Author: Crisitunity

Two Democrats vying for the nomination in the governor’s race that is: ex-Gov. Jerry Brown and San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa today stated unequivocally that he won’t be joining them in the race for Governor in 2010.

“The answer is no,” Villaraigosa said in an interview on CNN. “I feel compelled to complete what I started out to do… I can’t leave this city in the middle of a crisis.” He noted the city’s unemployment rate, residents who have lost their homes and the budget deficit.

Villaraigosa was considered a top contender until recently, and would have brought definite strategic advantages to the race (the only SoCal resident and the only Latino in the race). He never caught fire in the initial polls, though (and this weekend’s LA Times poll showing him with lukewarm approvals and barely beating Brown on his own turf in LA may have been the last straw). This way Villaraigosa saves his powder for another fight — such as the 2012 Senate race, if Dianne Feinstein retires.

RaceTracker: CA-Gov

• DE-Sen: Wilmington News-Journal writer Ron Williams seems convinced that Rep. Mike Castle will be running for the open Senate seat in 2010 and will announce next month, based on his chats with unnamed “high-ranking Republican operatives who know Castle’s moods and inclinations.” He also points to Democratic “rumblings” that AG Beau Biden may pass on the race, to avoid a career-damaging defeat. The Hill tried to get confirmation on this and didn’t get any new information out of Castle, so take with as much salt as needed.

• FL-Sen: This is about the last thing anyone could have predicted: billionaire gadfly Tom Golisano, who ran three races for NY-Gov as an independent and was last seen pulling levers behind the curtain in the New York Senate semi-successsful-coup-type-thing has a new idea: running for Senate in Florida. Either on the Independence Party line (which does in fact exist in Florida, although barely)… or as a Democrat. Despite the fact that he just became a Florida resident a few months ago because he hated New York’s high taxes. Sounds like the kind of thing that’ll last until he’s distracted by another shiny object.

• MN-Sen: While we’re trafficking in thinly-sourced rumors, here’s one more: there are plans afoot for the “pre-concession BBQ” for Norm Coleman staffers.

• NH-Sen: AG Kelly Ayotte is reportedly “close” to deciding to run for Senate. (If you haven’t already read Laura Clawson‘s takedown last week of the circular rationale for the Ayotte boomlet, do it.)

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: GOP Reno mayor Bob Cashell decided he didn’t really mean to endorse Harry Reid last week; he had co-hosted a fundraising reception for Reid but had done so as a “non-partisan mayor.” He probably noticed that having endorsed Reid wouldn’t help his chances in the Nevada governor’s GOP primary next year. (Although this article says that he’s also considering running for Governor as an Independent.) Meanwhile, Nevada’s other Senator, John Ensign saw his approval numbers take a huge hit with the allegations about his affair with a staffer: the Las Vegas Review-Journal finds him at 39/37, down from 53/18 last month. Still, he’s the most popular guy in Nevada, compared with Harry Reid‘s 34% approval and Gov. Jim Gibbons’ 10% approval in the same poll.

• CA-Gov: Antonio Villaraigosa will announce later today on CNN whether or not he’s going to run for California governor, which seemed likely even a few months ago but has gotten called into doubt recently. He can’t be encouraged by a recent LA Times poll, which polled only Los Angeles city voters on the Dem primary. Although Villaraigosa maintained a 55% approval as mayor, he only beat ex-Gov. Jerry Brown and SF Mayor Gavin Newsom by 38-32-13 on his home turf, with a plurality opposing his entry into the race.

• IL-Gov: Little-known state Senator Matt Murphy is getting in the Illinois governor’s race. He joins two other state Senators in the field: Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard. Murphy has only been in the Senate since 2006, but may have a geographical advantage against presumptive frontrunner Brady, in that Murphy is from Palatine in the Chicago burbs while Brady is from downstate.

• ME-Gov: Somehow this eluded me (and everyone else) last week, but it’s indicative of how little press the open Governor’s seat in Maine is getting. Steve Rowe, the Democratic former House speaker and Attorney General, has filed his campaign paperwork. The likely Dem frontrunner will have his formal kickoff “at a later date.”

• NJ-Gov: Chris Christie has some splainin’ to do to Congress: he agreed to testify before the House Judiciary subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, regarding who Christie chose to award no-bid federal monitoring contracts to when he was US Attorney. Christie also looks to be waddling toward the center for the general, as last week his team scrubbed the “Shared Values” portion of his website that was up during the primary, in which he talked about opposition to abortion and gay marraige. Meanwhile, the discovery of an extra $625 million or so under the couch cushions in the state’s tax amnesty program may help Jon Corzine’s chances a lot; with that extra money, Dems may be able to restore the popular property tax rebates that were on the chopping block.

• NY-Gov: Rudy Giuliani gave a timeline of sorts for deciding whether or not to run for Governor, saying “it’s something I have to decide sometime this year, but I haven’t really focused on it very much right now.” Also, like clockwork, another Siena poll (pdf) showing David Paterson’s dire straits just came out (although numbers have been stable for several months now): he loses the primary to Andrew Cuomo 69-16 and the general to Giuliani 57-27. Cuomo beats Giuliani 49-40, and has his highest-ever approval ratings at 71%.

• FL-08: Rep. Alan Grayson likes to keep ’em guessing. One of the most outspoken liberals in the House, the freshman rep. plans to appear at the next Orlando-area teabaggers’ event on July 4. Apparently he’s there to tout support for a bill to audit the Federal Reserve, a topic where he and the Paulist wing of the GOPers have common cause.

• FL-13: More insight into the campaign finance shell game that GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan allegedly had going on, that’s been the subject of investigations: a bankrupt registered Democrat explained his $8,800 contribution to Buchanan in that he was reimbursed for the contributions by his partners in a trucking company, one of whom is one of Buchanan’s biggest backers.

• OH-02: David Krikorian, who’s going up against Rep. Jean Schmidt in this dark-red district, has put out an internal poll showing him within striking distance, down 44-39. Those numbers may have a lot to do with the DCCC‘s surprising recent decision to list OH-02 as one of their eight best shots at a pickup.

• Redistricting: The presentations from the NCSL’s first Redistricting Seminar are available online. They include topics like the Census and “How to Draw Maps That Will Stand up in Court.” (D)

Harstad Strategic Research for the DGA (5/31-6/4, likely voters):

Diane Denish (D): 57

Heather Wilson (R): 35

Undecided: 8

Diane Denish (D): 57

Steve Pearce (R): 35

Undecided: 8

(MoE: ±4%)

As far as we know, no one has polled the New Mexico governor’s race until now… or even paid much attention to the race. That’s because, with the current field, this open seat is looking like, if not a slam dunk, then at least a poorly contested lay-up for Team Blue. Not only is there New Mexico’s big shift to the left in the 2008 election, but also a huge disparity in recruitment. Lt. Gov. Diane Denish has been the long-time heir apparent for the Dems (although state Senate majority leader Michael Sanchez is looking at the race), while all the GOP has cobbled together is official candidate National Guard Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti, along with two explorers: state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones and Allen Weh, former state party chair best known for his supporting role in the U.S. Attorney scandal.

Still, the possibility has loomed in the distance that the GOP might field a higher-profile candidate: either one of the two former Reps., Heather Wilson or Steve Pearce, who basically destroyed each other en route to Tom Udall’s easy 2008 Senate victory. If this internal poll for the DGA is even remotely close to reality, then there’s not much of a race here even if Wilson or Pearce show up, as both of them lose 57-35. Denish even leads Wilson 53-40 in NM-01, Wilson’s base of operations for over a decade as she kept America safe from stray nipples. Pearce has also been weighing a run to get back his old seat in NM-02; if this poll is any indication, that’d be a better use of his time. (H/t Campaign Diaries.)

RaceTracker: NM-Gov

• FL-Sen: Here’s a pretty serious repudiation of Charlie Crist by the GOP party faithful. At a county party straw poll in Pasco County (Tampa exurbs, one county removed from Crist’s Pinellas County home), Marco Rubio beat Crist 73 to 9. Luckily for Crist, the primary electorate includes a much broader sample than the party’s diehard activist base who actually show up for meetings… but this shows just how badly things are for him with the base.

• IL-Sen: Bad news for AG Lisa Madigan, whose list of demands for a Senate race include an Obama endorsement, a cleared field, and no brown M&Ms at the catering table: Barack Obama announced that he wouldn’t be endorsing anyone in the Senate race. Good news for Roland Burris, on the other hand: a state prosecutor has decided that Burris won’t face perjury charges over his vague statements to the state legislature about his appointment to the Senate by disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich.

• KY-Sen: SoS Trey Grayson has decided to start fundraising like a madman in the coming weeks, scheduling eight more events before the end of the fundraising quarter in June. Grayson opened his exploratory committee on May 6, so he has had only half-a-quarter in which to try to top Jim Bunning.

• MN-Sen: The FEC released two draft opinions that, if enacted by the full commission, will prevent Norm Coleman from tapping his campaign funds for his legal defense fees associated with his FBI investigation. (This doesn’t affect the costs of paying for the recount, which are paid in part by the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee instead.)

• CA-Gov: Has anyone noticed that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who everyone assumes is running for Governor, hasn’t taken any steps toward running for Governor? The folks at Calitics have noticed, and the fact that Villaraigosa (whose popularity in LA seems to be faltering) just took over the 2nd VP role for the US Conference of Mayors (which puts him on track to become the organization’s president in 2011) is another tea leaf that he won’t run. If he doesn’t run, that just leaves an all-Bay Area clash between old (Jerry Brown) and new (Gavin Newsom) for the Dem nod.

• MN-Gov: GOP state Rep. Paul Kohls from Minneapolis’s western exurbs has announced his candidacy for the Minnesota governor’s race. He joins former GOP state Rep. Bill Haas as official candidates, but at least a dozen more people seem intent on entering the race.

• FL-15: Rep. Bill Posey got nothing but scorn when he aligned himself with the most tinfoil elements of the GOP in introducing his birther legislation, but he’s just ratcheting up the crazy. Posey picked up four more co-sponsors (Culberson, Carter, Neugebauer, and Campbell). Also, while being interviewed on WorldNetDaily’s radio show about the bill, Posey outright accused Barack Obama of hiding something and, for good measure, tried launching a feud with Rachel Maddow.

• NM-01: Jon Barela, a former vice-chair of the New Mexico GOP and former head of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, officially announced his candidacy against Rep. Martin Heinrich. He did so with the endorsement of 2008 candidate Sheriff Darren White. While it’s now a D+5 district, it’s almost half Latino, so Barela could make some noise if he gets some traction in the Latino community.

• OH-08: Speaker Minority leader John Boehner got a break: his would-be primary challenger, iconoclastic Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, has opted not to get in the race. This frees Boehner up to spend more of summer of 2010 fundraising for other House candidates, or at least working on his tan.

• VA-05: Very little has been happening in VA-05 while everyone waits to see whether ex-Rep. Virgil Goode will try to get his old job back from Rep. Tom Perriello in this GOP-leaning district in rural Virginia. One GOPer isn’t waiting, though: Cordel Faulk is publicly considering the race. Faulk hasn’t held office, but he has an interesting job; he’s the spokesman for Charlottesville-based professor and pundit Larry Sabato.

• NY-St. Senate: With the New York State Senate collapsed into a 31-31 tie, turncoat Dem (and, for now, Senate president and thus acting Lt. Gov.) Pedro Espada Jr. has come up with a rather novel legal theory in the absence of any constitutional clarification: he gets two votes, one ordinary vote as Senator and one tie-breaker vote as LG. Of course, nobody else seems to think this, and other theories are popping up as to who might get a tie-breaking vote (Former LG and current Gov. David Paterson? Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver?) if the Senators can’t figure out how to break the deadlock themselves. Meanwhile, a likely primary challenger to Espada has already popped up: Haile Rivera, an activist and ally of city councilor Eric Gioia who had previously been planning his own city council run this year.

• IL-Sen: AG Lisa Madigan is apparently warming up to the idea of running for Senate instead of Governor (thanks to some entreaties from some big players — Madigan met with Barack Obama at the White House last week). However, according to the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet, she has some demands: she wants an endorsement from Obama when she announces, and she wants the field cleared of rivals.

That’s potentially very awk-ward, though, as state Treasurer (and, more notably, Friend of Barack) Alexi Giannoulias is already in the race, and has been fundraising very well (Madigan is sitting on $4 million, but that’s marked for a governor’s race and can’t be transferred to a federal race, so she’d be back to square one). Giannoulias issued a strong statement today that he wouldn’t be “bullied” out of the race, and sought to tie Madigan to party insiders. And even if Obama does manage to dangle some sort of carrot to entice Giannoulias out of the race, does he have the same sort of traction with Chris Kennedy, who also looks set to get in?

• NC-Sen: Here’s not the way to rebut polls showing you in bad shape: with a transparently pathetic internal poll. The Richard Burr camp points to a poll that reveals him “winning” (albeit with no specific topline numbers) against SoS Elaine Marshall, but with the head-to-head question asked only after questions as to which of the two would better serve as a “check and balance on the policies of Barack Obama.” No results against other interested Dems (like Mike McIntyre) were discussed.

• NH-Sen: More focus today on the possibility of Kelly Ayotte for the GOP Senate nomination. Attorney General in NH is an appointed position, so she’s never faced voters before, but that may be an asset; the rest of the state’s GOP bench, in Chuck Todd’s words, “all seem to have the smell of defeat on them.” Meanwhile, Rahm Emanuel will be hosting a DC fundraiser for Rep. Paul Hodes later this month, as Hodes (who banked only $260K in 1Q) looks to pick up the fundraising pace.

• NV-Sen: In an example of the law of unintended consequences, John Ensign’s little indiscretions are further complicating the Nevada GOP’s efforts to find a suitable challenger to Harry Reid, as insiders get distracted by assessing the fallout. If today is any indication, it looks like the fallout is growing, not shrinking, with allegations of a second affair, and Ensign walking back his initial “extortion” claims in view of the complicated financial links between Ensign and the Hampton clan. For emphasis, if there were any doubt about it, ex-Rep. Jon Porter confirmed today that he won’t be running against Reid.

• SD-Gov, SD-AL: Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin hasn’t ruled out running for Governor in 2010; she said she’ll make a decision by the August recess.

• CA-03: Many insiders seem settled on CA-03 as the Democrats’ top target in California next year. Unbeknownst to many, there’s a third Democrat in the race against Rep. Dan Lungren, physician Ami Bera, who got in in April… and he’s actually been fundraising like a champ, claiming he’s on pace to have $250K at the end of June.

• CA-44: CA-44 seems like a good place for a pickup, too, especially now that Rep. Ken Calvert is getting softened up with a primary challenge from his friendly neighborhood teabagger. Real estate broker Chris Riggs said the race would be a “litmus test” and referred to Calvert as a “big tax-and-spend incumbent.”

• FL-08: State House speaker Larry Cretul (who just took over the job in March, in the wake of former speaker Ray Sansom’s corruption indictment) may already be looking to move up. He’s been talking to the NRCC about taking on Rep. Alan Grayson in this Dem-trending R+2 district. This may push out state Rep. Steve Precourt, who said he wouldn’t want to share a primary with Cretul. Cretul might still face an uphill battle in a primary, though, as his base is in Marion County, rather than the district’s population center of Orange County, where another likely GOPer candidate, Rich Crotty, is mayor.

• MS-01: State Sen. Merle Flowers has decided to forego a challenge to Cold Chillin’ Travis (apparently at the behest of the NRCC), clearing a path for fellow Sen. Alan Nunnelee – for now. Others may get in, and in a move reminiscent of the disastrous post-primary period last year, Flowers did not endorse Nunnelee. The big advantage for Nunnelee is that he, like Childers, is from the Tupelo region, whereas Flowers (like Greg Davis) is from DeSoto County in the south Memphis suburbs. (D)

• DSCC/DCCC: Tonight’s DSCC/DCCC fundraiser with Barack Obama is projected to raise $3 million, an amount that seems kind of weak compared with the $14.5 million haul from the NRCC/NRSC dinner a few weeks earlier. However, lobbyists were banned from the event, and the GOP haul involves some accounting sleight of hand, as the $14.5 million is the two committees’ entire fundraising haul over the eight-week period since early April. In addition, there’s a lower-profile fundraising breakfast/”issues conference” planned for Friday morning where there’s no Obama appearance but also no lobbyist ban in place.

• Census: It looks like we might break the logjam that’s keeping incoming Census Director Robert Groves from being confirmed; it appears he’s part of a blanket hold on several dozen nominees, not a specific hold, and Susan Collins is happy with Groves and working with Democrats to get him in place. In other Census news, the tinfoil-hat wingnuts intent on avoiding and/or lying to the Census have a high-profile supporter: Rep. Michele Bachmann, who says she won’t answer any questions on her form beyond number of people in her house. Because, y’know, if you told Uncle Sam how many bathrooms are in your house, ACORN might somehow win.

• Voting Rights: An interesting trio of voting rights bills passed committee in the House last week to little fanfare: most notably, the Universal Right to Vote by Mail Act (which guarantees no-excuse absentee voting in all states, something that’s still restricted in 22 states right now). Also passed were legislation providing grants to help states provide absentee ballot tracking and confirmation systems, and preventing state election officials from serving on federal campaign committees.

• IL-Sen: AG Lisa Madigan is still under a lot of pressure from inside the Beltway to move over from her preferred race (Governor) to the Senate race instead. Thing is, the pressure seems to be working (and the fact that Pat Quinn remains pretty popular also helps): she says she’s “seriously considering it” and will decide within “four to six weeks” whether to run for gov, senate, or another term as AG.

• KY-Sen: SoS Trey Grayson is still treating Jim Bunning as undecided about running for a third term, despite the crotchety Bunning’s many protestations, Abe Simpson-style, that he ain’t dead yet. While saying that he has “no plans to run against him right now,” Grayson says he’d have a better answer to the question “after next month, when Bunning makes a decision….” Still, he says “I don’t suspect that (having to run against Bunning) would be a problem,” if Bunning stays in the GOP primary. The remarks were made at a poorly-attended (as in less than 50) Grayson fundraiser in Corbin.

• MO-Sen: Rep. Roy Blunt can’t catch a break. No sooner than professor Tom Schweich bailed out and former Treasurer Sarah Steelman’s message discipline came completely unglued, along comes yet another likely primary challenger: state Senator Chuck Purgason, who formed an exploratory committee. It sounds like he’ll be going at Blunt from the right (Purgason is known for his “country-western fashion sense and iron-clad fiscal conservatism,” and said we must “stop the ‘changing’ of America”).

• NC-Sen (pdf): Good polling news out of North Carolina, according to PPP: Generic Democrat leads Richard Burr, 41-38. (There’s still the little matter of nailing down a candidate, of course.) Only 29% overall (and 49% of Republicans) think he deserves another term, while 49% say give someone else a chance. Burr’s approval is 34/35, with a 31% “not sure,” which is still crazily high for a sitting senator.

• NH-Sen: Senatorial speculation for the GOP in the Granite State has turned to AG Kelly Ayotte. (AG is an appointed position in New Hampshire; Ayotte was appointed by ex-Gov. Craig Benson, but retained by John Lynch.) Still, everything seems to be on hold until fall, when the younger John Sununu is supposed to make known his senate intentions. Dean at Blue Hampshire observes ex-Rep. Charlie Bass (another possible Senate, or NH-02, candidate) getting a little testy about having to wait for Sununu Jr. to make up his mind (or for Sununu Sr. to make up Jr.’s mind).

• NY-Sen-B: Rep. Carolyn Maloney keeps ratcheting up her attacks on Kirsten Gillibrand, focusing increasingly on character and credibility. She hit Gillibrand’s “evolving” stances and said “She’s, to my knowledge, never passed anything. She spends all her time fund-raising. I spend my time doing things.” Meanwhile, Gillibrand rolled out the endorsements of 52 of the 62 Democratic Party county chairs in New York. That seems huge, but only half the population of New York state is accounted for, as they have yet to endorse in New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx, Richmond, and Suffolk Counties.

• CA-Gov: Rep. John Campbell from CA-48 in Orange County endorsed Insurance Comm. Steve Poizner a few months ago, but he recently dropped that endorsement and then this week endorsed ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman instead. Campbell’s explanation is that when he first endorsed Poizner, Whitman wasn’t in the race yet and he had never met her. (This Campbell, of course, is not to be confused with ex-Rep. Tom Campbell, who’s the third wheel in the GOP gubernatorial primary.)

• LA-03, LA-Sen: GOP state Rep. Nickie Monica, who has recently met with officials at the NRCC, is telling his contacts that he’s planning on running against Democrat Charlie Melancon. Meanwhile, faced with the prospect of a strong challenge and the looming uncertainties of redistricting, Melancon is still giving a race against GOP Sen. David Vitter a “pretty hard” look, according to a “Democratic insider.” (J)

• NY-23: Republican state Senator Joe Griffo, who’s based outside the district in Rome but whose turf overlaps part of the 23rd, said he won’t run in the special election. For the Dems, veteran Danny Francis (who ran twice against McHugh in the 1990s) said he’ll seek the nomination. Dem state Senator Darrel Aubertine shot down speculation that he’d fielded a call from Barack Obama about the seat, although he did cop to talking to DCCC recruitment guru Steve Israel about it.

• OH-15: ’08 candidate/ex-state Sen. Steve Stivers says that he’ll make up his mind on a rematch against Mary Jo Kilroy by the 4th of July, but Ohio Republicans apparently feel very confident that he’ll jump into the race. (J)

• PA-06, PA-Gov: Rep. Jim Gerlach has set a deadline of “this summer” for deciding whether to jump into the 2010 governor’s race — although he certainly seems to be moving to do so, positioning himself message-wise as the only GOPer who’s dealt with fiscal issues in a legislature. In the meantime, GOP power brokers are getting antsy that Gerlach’s delay in announcing his plans are complicating their efforts to hold this D+4 seat (although GOP state Rep. Curt Schroder is already warming up in the bullpen, having opened an exploratory committee).

• Votes: The war supplemental passed the House 226-202 yesterday, with 32 Democrats and 5 Republicans breaking ranks. The GOPers fall under the ‘moderate’ umbrella: Cao, King, Kirk, Candace Miller, and John McHugh (for whom a ‘no’ vote would be awk-ward, as the incoming Sec. of the Army). The Dems are generally the most liberal few dozen, although with a few eyebrow-raising exceptions (Eric Massa, maybe most notably): Baldwin, Capuano, Conyers, Doggett, Donna Edwards, Ellison, Farr, Filner, Grayson, Grijalva, Honda, Kaptur, Kucinich, Barbara Lee, Lofgren, Massa, McGovern, Michaud, Payne, Pingree, Polis, Serrano, Shea-Porter, Sherman, Speier, Stark, Tierney, Tsongas, Waters, Watson, Welch, and Woolsey.  

• MO-Sen: In an e-mail to local TV affiliate KY3, former Treasurer Sarah Steelman seems to be walking back her comments to the Hill yesterday, not wanting to appear to shut the door on a GOP primary bid against Rep. Roy Blunt. She says she’s still “very seriously considering” it.

• PA-Sen: Here’s an interesting development: a state legislator in Pennsylvania has introduced a bill to switch Pennyslvania from closed to open primaries. This seems like a nakedly pro-Specter bill: it would have helped him survive his GOP primary against Pat Toomey, and now it would have the opposite effect, helping him survive a Democratic primary against Joe Sestak by opening the door to independents and moderate Republicans.

• AK-AL: Unless the indictment fairy has a present for him soon, Rep. Don Young looks to have a much easier go of it in 2010 than last cycle. Not only is his Dem challenger ex-state House minority leader Ethan Berkowitz likely to run for governor instead, but now it sounds like his primary opponents, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell and ex-state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux, aren’t going to run again either. Unlike last time, Parnell would need to give up his LG job to run, and he may instead be running for Governor if Sarah Palin declines to run again. Businessman Andrew Halcro, who ran for Governor as an independent in 2006, also sounds likely to run for Governor rather than challenge Young. State Senator Hollis French, who sounded like a likely Governor candidate for the Dems until Berkowitz showed up, may be the Dems’ best bet.

• AL-07: The field to replace Artur Davis got bigger, as Jefferson Co. Councilor Shelia Smoot officially launched her campaign. She joins lawyer Terri Sewell, state Rep. Earl Hilliard Jr., and former Selma mayor James Perkins in the primary (which is the only real race in this D+18 district).

• CA-11: Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf turned down the chance to run as a Republican in the upcoming CA-10 special election, but that seemed to ignite his interest, as now he’s considering running in 2010 in next-door CA-11 against sophomore Rep. Jerry McNerney, at R+1 a more plausible race than the D+11 CA-10.

• FL-08: Republican state Representative Steve Precourt is considering making the race against Rep. Alan Grayson in this R+2 Orlando-area seat. His strongest words seemed to be reserved for likely primary opponent Orange County Mayor Rich Crotty, who Precourt doesn’t see as a “fresh face” or viable, although Precourt said he’d stand down if former state Sen. Daniel Webster got in.

• ID-01: The Republican field in ID-01 is filling up, as state House majority leader Ken Roberts announced he’s in. He’ll have to get past veteran and McCain ally Vaughn Ward before facing off against Rep. Walt Minnick, though. Ex-Rep. Bill Sali occasionally makes threatening noises about a rematch, but he hasn’t said anything definite.

• NH-02: Former state Rep. Bob Giuda (not to be confused with Frank Guinta, running in NH-01) is the first GOPer to launch an exploratory committee in the race to fill Rep. Paul Hodes’ open seat. He may still be joined by the 2008 candidate, Jennifer Horn, and, more remotely, a return by ex-Rep. Charlie Bass.

• NY-23: Douglas Hoffman, the head of a local accounting firm, has thrown his hat into the GOP nomination contest for the special election to replace Rep. John McHugh. Republicans also announced their schedule for picking a nominee, involving four regional meetings around the districts where candidates would speak to the Republican county committee members over a two- to four-week period once there’s an official vacancy.

• PA-03: Freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, representing the swingy R+3 district based in Erie (won by John McCain by 62 votes), has managed to secure a hot ticket in view of its self-imposed membership cap: she joined the Blue Dog Coalition.

• Redistricting: A petition drive is underway in Florida to get an initiative on the ballot for 2010 that, while not creating an independent redistricting campaign, would at least place some non-partisan limitations on the creation of House and legislative districts. Most of the money behind the petition drive is coming from Democrats, but two prominent Democrats aren’t on board with the drive: Reps. Alcee Hastings and Corrine Brown, both of whom stand to inherit more difficult districts if they’re made less convoluted.

• AR-Sen: The leader of Arkansas teabaggers’ movement, Tom Cox, has decided that he’ll run for the GOP nomination for Senate to run against Blanche Lincoln. Cox is the owner of Aloha Pontoon Boats, where he had a little trouble last year with a federal raid turned up 13 illegal immigrants working for him… which doesn’t sound like it’ll play well with his ideal base voters. In the primary, he’ll face off against an anti-semitic state senator and some Huckabee buddy who owns a food safety company.

• FL-Sen: The movement conservatives continue to square off against the establishment in the GOP Florida Senate primary. Jim DeMint, probably the most conservative senator by most metrics and with a sizable grass roots following, just endorsed Marco Rubio.

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk still refuses to say what exactly he’s doing, but he promises that he’s raising money “for a big campaign.” (His last few House races have been big-money affairs, so who knows what that means?)

• KS-Sen: Dems seem to be moving closer to actually having a candidate in the Kansas Senate race: former newspaper editor Charles Schollenberger, who formed an exploratory committee.

• KY-Sen: State Senate President David Williams had publicly contemplated getting into the GOP primary against Jim Bunning, even meeting with the NRSC, but he said yesterday that he won’t run. He refused to officially endorse anybody, but said he was most excited about philanthropist and former ambassador Cathy Bailey among the possible candidates.

• NY-Sen-B: Rep. Carolyn Maloney has set a July 4th deadline for deciding whether or not to run in the Senate primary. Meanwhile, Kirsten Gillibrand picked up two endorsement from groups with a lot of on-the-ground firepower: New York State United Teachers and (cue the Phase 5 wingnut freakout) ACORN. Rep. Peter King, on the GOP side, set his own deadline, saying he’ll decide whether or not to run by Labor Day. Also today is word that Barack Obama had King in his sights as he cut a swath through Northeast Republicans by offering him a job — in his case, ambassador to Ireland, which King declined.

• PA-Sen: Looks like that Act of God never happened, because Rep. Joe Sestak is actively staffing up for a Senate primary challenge to Arlen Specter.

• WV-Sen: With 91-year-old Robert Byrd having been in the hospital for nearly a month now and not planning an immediate return to the Senate, there have been some behind-the-scenes discussions of what happens if he can’t return to office. West Virginia state Democratic party chair Nick Casey is seen as the consensus choice to serve as placeholder until the 2010 election, if need be.

• AZ-Gov: This can’t be helping Jan Brewer (the Republican SoS who ascended to the governor’s mansion to replace Janet Napolitano) as she considers whether or not to run for a full term: she’s in a standoff with her Republican-controlled legislature over the budget, almost single-handedly leaving the state on track to a government shutdown.

• FL-Gov: David Hill, a top GOP pollster in Florida, is leery about the chances for AG Bill McCollum (who’s already lost statewide twice, and now is trying to transparently reboot himself as a Charlie Crist-style moderate) in the gubernatorial election. He says he’s been actively encouraging state Senator Paula Dockery to follow through on jumping into the primary.

• KS-Gov: Sen. Sam Brownback got some good news: SoS Ron Thornburgh decided to get out of the GOP primary, leaving Brownback a clear path. (Not that Thornburgh was going to pose much of a threat, which is why he got out.) And finally a Democratic state Senator, Chris Steineger, seems to be getting into the race for Team Blue — although he sounds like a bit of a loose cannon, having pissed off most of the state party establishment at various points.

• MI-Gov: George Perles, the 75-year-old former football coach at Michigan State and currently an MSU trustee (which is a statewide elected position) announced that he’s running for the Democratic nomination. He joins Lt. Gov. John Cherry in the field, who seems to have most of the establishment backing so far.

• MN-Gov: Contrary to earlier reports, Rep. Michele Bachmann hasn’t quite ruled out a bid for Governor in 2010, what with Tim Pawlenty stepping down. She expresses her ambivalence with some nice Harlequin romance novel phrasing: “If my heart moved in the other direction and I had the tug, I’d do it. I wouldn’t be afraid to run for office. I just don’t feel the tug.”

• NV-Gov: Another GOPer is sniffing out the governor’s race (kind of a no-brainer, given the world of shit Jim Gibbons is in): Reno mayor Bob Cashell, who was last seen endorsing Harry Reid a few weeks ago. Of course, there’s the risk that if too many credible GOP challengers get in, Gibbons has a better shot at surviving the primary via a badly split vote… although facing a wounded Gibbons in the general would probably be the best scenario for the Dems.

One thing we do a lot of at SSP is speculate, and a favorite topic of speculation is what House districts seem like the most vulnerable ones for each party, and most likely to be pickups. We can go one better than mere speculation, today, though, as the DCCC and NRCC disclosed their own top 2010 targets for a recent piece with National Journal‘s CongressDaily. In each case, they gave a top tier, and then added some other next-best opportunities.

For the Democrats, according to DCCC exec director Jon Vogel:

And for the GOP, according to NRCC political director Brian Walsh:

Interesting choices for the Dems, suggesting that they’re confident about having open seats in DE-AL and PA-06, and maybe even FL-10 (but maybe they aren’t confident about Mark Kirk vacating IL-10?). MI-11 is a solid pick based on last year’s performance (both at the presidential level and by McCotter), but they’ll need to step up their candidate recruitment there. For the GOP, their picks seem about right; the biggest surprise, though, may be that they’re touting challenges to the Virginia freshmen above a challenge to Bobby Bright, who more than anyone else seems to face the problem of a drop in African-American turnout in his district in an off-year election.

• PA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Pat Toomey says that he raised $1 million in 60 days toward his Senate run, with more than 11,000 donors. It’s still a drop in the bucket compared with the bankrolls of Arlen Specter and Joe Sestak, but it ought to help dissuade anyone else from jumping into the GOP primary. Another tidbit that ought to discourage any Republican line-crashers: $5,000 of that money came from John Cornyn‘s PAC, suggesting that he’s done looking for another candidate and is bringing establishment power to bear behind Toomey.

• FL-Sen: It’s not much of a surprise, considering they’re close neighbors, but Rep. Kendrick Meek nailed down the endorsements of two key members of Florida’s House delegation — Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Ron Klein — which will come in handy if he does wind up facing off against Corrine Brown in the primary.

• LA-Sen: Democratic New Orleans city councilor Arnie Fielkow decided, after some speculation, not to wade into the Louisiana Senate race. More plausible would be a challenge to Rep. Anh Cao in LA-02, as Fielkow is well-known in NoLa but has no statewide presence, but Fielkow also declined that, leading to speculation he may be eyeing the next mayor’s race instead.

• GA-Gov:  With an eye on Roy Barnes, Ed Kilgore takes aim at the claim that Georgia governors have a long track record of failure when it comes to comebacks. It turns out that past probably isn’t prologue. (D)

• TX-Gov: We’re reluctant to ascribe a whole lotta meaning to the phrasing of this particular letter, but Kay Bailey Hutchison seems to be moving pretty explicitly toward making official her run for Governor. Glenn Thrush points to a letter sent to potential donors saying “I am running for Governor.”

• AZ-05: Is Congress ready for its first gamer (or at least its first out-of-the-closet gamer)? Jim Ward, the former president of video game maker LucasArts, announced that he’ll be running for the GOP nomination to go up against Rep. Harry Mitchell. Ward brings a lot of wealth to the table, but he’ll have an uphill fight against former Maricopa County Treasurer David Schweikert, who lost the 2008 election to Mitchell by 9 points and is looking for a rematch.

• TX-32: Dems have landed a good candidate in TX-32 to go up against Rep. Pete Sessions: Grieg Raggio, an attorney and husband to Judge Lorraine Raggio. The 32nd, in north Dallas, is still a red district but has seen rapidly declining GOP numbers, both for Sessions and at the presidential level, and is down to R+8.

• NY-AG: Nassau Co. Exec Tom Suozzi published an editorial in the New York Times where he publicly discusses having changed his mind on the gay marriage issue (he’s now for it). With New York one of the few states where gay marriage has become an issue with majority support, Suozzi looks to be repositioning himself for, well, something (probably, as often rumored, Attorney General, but maybe Governor if Andrew Cuomo continues to dither).

• Redistricting: The Hill has an interesting piece about redistricting; while it doesn’t delve into too many specifics, it does shed some light on what districts the GOP is rushing to try to take back before they get strengthened for the Dems (like Bobby Bright’s AL-02), and what districts are unlikely to draw top tier challengers because everyone is willing to sit back and wait for new open districts to pop up in 2012 (like Dina Titus’s NV-03).

• Race Tracker: Benawu is already back doing what he does best: chronicling the Dems’ efforts to field candidates in all 435 districts. Right now, we’re still looking in 124 GOP-held districts (although, of course, it’s still early in the cycle). Check out the RaceTracker 2010 wiki for more.