Author: Crisitunity

Several developments from the Buckeye State today, as the fields solidify for the Senate race there. On the GOP side, Rob Portman has a pretty well unimpeded shot at the nomination now (facing only Cleveland-area auto dealer Tom Ganley). Auditor Mary Taylor, whose name had been bandied about as a more charismatic and less Bush-tinged alternative to the technocratic Portman, stated today that she’s not running against Portman (and his establishment backing and his $3 million CoH).

The Ohio Republican Party’s central committee unanimously endorsed Taylor today after she informed members in a conference call Wednesday night that she would run for re-election.

Taylor, who had not planned to publicly announce her decision until next week, has flirted with a bid for the Senate seat being vacated at the end of next year by the retiring GOP incumbent, Sen. George V. Voinovich.

Taylor’s decision to run again for Auditor won’t spare her a difficult race. In most states, Auditor is a sleepy backwater position, but she’s the only statewide GOP officeholder left, and Auditor takes on special importance in Ohio as it (along with SoS) is one of the five spots on the Apportionment Board that draws state legislative districts. With SoS Jennifer Brunner vacating her post, the SoS and Auditor races both take on huge importance if Dems are to dismantle the pro-GOP gerrymander in the state legislature. Luckily, a prominent Dem, Hamilton County Commissioner David Pepper, got into the Auditor race this week (although he faces longer odds against Taylor than with an open seat).

Speaking of Brunner, she felt compelled to fire off a letter today to Ohio activists stating that she’s in the Senate race to the bitter end.

“I want to make it clear that under no circumstances will I consider seeking re-election to the secretary of state’s position, or any other statewide or federal office, other than the open U.S. Senate seat of retiring (Republican) Sen. George Voinovich,” Brunner wrote.

Brunner has been lagging Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher in fundraising by a substantial margin, even though polls show them performing about equally well against Portman. There’s been behind-the-scenes pressure on Brunner to get out and avoid the divisive primary (and some idle speculation that she might move over to the Lt. Gov. spot being vacated by Fisher, now that Rep. Tim Ryan declined it), but for now she seems determined to stay in the Senate race.

• PA-Sen: It looks like the threat of a primary from the left may be having some of the desired effect on Arlen Specter. He’s engaged in negotiations on a compromise version of EFCA, and said yesterday that “prospects are pretty good” for such a bill (although it remains unclear what exactly would get cut from the bill).

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand will receive an important endorsement tomorrow: from NARAL. This may help solidify Gillibrand’s pro-choice credentials in the face of possible Senate primary challenges from Reps. Steve Israel or Carolyn Maloney.

• DE-Sen: Rep. Mike Castle, the one guy who can make the open Delaware Senate race interesting, isn’t promising anything right now. Castle set a decision-making deadline of “the next two months,” though. (Unclear whether that’s two real months or two Mark Kirk months.)

• AR-Sen: In the wake of state Senator Kim Hendren’s comments about Chuck Schumer yesterday, a more competent sounding Republican has surfaced to take on Sen. Blanche Lincoln. Curtis Coleman, the CEO of SafeFoods (a “food-safety services company,” whatever that is) and a close friend of Mike Huckabee, announced formation of his exploratory committee this week. Former US Attorney and Rove protege Tim Griffin may also get in; he’s announced a June 1 deadline for deciding.

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul, the son of Rep. Ron Paul, moved one step closer to running in the Republican Senate primary (theoretically against Jim Bunning), launching his exploratory committee.

• NY-Gov: Observers are noting that Rudy Giuliani is definitely not looking like a candidate for next year’s gubernatorial race. The tipoff is the recent departure of at least three key staff members, including former chief of staff Tony Carbonetti.

• MN-Gov: This should be something of a red flag to Tim Pawlenty: 57% of Minnesotans, according to SurveyUSA, don’t want him to run for a third term as Governor. A lost gubernatorial race would basically doom his 2012 presidential aspirations, so this may up the chances of an open seat instead.

• KS-Gov: New Democratic Governor Mark Parkinson appointed a new Lt. Gov., Troy Findley. Unfortunately, Findley promptly announced that, like Parkinson, he won’t be running for Governor in 2010, leaving Kansas Democrats with bare shelves in both the open senate and governor’s races.

• CA-36: Earlier this week, Marcy Winograd (who got 38% of the vote against Jane Harman in the 2006 Democratic primary) officially kicked off her campaign for a rematch.

• Gay marriage: We’re on the precipice of gay marriage in one more state, as New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch confirmed that he was willing to sign it into law. One catch: Lynch wants a slightly different bill, that includes additional language stating that churches aren’t compelled to marry anyone they don’t want. The legislature is expected to move quickly to add the new language.

• Demographics: Hispanics and Asians are still the fastest-growing groups in America, but their growth rates have slowed down in recent years as the economic downturn has cut into immigration. In particular, Hispanic growth in the Southeast slowed down. This pushes back projections of when the U.S. becomes a minority-majority country, to the 2040s. In other census news, Orange County, Florida (Orlando) became a minority-majority county in the last year (good news for Alan Grayson as he attempts to hold FL-08).

• Redistricting: Utah has an initiative on the table for the 2010 election, proposing an independent redistricting commission (instead of letting the overwhelmingly GOP legislature draw the boundaries). Interestingly, the idea just got a prominent Republican backer: former 11-term Rep. Jim Hansen.

• NJ-Gov: Believe it or not, we’re in the home stretch heading toward the June 2 primary in the New Jersey governor’s race, and Rasmussen takes a quick look at the GOP primary field. US Attorney Chris Christie leads former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan 39-29, with 3% voting for someone else and 29% still undecided. That’s a lot of undecideds with just a few weeks to go, and I have no way of knowing whether they’d tend to break for the better-known establishment figure of Christie, or the anti-tax raging of Lonegan.

• TX-Sen: The last thing John Cornyn wants is a special election on his watch at the NRSC, but he may get one anyway. Despite his pressure on fellow Texan Kay Bailey Hutchison to remain in place while she runs for Governor, Cornyn is now publicly warning to expect her resignation “this fall sometime.”

• PA-Sen: Seems like the GOP is going through its whole Rolodex looking for someone more normal than Pat Toomey to run in the Pennsylvania primary. Two of the more moderate members of the Keystone State’s House delegation, Charlie Dent and Todd Platts, felt compelled to announce today that they won’t be running. Dent, in fact, endorsed Toomey, the previous holder of PA-15 (making him the first PA House GOPer to endorse Toomey).

• AR-Sen: State Senator Kim Hendren, the GOP’s only candidate so far against Blanche Lincoln (and they may want to keep looking…), has been in politics a long time (one claim to fame is that he lost a gubernatorial race to Bill Clinton). But now he actually seems to be caught in a timewarp from a different century. Today he’s trying to walk back having called Chuck Schumer “that Jew” (and, in doing so, tried using The Andy Griffith Show by way of explaining himself).

• IL-Sen: Speaking of shifts in the space-time continuum, Mark Tiberius Kirk’s end-of-April deadline on announcing his Senate plans has seemingly disappeared into a wormhole, while the GOP waits impatiently for him to emerge at the other end. (No backup date for a decision has been set.) A likely explanation is that he’s waiting to see what Lisa Madigan does, and he may meekly go wherever she doesn’t.

• SC-Gov: Who would’ve guessed that the South Carolina governor’s race would be one of 2010’s hottest tickets? Two more GOPers are trying to hop onto that ride: state Senator Larry Grooms, who officially launched a campaign, and state Rep. Nikki Haley, who now says she’s considering it. (Haley is a young rising star who’s a close ally of Mark Sanford and the hardcore anti-taxers.) They’d join Rep. Gresham Barrett and professor Brent Nelsen, as well as likely candidates Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and AG Henry McMaster, in the hunt for the GOP nod.

• NC-08: Freshman Rep. Larry Kissell has drawn a potential opponent with no previous political background, but very high name rec: Mike Minter, who was safety for the Carolina Panthers for 10 years until recently retiring. Kissell handily beat incumbent Rep. Robin Hayes in 2008 in this now R+2 district, but Minter, who’s still scoping out the race, is well-connected in the local megachurch community and could also eat into Kissell’s African-American support. Minter is apparently looking with Hayes’ encouragement, suggesting that the 10-year Congressman is looking to spend more time with his money instead of seeking out a rematch.

• NRSC: Here’s a double shot of John Cornyn news: in another one of his occasional reality-based moments, Cornyn slapped down strange remarks by his NRCC counterpart, Rep. Pete Sessions, alleging that Barack Obama is intentionally sabotaging the American economy. When asked if he was comfortable with Sessions still leading the NRCC, Cornyn equivocated, deferring the judgment of the House Republicans on the matter. (Because “judgment” and “House Republicans” always go together so well.)

For reasons that remain unclear to me, the GOP has rushed to embrace Twitter as the tool that will lead them out of the wilderness. (Maybe it’s because it’s a medium that not only doesn’t require you to have thoughts that take up more than 140 characters, but that doesn’t even allow them.) Nevertheless, over its short lifetime, the GOP’s infatuation with Twitter seems to have produced more petard-hoistings and outright FAILs than it has victories for the GOP’s twits:

• the time errant tweets scuttled a GOP plan to flip a Dem to take control of the Virginia Senate,

• House Intelligence ranking member Pete Hoekstra twittering away his positions in Iraq,

• Wayne Mosely‘s recent hilarious overselling of his campaign,

• Joe Barton‘s hubris over what he perceived as his takedown of Energy Secretary Steven Chu followed by his twittering away with catty remarks like a bored teenager during the SOTU, and

• somebody’s decision to direct the entire #NY20 feed onto Jim Tedisco‘s website, Dem press releases and all.

Well, we have an incident that may beat all of those: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff accidentally announced his own candidacy for the GOP Senate nomination on his Twitter account, apparently thinking that he was just texting to an acquaintance instead. (His account has been scrubbed, but the memory lives on, hewn in the living rock of screen capture.) According to the Salt Lake Tribune:

“I’m announcing I’m running at 12,” Shurtleff wrote in part of a series of garbled messages, called tweets on the digital networking system.

In another he said he would have “all of the legislative conservative causcus (sic) and other senators and representatives there endorsing me. Time to rock and roll!”

Shurtleff later amended his statement to say that he was still deciding, and would make a formal announcement regarding his plans on May 20.

So, all’s well that ends well… uh, wait, what? There’s a competitive Senate race in Utah? Don’t they already have Bob Bennett? It’s true: with Shurtleff’s, um, entry into the race, it’s a major primary challenge to Utah’s long-serving (since 1992) junior senator. No one would mistake the uncontroversial Bennett for a moderate, but there’s enough rabid conservatism in Utah that Bennett’s vote for the bailout bill last year (and his unforgivable willingess to occasionally engage his Democratic colleagues in productive conversation) are apparently justification enough for a challenge from the very right.

Utah is also enough of a one-party state that primary challenges within the GOP are the only way for ambitious, restive younger members to climb the ladder. That was what happened last year in UT-03, where young movement-conservative Jason Chaffetz picked off longtime establishment Rep. Chris Cannon.

There’s at least an outside shot of that same thing happening here, and that’s partially due to Utah’s weird nominating system. GOP candidates go through a May 2010 nominating convention, where ballots are taken repeatedly with the lowest-scoring candidate removed after each round, until two men remain, both of whom advance to the primary… but if any candidate gets more than 60% of the vote at any point, he not only wins the nomination but there isn’t even a primary election. When Chaffetz won the nominating convention in 2008 (although not clearing the 60% bar), that was a clear indicator that he was the man to beat going into the UT-03 primary.

If Shurtleff is correct about having locked down the support of the conservative wing among the state legislators, he may have a shot at winning it outright at the state convention. At any rate, the convention looks like it’ll be hotly contested, and one wonders whether Bennett can survive the primary even if he makes it through the convention; I wonder if the same thing happened in Utah last year (where Obama dramatically improved on Kerry’s numbers, albeit still losing badly) as in Pennsylvania, where a share of the moderates (who Bennett would need to win the primary) threw up their hands and became Dems, leaving behind a more purely distilled primary base.

It gets even more complicated than that, as two other Republican candidates are sniffing around the race: Tom Bridgewater, a former top McCain aide, also announced on Tuesday (by Twitter, natch), that he was going to drop his candidacy for state GOP chair and instead form an exploratory committee to run against Bennett. (Bridgewater failed in 2006 and 2008 to win the GOP primary for the right to lose to Jim Matheseon in UT-02; he’s also an investment partner of… get this… Neil Bush, the Bush brother who’s too corrupt to be a viable candidate for office.) Then there’s also David Leavitt, the former Juab County Attorney (and brother of former governor Mike Leavitt) who was talking up his candidacy for many months but hasn’t been heard from recently. (As first reported by Senate Guru, Dems have a viable, or at least well-known, candidate in the race, Sam Granato, the chair of the Utah Liquor Control Commission and owner of a deli chain.)

So, with the FL-Sen, MO-Sen, and KS-Sen 2010 primaries turning into establishment vs. movement conservative free-for-alls (and with the plug having been pulled on that same battle in PA-Sen), it looks like UT-Sen is turning into one more presto log on the hellfire as the GOP finally has its long-promised battle of Armageddon for the party’s heart and soul.

• IL-Sen: Tempted by Lisa Madigan’s titanic poll numbers against all comers, and her public statement of reconsidering the Senate race, the DSCC has started actively courting Madigan to get into the Senate race. This news comes from Madigan herself, who still maintains that her main focus is the governor’s race (but, if you read the fine print, seems to be firing warning shots across Chris Kennedy’s bow to keep him from jumping into the Senate race). Madigan’s interest can’t be good news for Alexi Giannoulias, especially as concerns over his handling of the state college savings program are taking a bit of the bloom off his rose.

• FL-Sen: Movement conservatives are tying themselves in knots trying to decide how to react to apostate Charlie Crist’s entry into the Senate race in Florida. The Club for Growth gave a tepid reaction, saying that Crist can still redeem himself by opposing the tax hikes proposed in the new state budget. On the other hand, Grover Norquist, the CfG’s patron saint, sounded a note of realpolitik, saying that Crist may be the best candidate “in Florida.” The conservative blogosphere, however, isn’t giving an inch, trying to organize a boycott on giving funds to the NRSC after John Cornyn weighed in on Crist’s behalf.

• MN-Sen: Norm Coleman is getting buried under legal bills, and not all of them are related to his tiresome contesting of Al Franken’s election. He just requested for FEC permission to start tapping his campaign funds for defense attorney fees related to allegations that sketchy Coleman benefactor Nasser Kazeminy was funneling payouts to Coleman through Coleman’s wife. Would GOP donors be willing to keep funding Coleman if they knew their donations were going to his defense attorneys and not the futile Franken fight? That hasn’t stopped Coleman’s Senate friends from continuing to solicit donations for him, as compiled in this video.

• MO-Sen: Rep. Roy Blunt pulled down a couple of expected but important endorsements in his quest to become Missouri’s next Senator: Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, the last member of Missouri’s House Republicans to get behind him, and Sen. Kit Bond, whose seat Blunt is looking to fill.

• OH-15: Ohio voters may get the chance to add even more Steves to their House delegation. Former GOP state Sen. Steve Stivers, who narrowly lost the open seat race in OH-15 to Mary Jo Kilroy last year, is contemplating another shot at the race, with lots of urging from John Boehner. (Ex-Rep. Steve Chabot is already committed to a rematch against Rep. Steve Driehaus in nearby OH-01.)

• SC-02: Speaking of rematches, backbench GOP Rep. Joe Wilson will have to face off again versus Iraq vet Rob Miller, who held Wilson to a surprising 54-46 margin in 2008 without DCCC help. Miller should be able to count on a higher-profile run this time.

• Mayors: City councilor Jim Suttle squeaked past Republican Hal Daub (former mayor and Representative) to hold the open Omaha mayor’s seat for Democrats. (The position is officially nonpartisan, but the race was fought along clearly partisan lines, which favored Suttle as Democrats hold a 44-33 registration edge within the city.) Suttle won by 1,500 votes, by a 51-49 margin.

• MO-Sen: Law professor Tom Schweich has publicly floated running for the Missouri GOP Senate nomination. Schweich used to be John Danforth’s chief of staff and was Ambassador for counternarcotics in Afghanistan in the Bush administration. Interestingly, the main motivation for his run that he’s putting out there is the fear (nay, likelihood) that Roy Blunt would lose the general election and that he (as sort of a Danforth proxy) offers a more appealing figure.

• VA-Gov: Former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe, who’s been demonstrating a lot of momentum in the polls lately, got another big boost: he picked up the endorsement of the SEIU today.

• NM-Gov: New Mexico’s only current statewide Republican elected official, Land Commissioner Pat Lyons, was a rumored gubernatorial candidate, especially since he’s term-limited out of his current job. In an indication of how popular the GOP brand is in New Mexico right now, Lyons decided to pass on the open seat race, instead running for an open position on New Mexico’s Public Regulation Commission.

• FL-Gov: I hadn’t even considered, with Charlie Crist bolting from Tallahassee, that Jeb! Bush might seek a return engagement as governor. After a Draft Jeb website popped up, Bush politely declined, saying that he will instead “continue to play a constructive role in the future of the Republican Party.”

• OH-Auditor: David Pepper (D), a Hamilton Co. Commissioner (and former Cinci Councilor/Cinci mayoral candidate who lost by a hair in 2005) is going to run against Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor (R). This is a crucial office because it controls a seat on the Ohio Reapportionment Board (which draws state legislative seats) and the GOP will be making a serious run at the open Secretary of State position that Jennifer Brunner is vacating (which also determines a seat on the board). Taylor says that she will announce whether she’ll run for re-election or in the GOP primary against Rob Portman for Senate later this week. (J)

• NH-01: Manchester mayor Frank Guinta has been acting like a candidate for a long time, but finally had his official kickoff event yesterday. Guinta hit every note in the libertarian book, singing the praises of tea baggers, criticizing the stimulus package, and saying that EFCA is “blatantly against” New Hampshire’s “live free or die” mentality.

• IL-06: Lost in the IL-Sen shuffle is Rep. Peter Roskam, who had occasionally been mentioned as a candidate for that (or governor). Roskam says it’s “increasingly less likely” that he’ll run for higher office, and seek to stay put instead.

• NRCC: The NRCC has launched a new wave of radio ads against theoretically vulnerable Dems in nine districts, still harping on the stimulus package, trying to tie them to John Murtha and his “airport for no one” (riffing on the “bridge to nowhere,” I suppose). Targets were Vic Snyder (AR-02), Mark Schauer (MI-07), Travis Childers (MS-01), Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01), Harry Teague (NM-02), Mike Arcuri (NY-24), Larry Kissell (NC-08), Kurt Schrader (OR-05), and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD-AL).

• Mayors: Yet more mayoral elections in the news. Today, it’s Omaha, where there’s a faceoff between Democrat Jim Suttle and Republican Hal Daub (a former mayor and former Representative) to replaced retiring Dem mayor Mike Fahey. A recent poll had Daub up 42-39, but there may be a Democratic trend at work in Omaha (as seen in Obama’s victory in NE-02).

When former Commerce Secretary William Daley pulled the plug on his never-really-began Senate campaign in Illinois, it was starting to look like everyone was coalescing around state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (with Roland Burris providing an amusing footnote to Giannoulias’s victory lap). All of a sudden, though, the race is back in the spotlight (maybe people are no longer worried that Burris and his $845 could sneak through the primary as a spoiler).

Rep. Jan Schakowsky has seemed reluctant to give up her safe House seat and junior leadership role for a run at the Senate, but the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that’s she revving up her fundraising machine. She says she’ll announce by June 8 whether or not she’s running for Senate (although one of her erstwhile potential opponents, Mark Kirk, has had no compunctions about disregarding his own timeline). In the meantime, she has a star-studded fundraiser on tap:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), mulling a Senate run, throws her annual “women’s power lunch” fundraiser Monday at the Hyatt Regency with marquee speakers White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Director of Public Liaison Tina Tchen and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).

Jarrett’s an interesting get, as she’s perhaps the pre-eminent Friend of Barack (as seen by her almost-selection as Commerce Secretary). One of Giannoulias’s electoral strengths is his close connections to Obama’s inner circle… but then, Schakowsky was also one of Obama’s biggest congressional backers during the 2008 primaries, so she may be entitled to some payback too.

But an even heavier heavyweight than Schakowsky may be looming in the distance in the Senate primary: Illinois AG Lisa Madigan. While she had previously explicitly ruled out a Senate run and had done little to hide her gubernatorial ambitions, Cillizza is now reporting that she’s at least reconsidering. While a recent PPP poll showed Madigan beating incumbent governor Pat Quinn by a healthy margin in a Dem primary, he still has high approval ratings, and an open Senate race might be more of a sure thing for her (PPP also showed her dominating that field as well). So, the rethink makes sense, although which ever route she takes, she’s poised to dominate.

On top of all that, Chris Kennedy (never before elected, but a big wheel in Chicago’s commercial real estate world and, as son of RFK, possessor of that magical last name) has been privately making a splash as he “explores” the race, to the extent that Obama henchman Rahm Emanuel has been reportedly talking him up as potentially the strongest candidate. What tangled webs we weave…

• TN-03: Paula Flowers, the former Tennessee Insurance Commissioner, formally announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination on Thursday. This is a tough district at R+13, but between it being an open seat (as Zach Wamp is running for governor) and Flowers’ statewide profile, we have a shot here.

• IL-13: Last year, businessman Scott Harper held Rep. Judy Biggert to a much closer than expected margin (54-44) without DCCC help, in this once solidly Republican district (which just plunged from R+5 to R+1). Harper filed an exploratory committee on Friday for a rematch. He can probably count on a higher-profile race this time, especially as strong fundraising might encourage the 71-year-old Biggert to think about retirement.

• MI-07: The GOP is still trying to settle on a challenger to freshman Rep. Mark Schauer in this rural Michigan district. Former Rep. Tim Walberg (who lost after one term to Schauer) seems to have dibs on the race, and state GOP chair Saul Anuzis is thinking he’ll do it again, but Walberg says he’s in no hurry to decide. Brad Smith, a lawyer who’s the son of the district’s former Rep. Nick Smith, seems to be taking shape as their fallback option.

• NJ-03: John Culbertson, a wealthy investor who was courted by the New Jersey GOP to run against frosh Democratic Rep. John Adler based on his capacity to self-fund, says he’s not interested in pursuing the race. (J)

• KS-Sen: I’m not exactly sure what Dennis Hastert has at stake in the Kansas Senate primary, but he waded into it today, endorsing Rep. Todd Tiahrt. (Tiahrt is up against another former Hastert colleague, Rep. Jerry Moran, in a moderate/conservative duel; maybe Hastert sees this as a proxy battle over the GOP’s heart-and-soul.)

• Mayors: In Austin’s mayoral election over the weekend, no candidate finished over 50%, but it looks like there may be no contested runoff after all; 2nd-place finisher Brewster McCracken, who trailed fellow city councilor Lee Leffingwell by 20 points on Saturday, said that he’s bowing out of the runoff and conceding. In San Antonio, former city councilor and rising star Julian Castro easily won against eight other challengers.

• PA-Sen: Tom Ridge’s appearance on Hardball yesterday may have set a new bar for equivocation. He wouldn’t commit to whether or not he’d vote for would-be rival Pat Toomey in the GOP primary, instead veering off into extolling the virtues of the secret ballot. On the flipside, in a nice bit of symmetry, Arlen Specter told Fox News that he can’t promise to vote with the Dems “all the time” on procedural votes. So, the takeaway is: nobody’s promising anything.

• NY-Sen-B: Charles Schumer has ratcheted up his efforts to grease the wheels for Kirsten Gillibrand’s re-election path in 2010, hooking her up with donors, lobbying to get her on the good committees, and trying to tamp down possible primary challenges. “There is not going to be a primary!” he recently announced at a fundraiser (to the laughs of the audience… although I’m not sure whether the insiders were laughing due to his comic timing or the audacity and/or futility of his statement).

• IL-Sen: Roland Burris is starting to seem like that last guest at the party who isn’t getting the message that it’s time to go home. Burris says he would like to keep his Senate seat, but will have to make “a formal decision in the next few weeks based on his ability to raise money for a campaign.” With a total of $845 raised so far… well… you do the math.

• KY-Sen: One more Kentuckian is touring the state gauging potential support for the GOP Senate primary, which may or may not contain Jim Bunning. It’s Rand Paul, a doctor who’s never held elected office before but has one important ace in the hole: he’s the son of Rep. Ron Paul, which, if nothing else, establishes his liberatarian bona fides and gives him a nationwide fundraising base of fringe weirdo small donors.

• NM-Gov: Two new candidates have emerged as possible contenders for the Republican nomination for governor in the Land of Enchantment: former state GOP chair Allen Weh (who was intrumental in the firing of US Attorney David Iglesias), who opened an exploratory committee this week, and state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, who’s in the “considering” stage. National Guard Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti is already in the race. This race could get more interesting if ex-Rep. Heather Wilson joined this paltry lot, but with the Dems already coalesced behind Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, the GOP is starting out in a hole here.

• CA-47: Remember how Bill Sali had his campaign HQ in the wrong district? GOP assemblyman Van Tran seems to be following in Rep. Brain Fade’s fine footsteps, at least in the map skills department. He kicked off his campaign with an event in the Little Saigon neighborhood in Westminster… in CA-46.

• CA-32: In the run-up to the May special election, state Sen. Gil Cedillo has turned his fire toward the race’s third wheel: Emanuel Pleitez. Pleitez, a 26-year-old up-and-comer who was part of the Obama transition team, threatens to eat into Cedillo’s share of the Latino vote (which he’ll need to dominate if he’s to beat Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu). Cedillo is sending flyers using photos grabbed from Pleitez’s Facebook page to make the case that he’s too young and immature for Congress.

• TN-04: A stem-winding progressive-sounding speech came from a very unlikely place: Blue Dog Rep. Lincoln Davis, holder of a newly-minted R+13 seat, speaking at last weekend’s Tennessee Democratic Party summit.

• Mayors: There’s another batch of big-city mayoral elections this Saturday, all in Texas. In San Antonio, 34-year-old former city councilor Julian Castro is favored to win. Castro finished second four years ago to Phil Hardberger, who’s now termed-out. In Austin, the best-known mayoral contender is Carole Strayhorn, who was mayor of Austin in the 1970s and ran for governor as an independent in the crazy 2006 gubernatorial election. Strayhorn, however, is probably too conservative for today’s Austin, and the frontrunner seems to be city councilor Brewster McCracken.

• Census: The state of New York is ponying up $2 million in state funding to bolster participation in the 2010 Census, mostly for outreach campaigns to traditionally undercounted populations. Assumedly, they think this money will pay much greater dividends later, if a more accurate count reveals more New Yorkers and thus brings in more federal funding for social programs.

• LA-Sen: In a tantalizing item, the Hotline teases that “The DSCC won’t let Rep. Melancon (D) alone.” Does this mean Melancon could be back in the recruiting crosshairs, despite previously saying he was “not contemplating a run”? The Hotline’s note is behind a subscription paywall; if you have access to it, please feel free to elaborate in comments.

• PA-Sen: Well, something finally went right for Arlen Specter. After Specter got condemned to the basement on all his committees on Tuesday night, Majority whip Dick Durbin doled out a little charity this morning by giving up his own chair (Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs) and handing it over to Specter (apparently without Pat Leahy‘s say-so). I’m wondering what Specter had to do behind the scenes to smooth things over; if the rumors flying that Specter is poised to re-flip-flop back to supporting EFCA are true, that’s probably the answer.

• NY-Sen-B: Rep. Carolyn McCarthy is still making noises about a primary challenge to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, but with her frequent caveats about stepping aside if someone younger takes on the challenge, it seems like she’s doing it more to yank Gillibrand’s chain on gun control issues. Gillibrand has been a reliable vote in favor of gun controls since entering the Senate, going so far as to co-sponsor the current bill to close the gun-show loophole. McCarthy confesses to being “very happy about it. I just want her to stay there.”

• NH-Sen: Judd Gregg tells CQ that wherever he goes, he’s bombarded by Republicans begging him to run for another term in the Senate. He says he’ll listen to their entreaties, but he’s “comfortable with where” he is.

• AK-Gov: Governors in general are having a rough go of it these days, and now even the once-mighty Sarah Palin is suffering, falling to a mundane 54/41 favorable rating according to Hays Research. Senator Lisa Murkowski, by comparison, is still at 76/18.

• OK-Gov: Ex-Rep. J.C. Watts is still publicly undecided about the governor’s race, and kicking the can down the road on a formal decision. Reading between the lines of his statement, it sounds like he’s having some trouble fundraising, saying “You don’t take on something like this unless you know you will have the resources to do it.”

• CO-04: The GOP got the candidate it wanted, to go up against freshman Rep. Betsy Markey in this now R+6 district. State House minority whip Cory Gardner, who represents the vast emptiness of eastern Colorado, announced that he’ll be running. Univ. of Colorado regent Tom Lucero is already in the hunt for the GOP nod.

• MN-06: One day after former Independence Party Lt. Gov. candidate Maureen Reed said she’ll be a Dem candidate in 2010, the 2008 candidate, Elwyn Tinklenberg, confirmed he’ll be running again, against one-woman gaffe machine Michele Bachmann.

• CA-47: GOP Assemblyman Van Tran made it official, setting up his exploratory committee for an uphill bid against Rep. Loretta Sanchez in this D+4 Latino-majority district in the heart of the O.C. (Discussion underway in Gus Ayer‘s diary.)

• ID-01: Idaho state Treasurer Don Crane spent the last week glad-handing GOP leaders and fundraisers in Washington, DC, fueling speculation that he’s ready to challenge frosh Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick next year. Would his candidacy dampen the spirits of ex-Rep. Bill “Brain Fade” Sali, who is currently mulling a rematch? (J)

• GA-09: When you have an R+28 district, the only question about an open seat is what variety of wingnut you’re going to get next. Former state Senator Bill Stephens (who lost the SoS primary to Karen Handel in 2006) announced he’ll run to succeed Rep. Nathan Deal, retiring to run for governor. Former state Transportation Board chair Mike Evans is already seek the GOP nom.

• IL-11: The GOP has lined up Air Force Captain Adam Kinzinger to run against freshman Rep. Debbie Halvorson in the Chicago suburbs. His exploratory committee is open, but he’s currently serving in Iraq and won’t be able to make a formal announcement until summer.

• MI-11: We’ve got somebody willing to step up against Bad Thad McCotter in this Dem-trending seat in the economically hard-hit Detroit suburbs: fundraising consultant Natalie Mosher. The DCCC sounds like it’s going to keep looking for someone else, but if that fails, bear in mind that McCotter barely won in 2008 against a different Dem nobody.

• GA-12: When you’re running for office, it’s important to sell yourself… but not oversell yourself. Surgeon and Iraq vet Wayne Mosely, who’s running against Rep. John Barrow in the D+1 rural Georgia district, recently tweeted that the NRCC rated his race as one of the top 3 in the nation! Uh, no, there’s no ranking system, responded the NRCC, although they did concede that they were “very excited” about Mosely’s candidacy.