several hundred, with the exact number not clear yet). (Or alternately, they could, as occasionally rumored, flip Grisanti, who was a Dem up until when he ran for the race and will essentially need to be one in order to be re-elected.) Thompson’s loss is, in fact, pretty mystifying — I knew this was a Dem-heavy district, but it went 77-22 for Obama (the equivalent of D+24 based on just 2008 numbers)! Ordinarily, a Dem would have to be under indictment or in dead-girl/live-boy territory to lose in that kind of district; in fact, everyone seems mystified, but the theory is that an upsurge in white votes in that district motivated by the candidacy of local fave Carl Paladino pushed Grisanti over the hump (although there are claims (we don’t have the data to confirm yet) that Andrew Cuomo still managed to win in the 60th, which would tend to counteract that theory).

• State legislatures: We already mentioned four party-switchers from the Dems to the GOP in the Alabama legislature, following the change in the majority there, but there’s also a handful of other changes to mention (though not as many changes as we saw in 1994): 13 changes in 5 states. That includes 5 in the Georgia House and 1 in the Georgia Senate, 1 in the South Dakota Senate, 1 in the Maine House, and in 1 in the Louisiana House (which had the consequence of officially flipping the chamber to GOP control, although that body already had a GOP speaker). Politico has more on the changes in the south (in a rather hyperbolically titled article).

• DSCC: It’s official: Patty Murray is the one who got left holding the burning bag of dog doo. She signed on for a second stint as head of the DSCC for the 2012 cycle. She also ran it during the 2002 cycle, when the Democrats lost two seats.

• DGA: One of the other Dem holes needing to be filled also got filled today: Martin O’Malley, fresh off a surprisingly easy victory in Maryland (and possibly looking at something bigger in 2016), is taking over the helm at the DGA. With only a couple troublesome holds on the horizon in 2012, I’d imagine this job was a little easier to fill than the DSCC.

• Demographics: Democracy Corps (or GQR, if you prefer) is out with a memo that’s worth a read. Most of it is about messaging, which is a little outside SSP’s scope (though still worth a read, in terms of what worked, and mostly didn’t work, in 2010, and what recent polls have shown works better going forward). There’s also some discussion of demographics, though, in terms of what kind of a turnout model they’re expecting (or at least hoping for) in 2012.

• AK-Sen: When Norm Coleman… the man who has pretty much set all current standards for pointlessly dragging out an election for partisan purposes… is telling you to pack it in, believe me, it’s time to pack it in. The ex-Sen. from Minnesota is the latest GOPer to tell Joe Miller to stop the madness. (What’s his angle? He may have designs on behind-the-scenes Beltway leadership, possibly RNC chair, and with that in mind would probably like to discourage nonsensical R-on-R courtroom violence.)

• IL-Sen: The 59-41 Dem edge in the Senate drops to 58-42 for the rest of the lame duck session today, as Rep. Mark Kirk gets sworn in as the newest member. (Illinois, of course, was the only of the special election seats that flipped to the GOP.)

• IN-Sen: This NYT story doesn’t really have any new specifics about Richard Lugar’s upcoming teabagging that you don’t already know, but it has a spectacular quote from former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, another Republican who occupied the same pretty-conservative-but-not-a-jerk-about-it space as Lugar:

If Dick Lugar… having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.

• MA-Sen: The Boston Globe takes a look back at Deval Patrick’s reelection town-by-town, and also wonders what it may mean for Scott Brown’s first re-election battle in 2012. Patrick, for instance, won back many of the larger blue-collar (and usually Democratic) communities like Lowell and Quincy that Brown won. The question for 2012, though, is: how much of Brown’s initial success was unique to Brown (more charismatic than your garden-variety blue-blood Republican like Charlie Baker), and, by contrast, how much of that was unique to the turnout model produced by the special election?

• MD-Sen: Republicans may already be settling on a favorite for the Maryland Senate race in 2012, and they’re considering the same strategy as 2006, running an African-American against Ben Cardin. (In ’06, recall, Michael Steele, well, still lost badly, but made the race more competitive than Maryland is used to.) There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Charles Lollar, who just ran against Steny Hoyer in MD-05 and apparently wowed a lot of people on the stump. Of course, he also lost 64-35, but, well, you’ve gotta start somewhere. (Eric Wargotz, who just lost to Barb Mikulski, is also reportedly interested in trying again.)

• MO-Sen: The Beltway seems abuzz about a potential Claire McCaskill/Jim Talent rematch (thanks to McCaskill tweeting about her random airport meet-up with Talent, no doubt), but the missing part of the story seems to be that Talent, if he runs, could be walking right into a juicy establishment/tea party battle. Ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman, who lost a feisty gubernatorial primary in 2008 and threatened a 2010 primary run against Roy Blunt, has been turning up the volume on a potential run too. Ed Martin, last seen losing narrowly in MO-03, has also become the subject of some speculation. One unlikely run at this point, though, is former Ambassador to Luxembourg (which is code for “very wealthy donor”) Ann Wagner, who has been linked to the Senate race but just announced a bid for RNC chair instead this morning.

• NJ-Sen: When did Bob Menendez’s numbers start to look like Richard Burr’s? A poll from Fairleigh Dickinson (favorables only, no head-to-heads) finds vast indifference about the Garden State’s junior Senator. At least he’s above water, with 31/25 faves, but 29% are unsure and 15% have never heard of him.

• NM-Sen: Jeff Bingaman, assuming he runs again, is already facing his first GOP opponent, although one from the Some Dude end of the spectrum. William English ran (apparently in the GOP primary) for the open NM-02 seat in 2002, although he seems best known for saying controversial things in his local newspaper, perhaps most notably that Barack Obama “literally amounts to an African dictator.”

• TX-Sen: Yet more names are surfacing on the GOP side for possible primary challenges to Kay Bailey Hutchison: today, it’s Houston-area state Sen. Dan Patrick.

• VA-Sen: Corey Stewart is the Prince William County Supervisor and a likely candidate in the GOP Senate primary, if his latest pronouncements are any indication. He’s started firing shots across the bow of presumptive favorite George Allen’s comeback, saying he had a “mediocre” Senate record and that his base has moved on.

• MN-Gov: The recount of the 2.1 million ballots in the Minnesota gubernatorial race officially kicks off today. You probably already know the candidates, but the Star-Tribune today profiles the really key players at this juncture: the lawyers. One of them, interestingly, is Eric Magnuson, who you may remember from the 2008-09 recount as state supreme court chief justice and head of the canvassing board; having left the court, now he’s on Tom Emmer’s team.

• WV-Gov: It’s still not clear when the election will even occur (to set a permanent replacement for Joe Manchin), but acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin isn’t going to get a free pass in the Dem primary, facing likely opposition from two of the people most actively involved in establishing when that election will happen. Both SoS Natalie Tennant and state House speaker Rick Thompson are eyeing the race, with Thompson “planning” to run and Tennant “seriously considering.”

• CA-20: Look for a likely rematch in the 20th, which turned into one of the nation’s closest races this year. Andy Vidak “promises” he’ll try again vs. Jim Costa in 2012, although if he couldn’t make it this year, the odds of him getting over the hump in a presidential year model seem even slimmer. (Unless, of course, the boundaries of the 20th get changed by the citizens’ commission, but the VRA is likely to keep compelling a Hispanic-majority Fresno-to-Bakersfield district.)

• CA-45: Further south, Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet is another potential rematch. The Democrat already filed for a 2012 campaign, although he says he hasn’t ruled another race in or out and is establishing the committee to settle up some unpaid bills from his 2010 race.

• CT-05: And here’s one more: Justin Bernier, who was initially the GOP’s preferred candidate in the primary in the 5th but got shoved over after Sam Caligiuri dropped down from the Senate race, is saying he’s considering another run in 2012 (motivated in part by the likelihood of an open seat with Chris Murphy’s likely Senate run).

• PA-11: Don’t assume that Corey O’Brien is going to be the Dem nominee in the effort to take back the 11th in 2012, as there’s a long list of possible contenders on the bench in this bluish seat. At the top is Scranton mayor (and, briefly, gubernatorial candidate) Chris Doherty, but other names you might see are Wilkes-Barre mayor Tom Leighton, former Pittston mayor (and Paul Kanjorski crony) Michael Lombardo, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, Wilkes-Barre solicitor William Vinsko, and new state Sen. John Yudichak.

• California: Finally, those of you not living on the West Coast may be unaware that there are parts of the country where the Republicans are the ones in “what did we do wrong?” soul-searching mode. The WaPo looks at the epicenter of that, in California (where they didn’t pick up any House seats, lost all the statewide races, and even lost ground in the state legislature), where local GOPers are flummoxed by the state’s changing demographics.

(General h/t to Brian Valco, bearer of many of today’s links.)

This one had seemed wrapped up a couple weeks ago, but there’s nothing wrong with an abundance of caution. At any rate, the AP finally felt like it could call the race today, in favor of sophomore Dem Jerry McNerney.

The latest ballot-tallying updates from the most populous part of the district showed McNerney, D-Pleasanton, again had widened his lead over Republican challenger David Harmer to a margin of 2,475 votes, or about 1 percent of the 237,808 ballots counted. The Associated Press reported fewer than 1,900 ballots remained to be counted.

Harmer hasn’t conceded yet, although McNerney declared victory way back on Nov. 10. This means that, despite the onslaught of destruction in other parts of the nation, the GOP didn’t pick up a single House seat in California (and only one on the West Coast: WA-03). This also leaves only one race that remains to be decided in the House: NY-01, where Dem incumbent Tim Bishop leads by 235 with all absentee votes counted but with challenged ballots still to be sorted out.

• AZ-Sen: So, that anti-earmark stance from Republican leadership seemed to last a whole week or so, until everybody’s attention had moved onto something else (something about sharks attacking people in airport security lines, maybe). Jon Kyl just got a $200 million earmark to settle an Indian water rights case with the government. Kyl’s defense… and one we should expect to hear a lot from both sides of the aisle… is that it’s technically not an earmark (which seems to have a profanity-style you-know-it-when-you-see-it standard).

• CT-Sen: Joe Lieberman is hinting at an independent run as the preferred way forward out of his three-possible-ways-to-lose conundrum. In a recent interview, he said “I’ve enjoyed being an Independent so I guess that’s the most natural way to run, but I haven’t decided,” as well as “I don’t meet all the requirements of either party.” Other insiders, or at least the ones Politico is talking to, say that Lieberman’s choices at this point are essentially retiring or becoming a Republican. (One reason they cite is the recent collapse of the CfL “Party,” which failed to get the 1% needed to maintain its ballot place… although that overlooks the fact that the CfL was, several years ago, hijacked by waggish Lieberman opponents).

• FL-Sen: The first announced Republican candidate for the Senate in 2012 is both a Some Dude and a familiar face: college instructor Mike McCalister. If the name rings a bell, he got 10% in this year’s gubernatorial primary by virtue of not being either Rick Scott or Bill McCollum. As for temp Sen. George LeMieux, a reported possible candidate, his current status is still “no decisions yet,” albeit “I do feel a calling to serve.”

• KY-Sen: Here’s some pointless post-mortem about Kentucky, but it’s the first I’ve heard any major player from Team Blue say that the “Aqua Buddha” ad was a net liability for Jack Conway. Outgoing DSCC Bob Menendez said his main regret was not asking for better briefings about candidates’ ads, and he cited the anti-Rand Paul ad as a particular “killer.”

• PA-Sen: The first announced GOP candidate in Pennsylvania has also surfaced, and he’s also on the cusp between Some Dude and whatever’s one step higher than that. Marc Scaringi was a legislative aide to Rick Santorum back in the 1990s, and is currently a lawyer in Harrisburg. (The article also cites one other potential GOP challenger in addition to the usual Jim Gerlach/Charlie Dent suspects: incoming state House majority leader Mike Turzai, whom you might remember weighing and deciding against a PA-04 run in 2010.) As for Bob Casey Jr., he’s running again, although his main concern for the next year seems to be upping his low-key profile.

• NY-23: After making some waves yesterday with saying he was at least considering voting for John Boehner in the floor leadership vote, Bill Owens is now just saying he was “blowing off steam” and will vote for her as long as she promises to focus on jobs. (In other words, he probably got a call from leadership explaining the consequences.)

• CA-AG: Kind of a foregone conclusion at this point, given his 40,000 vote deficit, but Steve Cooley has just conceded the Attorney General’s race, with Democratic San Francisco DA and rising star Kamala Harris the victor.

• KY-AG: Here’s a surprise: after a few weeks of hype concerning a 2011 battle royale between Jack Conway and Trey Grayson for Attorney General, Grayson suddenly reversed course. Rather than run again for SoS, where GOPers were already lining up, he apparently won’t run for anything, other than the sweet embrace of the private sector.

• Chicago mayor: One more poll gives Rahm Emanuel a sizable edge in the Chicago mayoral race. He has 39% support in a Chicago Retail Merchants Association poll, followed by Carol Mosely Braun at 12, Gerry Chico at 9, Danny Davis at 7, and His Accidency, Roland Burris, at 2. The real question here seems to be whether Emanuel can win on Feb. 22 without a runoff (which would be Apr. 5).

• AR-St. House: Here’s an interesting situation in Arkansas, where Dems still control the state House (albeit with reduced numbers) but an unusual special election is already on tap. Democratic State Rep. Rick Saunders was apparently going to be given a pass to serve another two years despite being term-limited out, because the guy who won the seat in November, GOPer Keith Crass, did so despite being dead. He beat Dem Larry Williams despite dying during the early voting period. Now Saunders says he’ll resign in early January so a special election can be held (in April at the earliest).

• Washington: It looks like all the counting in Washington is finally done, with turnout a whopping 71% (thanks to the mail-in nature of the election, which goes a long way toward evaporating the ‘enthusiasm gap’). Patty Murray wound up winning by just shy of 5%, right where UW’s polling put it, compared with the out-of-state robo-pollsters who saw a much closer race. Dems still control both chambers of the state legislature by decent (but not supermajority anymore) margins, after losing 4 seats in the 49-seat Senate and 5 in the 98-seat House. Three races where the Dem trails (Randy Gordon in the Senate, and Dawn Morrell and Kelli Linville in the House) are apparently going to recount, though, by margins ranging from 47 to 194.

• Money: The Dems, after getting outgunned on the dark money front in 2010 by a wide margin, aren’t going to be caught napping this time (and this time, unlike 2008, they seem to have Barack Obama’s tacit approval). David Brock (in his quest to become the left’s answer to Karl Rove) is busy revving up his own 527/501(c)(4) type-thing for corraling large donations from undisclosed donors. The good news: they’ve already lined up $4 million in commitments. The bad news: they’re being led by Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (although maybe she’s better behind the scenes than she is as a campaigner).

• History: Here’s a great look back from Greg Giroux at Senate cycles where one party was defending more than 10 seats than the other party (as the Dems will in 2012). While the last three times this happened (2006 2008, 1986, and 1980), the defending party got hammered, many of the prior examples showed little movement one way or the other, including 1976, where a number of incumbents of both parties lost (in the post-Watergate environment) but it all balanced out to zero.

• AK-Sen: There’s yet another lawsuit coming out of the Joe Miller camp, this one filed in state court. It essentially rehashes claims he’s already made at the federal level, but adds two new allegations: voters without identification were allowed to take ballots in some precincts, and that in a few precincts handwriting samples suggest that the same person completed multiple ballots. Miller’s ultimate goal is a hand count of the entire race, which could delay Lisa Murkowski’s swearing-in past January. The question, however, is starting to arise: who’s paying for all this? None of Miller’s former friends seem interested any more: the NRSC has gone silent, and the Tea Party Express still offers verbal support but isn’t ponying up any money. Only Jim DeMint continues to offer any financial support (with a Joe Miller fundraising button on his Senate Conservatives website).

• MT-Sen: This could complicates matters for Denny Rehberg, turning this primary into an establishment vs. teabagger duel. Two right-wing groups, Concerned Women PAC and Gun Owners of America, have already lent their support to businessman Steve Daines, who has already announced his bid for the GOP nod here.

• NY-Sen: Kirsten Gillibrand has to do it all over again in 2012 (this one was just a special election), and rumors are that former Bush administration official Dan Senor, who spurned a run this time, is interested in a run next time. It’s hard to imagine, if Gillibrand could top 60% in a year as bad as this, that Senor could somehow overperform that in a presidential year.

• MN-Gov: The recount is officially on. The State Canvassing Board, whom you all got to know really well in early 2009, ruled that the 8,770 vote lead for Mark Dayton is less than one-half of a percentage point and that an automatic recount is triggered. The count starts on Monday and should end in mid-December, allowing time for swearing in on Jan. 3 (unless things really go haywire). This comes after a variety of legal maneuvering from both sides, including a fast Minnesota Supreme Court ruling against Tom Emmer, in response to his desire to force counties to comb through voter rolls and eliminate votes that were “excessively cast.” No word yet on whether the Board will honor Dayton’s request for ways to streamline the process (and minimize Emmer’s chances for challenges).

• MT-Gov: There had been rumors that Democratic ex-Rep. Pat Williams would seek the Dem gubernatorial nomination (potentially setting up a match with his successor, ex-Rep. Rick Hill), despite being 72 years old. He’s now saying that he won’t. Williams is so old-school that he used to represent MT-01, before the state got smooshed together into one at-large district.

• CT-05: Random rich guy Mark Greenberg, who finished third in the GOP primary in the 5th this year (although with nearly 30% of the vote), says he’ll be running again in 2012. Added incentive: he says he expects this to be an open seat as Chris Murphy runs for Senate.

• FL-17: Newly elected Frederica Wilson is already challenging the old ways of the House… going after the long-standing prohibition against wearing hats on the House floor. She says it’s “sexist,” saying that women’s indoor hat use is different from men’s. Wilson owns at least 300 hats, she says. (If Regina Thomas ever makes it to the House, maybe the Hat Caucus can gain some momentum.)

• MD-01: Recently-defeated Frank Kratovil seems like one of the likeliest losses to run again in 2012, especially since the Dem-controlled Maryland legislature is likely to serve him up a much Dem-friendlier district (as many of our in-house mapmakers have suggested). He isn’t saying yes yet, but says he will “consider” it.

• NH-02: Another possible re-run is Ann McLane Kuster, who performed pretty well in a narrow loss to Charlie Bass in the open 2nd. There have been lots of Beltway rumors that her run is imminent, and some are pointing to encouragement straight from the White House for her to try again.

• NY-01: We’ve essentially finished the absentee ballot count, and the news is very good here: Tim Bishop, after leading by only 15 last night, is now leading by a comparatively-gargantuan 235 with all absentees counted. However, we’re nowhere near a resolution, as attention now turns to the court battle over 2,000 challenged ballots (Randy Altschuler has challenged 1,261, while Bishop has challenged 790). Still, Bishop’s spokesperson is saying they’re “very confident” that they’ve won this one.

• NY-23: Yeesh, Bill Owens is actually saying he might vote for John Boehner for Speaker or abstain instead of Nancy Pelosi when it comes to a floor vote, saying Pelosi is too liberal. (This despite saying he voted for her, rather than Heath Shuler, in the caucus vote.) Also, not that it matters at this point, but this race wound up being closer than the Election Day count indicated: Matt Doheny picked up 1,982 previously-unknown votes in the recanvass of Fulton County, taking Owens’ margin down to 1,795 overall, and making it all the clearer that we owe this victory entirely to 3rd-party bearer-of-cat-fud Doug Hoffman.

• Odds and ends: The Fix has a massive list of people considering rematches in 2012, most of which we’ve already dealt with before (including Kuster and Kratovil, above). Other names that we haven’t listed include Brad Ellsworth (either for Gov, Senate, or his old IN-08), Christine O’Donnell in Delaware (not unexpected, since she runs every 2 years anyway), Glenn Nye, and Allen Boyd (despite his losing very thoroughly to Steve Southerland).

• AL-St. House: The inevitable realignment at the legislative level in Alabama finally happened, and happened all at once instead of slow drips. Four conservative Democrats in the state House changed to the GOP, bringing the GOP numbers up to not just a majority but a supermajority in one fell swoop. The Madison County (Huntsville) Clerk also announced her switch, too.

• CA-AG: At this point, it’s all over but the shouting in the AG race, as Kamala Harris now leads Steve Cooley by 43,000 votes (with 500K votes still left to count). While the AP hasn’t called it, LA Weekly has decided it’s a done deal.

• Chicago mayor: Roland Burris has aparently thrown his well-traveled hat into the ring for the Chicago mayoral race, as he’ll need a new job in a week or so. Supporters filed his candidate paperwork yesterday, the deadline for filing (although he has yet to officially say that he’s running). Somehow, I can only see this helping Rahm Emanuel, by further splitting the African-American vote (already divided between Danny Davis and another ex-Senator, Carol Mosely Braun).

• Redistricting: There’s been some sudden buzz about switching North Carolina to an independent redistricting commission (which, of course, has to do with the GOP seizing control of the state legislature). In what is not a surprise, though, the GOP has no interest in giving up its newfound power, saying that (despite a recent PPP poll showing wide support for such a commission) there isn’t any time to move on the constitutional amendment that would create a commission (something that they generally supported up until, y’know, this month). Also on the redistricting front, check out the Fix’s latest installment in its state-by-state series, focusing today on Indiana, where GOP control over the trifecta is likely to make things worse for IN-02’s Joe Donnelly (just how much worse, we have yet to find out)… and, if they wanted to experiment with dummymanders, possibly IN-07’s Andre Carson, too.

• Demographics: Here’s some interesting demographic slice-and-dice from the Washington Post: Dems increased their vote share in big counties (500K+) from 49% in 1994 to 54% this year, but lost even further in smaller counties, from 43% in 1994 to 39% this year. The districts the GOP won were disproportionately older, whiter, and less educated. And on a related note, check out these maps and the interesting ways they represent population density around the U.S. Note any similarities between these maps and where Democratic votes are concentrated?

The AP has called the race in California’s 20th district for Democratic incumbent Jim Costa.

SACRAMENTO (AP): Democratic Rep. Jim Costa has narrowly won enough votes to retain his Central Valley seat.

That’s not a surprise, as everyone had been treating this one as a victory for almost a week, ever since a huge ballot dump from Fresno Co. pushed Costa into a late lead over GOP challenger Andy Vidak.

In New York’s 25th District, however, it’s over, and GOP challenger Ann Marie Buerkle has won. Dan Maffei just conceded the race, trailing by 567 votes. He’d been planning a court date concerning the recount today, but instead decided to pull the plug. Here’s the best part of his statement:

The electorate may have changed tremendously from 2008 to 2010 in terms of who turned out to vote, but I kept my pledges to the people who elected me and I will forever be proud of that. Not only do I not apologize for my positions on the stimulus, the health care bill, financial reform, and the credit card bill, but my only regret is that there were not more opportunities to make healthcare more affordable to people and businesses and get more resources to the region for needed public projects – particularly transportation and public schools.

That brings the total GOP gain in the House to 63 seats, with only two seats left to be called and/or conceded (CA-11, looking like a definite Dem hold, and NY-01, a nailbiter but with some Dem momentum).

• AK-Sen: A new profile of Sitka mayor Scott McAdams has him sounding unsure about using his newfound celebrity to run statewide again, as he cites the very apparent difficulty of winning statewide as a Democrat in Alaska. In the article is an interesting number that also shows just how well Lisa Murkowski did at getting moderates (and even Dems doing the game-theory thing) to fall in line behind her: Ethan Berkowitz, the Dem candidate in the standard 2-way race for Governor, picked up 96,000 votes, way more than McAdams’ 67,000.

• MA-Sen: Here’s a name that we haven’t heard associated with the Senate race, sounding more interested than assumed (well, he’s not sounding interested, but “mum” is not not interested). Barney Frank, who skipped the special election and was assumed not interested at the time because of his age and his chairmanship, is saying “ask me later” about challenging Scott Brown. Maybe being in the minority has changed his mind, since he has no gavel to give up anymore.

• ME-Sen: If there was any doubt that Olympia Snowe’s main problem in 2012 will be in the GOP primary, against a teabagger-to-be-named-later, check this out: she just signed on to an amicus brief challenging the constitutionality of the mandate portion of health care reform. That’s, of course, the same bill that she helped vote out of committee (though she voted against it on the floor).

• MI-Sen: The GOP field to go against Debbie Stabenow hasn’t really started to take shape yet, but here’s one potential name that’s getting some encouragement within conservative circles to run: soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Peter Hoekstra, who lost the GOP gubernatorial primary. He isn’t ruling it out, but is “predisposed to say no.”

• NE-Sen: While the entry of AG Jon Bruning (who has an exploratory committee) is considered pretty much an inevitability, there’s already one Republican formally in the race now: investment adviser Pat Flynn, who sounds like he’ll be flying the tea party flag. Flynn got 22% of the vote in the 2008 Senate GOP primary, losing to Mike Johanns.

• NM-Sen: If you’re waiting on pins and needles to find out whether Jeff Bingaman will run for another Senate term, you’ll need to wait a little longer. Bingaman is expected to announce his 2012 plans in March (the usual timetable he’s followed for previous re-elections). The article points out he recently raised $400K at a fundraiser, certainly the actions of a man planning another run.

• NV-Sen: It would have taken the confluence of a great Harry Reid campaign and a terrible opponent’s campaign for Harry Reid to win in a year like this, and it looks like that’s what we got. You’ve all seen the post-mortems about how effective Reid’s campaign was, and now here’s a nice Politico piece on the amateur-hour efforts from Team Angle, focusing on her campaign manager Terry Campbell, who often seemed unaware of the timing of ad buys or even how much money they had at a given moment. Maybe most telling: the Election Day phone bank shut down at 5 pm (despite polls being open until 7) in order to go set up the victory party. Never fear, though, it sounds like yet more Angle is on tap for 2012. However, it’s sounding more and more like the plan, instead of running against John Ensign in the Senate primary, will be to run for the open seat in NV-02 assuming Dean Heller runs for Senate. (Another option is running for the state Senate, as her long-time nemesis Bill Raggio will be vacating his Reno-area open seat.)

• TX-Sen: Here’s a boilerplate article on the speculation as to whether Kay Bailey Hutchison runs for re-election, but there’s an interesting tidbit buried within: Chet Edwards, who’ll be looking for work soon and has a better profile for running statewide than for his blindingly-red district, is getting a strong push to run on the Dem side. (The Texas Tribune has more on Edwards here. Another, maybe likelier, possibility, is an Obama administration job.)

• VA-Sen: The Virginia state GOP has decided to hold a primary to nominate its Senate nominee in 2012, not a convention (as they did in 2008). This is seen as a boost to establishment fave George Allen, who, flamingly right-wing as he is, would still be vulnerable to someone even to the right at a convention, which is dominated by the hardcore faithful. (As seen by Jim Gilmore’s near loss at the ’08 convention to the obscure state Del. Bob Marshall, reported to be interested in another try.)

• IL-17: There’s a fair number of defeated Dem House members that seem like it’d a good idea for them run again in 2012, but here’s one that, well, isn’t a good idea, who’s still quick to state his interest. Phil Hare (who lost by a significant margin to a pizza parlor owner in his first actively-contested election) says he’d like to try again. The real question may be what district he’d even be running in, considering that the weird-looking 17th (intended as a downstate Dem vote sink, albeit not a very effective one if the Dem can’t even hold it) is likely to be vaporized in redistricting.

• DCCC: It’s official: Rep. Steve Israel will be running the DCCC for the 2012 cycle, as the Dems seek to get back on the offensive. Israel will still need to be approved by the larger House caucus, but having gotten the Pelosi imprimatur, it’s considered a done deal.

• Polltopia: Pew is out with even more data on the cellphone polling issue, and it confirms what you probably already know, that the cellphone gap is not only real but growing. They found that in the polls they conducted in fall 2010, the landline-only surveys skewed in the Republican direction by 5.1% more than dual-frame surveys. That’s up from the 2.4% cellphone gap they found in 2008 polling. They also found that dual users (both cellphone and landline) reached by cell are still significantly more Democratic than dual users reached by landline, which would explain much of the skew.

• Redistricting: Good news for Dave’s App users. Having just unveiled Dave’s App 2.0 a few weeks ago, now he’s up to Dave’s App 2.0.1, incorporating a few tweaks (such as showing all districts all the time).

• AK-Sen: In the words of Bart Simpson, “he’s like some kind of non-giving-up guy!” Joe Miller just keeps contesting the Alaska Senate race despite rigor mortis having started to set in. Today he added another legal action to the already-long (and expensive) tally, asking a federal judge for an injunction stopping state officials from certifying the election. Miller’s latest gripe is that the state started the count a week earlier than scheduled, forcing him to pull together a volunteer ballot-challenging team on short notice, meaning that “an indeterminate number” of misspelled ballots got through. (That number would have to be several thousand for this challenge to have any hope of succeeding.) This, of course, has to work in parallel to a separate suit, still in process, where he’s trying to force the state from counting any misspelled ballots.

• CT-Sen: Since she apparently has absolutely nothing better to do with her piles of money, Linda McMahon is actually running a post-election “thank you” ad. Speculation is rising that she’s trying to stay top-of-mind for 2012, where there’s the possibility of running against Joe Lieberman (an option she said she wasn’t taking off the table). The article also cites increased buzz about Ted Kennedy Jr. running for the Dems. Rep. Chris Murphy is known to be interested too, and soon-to-be-ex-SoS Susan Bysiewicz, despite a year of nonstop bungling, is also in the mix.

• VA-Sen: Here are a couple more Republican names who are checking out the Senate race in Virginia. One is an establishment figure, Prince William Co. Chairman Corey Stewart, but the other is Bert Mizusawa, a retired Army Reserve brigadier general whom you might remember as the more-conservative opposition from the VA-02 GOP primary this year, who lost to Rep.-elect Scott Rigell. Also, the Tom Perriello buzz (in the event of Jim Webb not running again) seems to have gotten loud enough that the Washington Post has taken notice.

• NY-01, NY-25: The race in the 1st is down into the double digits, as Tim Bishop made up more ground yesterday as absentee ballots counted in his home turf of Southampton started reporting. Randy Altschuler’s lead is 81 votes, representing a gain of more than 200 for Bishop (although Altschuler’s camp says they did “better than expected” in Dem areas that reported, and that the more GOP-friendly Brookhaven has yet to report). In the 25th, Dan Maffei upped his percentage of the absentee votes coming in from the first half of votes from Onondaga County, enough to gain 521 votes, now trailing Ann Marie Buerkle by 303. He’ll still need to maintain that pace to win, though, as more GOP-friendly Wayne County has yet to report.

• DSCC: Harry Reid is now saying he’s “in no hurry” to fill the still-empty DSCC slot, but Beltway CW seems to find the fickle finger pointing more clearly in Patty Murray’s direction. With Michael Bennet having pretty thoroughly declined, Reid and the White House are now making a “full court press” on Murray (who also helmed the DSCC’s 2002 cycle).

• CO-St. House: 197 votes is all that kept Dems from controlling the trifecta in Colorado for 2012. The last outstanding race in the state House was concluded, with Republican Robert Ramirez beating Dem incumbent Debbie Benefield by 197, flipping the state House to the GOP by a 33-32 margin. (Dems control the state Senate and the governor’s chair.)

• IA-St. Sen.: It’s been two and a half weeks since an election, and you’re already hungry for another one? Well, we’ve already got one on tap coming up very soon: the legislative special election to fill Lt. Gov.-elect Kim Reynolds’ seat in SD-48, scheduled for Jan. 4. It’s light-red turf in Iowa’s rural southwestern corner, though, so likely GOP nominee Joni Ernst (the Montgomery Co. Auditor) is probably the favorite. The local parties will select their nominees next week; despite losing the state House, Dems still control the state Senate.

• Redistricting: Eight members of the new California citizens’ redistricting commission have been named (one of whom is a former US Census director). If you make unsupported assumptions based on their professions, it looks like we may have done well with the “unaffiliated” picks. Six more will be added before work begins.

One more race down in the House, with NC-02 coming to a conclusion. The recount requested by Bobby Etheridge didn’t seem to change the numbers much, if at all:

Democratic Rep. Bobby Etheridge will concede to Republican Renee Ellmers, a Democratic source confirms.

With local election officials completing their recount of votes cast in North Carolina’s 2nd District race, Ellmers led Etheridge by 1,489 votes.

With Ellmers pretty clearly on the outs with the NRCC, the real question here for her survival in 2012 is how much the North Carolina legislature, under GOP control for the redistricting process, will reconfigure the Raleigh area lines in order to protect Ellmers. (You might remember that a similarly-configured 2nd also had a Republican Rep. for 2 years following the previous GOP wave in 1994, the long-forgotten David Funderburk, beaten in 1996 by Etheridge.) The current configuration of the district (which includes part of Raleigh proper) is swingy enough (R+2) that she could have a rough time in her first re-election… unless her district gets pushed further out into the exurbs and rural counties, and Brad Miller’s NC-13 becomes more Raleigh-centric.

Of all the list of outstanding races, this was the one that seemed least likely to get reversed, given that the disparity was always in the four digits and the AP never un-called the race. That leaves only four House races left to resolve, including CA-11 and CA-20, where Dem victories seem very likely, meaning that NY-01 and NY-25 are the real question marks. (UPDATE: Make that five, as a recount is still pending in the likely loss in TX-27.)

• AK-Sen: Is there anyone other than Joe Miller left who wants Joe Miller to keep contesting the Senate race? The state GOP organization is now saying it “stands ready to embrace Lisa Murkowski” as the winner of the race, despite her not having won its primary. I’m sure they were secretly ready all along to do so… recall that the person issuing the statement, state party chair Randy Ruedrich, was the guy that Joe Miller was trying to orchestrate a palace coup against, which got him fired from his Fairbanks borough job. I can’t imagine much love lost between Ruedrich and Miller.

• IN-Sen: Richard Lugar, who just announced that he’s running for re-election, is laying down a pretty big marker (and one that probably helped convince him to run again). He’s out with an internal poll from American Viewpoint that, while it doesn’t specifically poll the 2012 GOP Senate primary, shows him with huge approvals, though apparently among all voters and not just registered Republicans. He’s at 66% favorable. Two of his potential GOP opponents, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock and state Sen. Mike Delph, have faves of 14% and 7% each.

• ND-Sen, NM-Sen: This Politico article doesn’t actually contain any hard facts that are newsworthy, but it does contain one alarming sentence, that both Kent Conrad and Jeff Bingaman are “weighing retirement” (without anything beyond that). Conrad and Bingaman, though both long-timers, are still in their early 60s. Buried deep in the article is also a throwaway line that Jon Kyl is also the subject of retirement “speculation.”

• NJ-Sen: That tea party push to have a recall election for Bob Menendez (despite, of course, the universally accepted legal principle that you can’t recall federal officials) seems to have finally died, courtesy of the New Jersey Supreme Court. I’m just surprised the case rose that far through the courts before, y’know, someone thought to crack open their 1L Con Law textbook, but the bright side is that every dollar right-wingers spend on pointless appellate legal fees is a dollar not spent on actually electing somebody. Menendez is up for a regularly scheduled election in 2012, anyway.

• NV-Sen: Everyone seems in a fit of instant nostalgia for Sharron Angle today, with the revelation that in the course of the campaign she said “Sometimes dictators have good ideas” (in reference to Augusto Pinochet and privatized pension systems), and the leaked release of the ad that she cut that never got released, probably because it takes a minute to make a point that should take five seconds and because the 70s-disaster-flick-style overacting overshadows any possible message. (You can click here to see the ad, bearing in mind that it opens in Windows Media Player.) The real news that got leaked today that might impact the 2012 race, though, is that none other than John Ensign helped Sharron Angle prep for her debate by playing the part of Harry Reid. I wonder if that’ll be the last nail in the coffin for the reputed Reid/Ensign non-aggression pact?

• RI-Sen: Add one more potential name to the roster for a Republican challenger to Sheldon Whitehouse: the state’s GOP chair, Giovanni Cicione (who has been encouraging outgoing Gov. Don Carcieri to run, as well as floating his own name as a last resort), is touting John Robitaille as a possible candidate. Robitaille (Carcieri’s former communications director) performed above expectations in the gubernatorial race in which he was supposed to be a sacrificial lamb, finishing second (though helped along by Frank Caprio’s last-minute implosion).

• VA-Sen (pdf): PPP’s Virginia Senate poll had a GOP primary portion that just got released separately; right now, George Allen is the consensus pick, although that may have more to do with the ex-Gov. and ex-Sen.’s broad name rec compared with the rest of the field. Allen is at 46, with the very-unlikely-to-run Eric Cantor at 18, right-wing AG Ken Cuccinelli at 16, Lt. Gov. Bill Boling and ex-Rep. Tom Davis both at 4, and state Del. Bob Marshall (who almost sneaked into the 2008 Senate nomination) at 2.

• NY-01, NY-25: Good news in the 1st, bad news in the 25th. Tim Bishop has made up some ground, as of the second day of absentee counting. Bishop picked up 108 votes on Randy Altschuler, cutting Altschuler’s lead down to 275, and that’s with Smithtown, Altschuler’s strongest area, having almost entirely reported. Bishop’s strongest turf is East Hampton, which will begin counting tomorrow. Ann Marie Buerkle, however, gained a small amount of ground in the 25th, contrary to expectations. Her lead is up to 824 votes, after a batch of small batch (230) of challenged ballots from Monroe County got opened and counted. The county to watch, though, will be Onondaga County, which is Dan Maffei’s base and where 7,000 absentees are yet to be counted.

• Redistricting: There are three different redistricting articles out today that are worth a read. One is about Texas, where it seems like the GOP is extended about as far as it can go (thanks to victories in TX-23 and likely TX-27); compounding the problem there is something that I’ve been pointing out for years, which is that at least two, possibly three, of its expected four new seats are going to have to be VRA seats, seeing as how the vast majority of Texas’s growth in the past decade has been among Hispanics. Trying to limit the creation of new Hispanic-majority seats will only make it harder to protect Quico Canseco and Blake Farenthold.

There’s also a piece looking at Nevada, more specifically the fight within the Dem-controlled legislature about for whom to tailor NV-04 (which will probably be a Dem-leaning suburban district, conceding a GOP-leaning NV-03 to Joe Heck). Both state Senate majority leader Steven Horsford and new state Assembly speaker John Oceguera have their eyes on the new seat. Finally, there are questions in Florida about just who’s behind the lawsuit, fronted by a bipartisan coalition of Mario Diaz-Balart and Corrine Brown, to stop implementation of Amendment 6, the one bright spot from Florida on Election Day (a new initiative that makes gerrymandering more difficult). The Orlando Sentinel traces the money trail back to a number of state legislators’ groups, including one led by GOP state Sen. Don Gaetz, the guy who… big surprise… is tasked with leading redistricting for the state Senate.