Author: Crisitunity

For a few days there, it was looking like PA-Sen had turned from a coup for Democrats to a giant exploding cigar. Not just because Arlen Specter was having great trouble adjusting to Democratic, uh, behavioral norms, but also because GOP pollsters had former Governor and DHS Secretary Tom Ridge not only beating Pat Toomey in the primary, but also beating Specter in the general.

Ridge threw cold water on that idea this morning, issuing this following statement:

“After careful consideration and many conversations with friends and family and the leadership of my party, I have decided not to seek the Republican nomination for Senate,” Ridge said in a statement.

“I am enormously grateful for the confidence my party expressed in me, the encouragement and kindness of my fellow citizens in Pennsylvania and the valuable counsel I received from so many of my party colleagues.”

Without Ridge, GOP efforts to find an anti-Toomey may turn back to Rep. Jim Gerlach, who is looking to bail out of the increasingly blue PA-06 and has launched a gubernatorial exploratory committee, but has been publicly open to switching to the Senate race.

• PA-Sen: In a big diss to Arlen Specter, the Democratic caucus last night voted to slot Specter into the most junior spots on his committees for the remainder of this Congress. The issue won’t be revisited until after the midterm. This strips Specter of one of his strongest re-election arguments: seniority, and the power to make things happen that comes with it (especially on his Appropriations subcommittee… although that’s not as huge a problem in a big state like Pennyslvania as it would be in an Appropriations-dependent state like Alaska).

• KY-Sen: There’s another potential GOP primary challenger to Jim Bunning sniffing out the race, in case SoS Trey Grayson doesn’t show up despite having opened an exploratory committee. Cathy Bailey hasn’t held elective office before, but she’s strong on the fundraising front. She was a Bush Pioneer in 2000, and was rewarded for that with a post as Ambassador to Latvia. She’s married to the former CEO of Providian as well, so she can self-fund if need be.

• NC-Sen: Kenneth Lewis, a Durham attorney and fundraiser for Barack Obama, is telling state Democratic Party leaders that he will run against Richard Burr next year. Still no word on state AG Roy Cooper’s intentions. (J)

• IL-Gov: DuPage County Board chair Robert Schillerstrom is setting up an exploratory committee to run for the GOP nomination in the 2010 gubernatorial race. He’ll join state Senator Bill Brady, who’s already in the hunt. Brady has the “my turn” advantage, having finished 3rd in the 2006 primary, but the suburban Schillerstrom would have the population advantage over downstate’s Brady.

• NJ-Gov: The Democratic Governors’ Association has been reading the Gray Davis playbook (or maybe my advice?): they’re going hard after Chris Christie this month with an ad barrage in order to damage Christie in the hopes of getting the much less-known and more-conservative Steve Lonegan the GOP nomination instead. The Corzine camp is not involved in the efforts, which aims at Christie’s strength: questioning his supposed corruption-fighting credentials as U.S. Attorney.

• VA-02: Ex-Rep. Thelma Drake announced she won’t seek a rematch against Rep. Glenn Nye, who upset her in 2008. This may actually be bad news! for Nye, as there are potential GOP candidates more impressive than the polarizing Drake waiting in the wings. Nye has to be bolstered, though, by the blue shift in this now R+5 district, narrowly won by Obama.

• MN-06: Maureen Reed, a former Univ. of Minnesota regent who ran for Lt. Gov on the Independence Party ticket, will be running in MN-06 in the DFL primary in 2010. While she might not make it through the primary, especially if Elwyn Tinklenberg runs again and/or state Senator Tarryl Clark runs, I’m taking this as a positive sign, in that the IP might not be looking to shoot us in the foot this time. (See also Populista‘s diary.)

• NRCC: The NRCC has launched another offensive on what they perceive as vulnerable (or at least soften-up-able) Dems, with radio ads against Marion Berry, Charlie Melancon, Earl Pomeroy, Zack Space, and John Tanner. Space is the only one who’s on Frontline, but Berry, Melancon, and Tanner are all in districts that moved sharply toward McCain in 2008. The ad attacks the Blue Dogs for being “lap dogs” on the Obama budget.

• Gay marriage: The gay marriage train just keeps building up speed, picking up one more state today. After some public hemming and hawing, Maine Governor John Baldacci signed gay marriage legislation this morning after it passed both chambers of the legislature. (Discussion underway in David Kowalski‘s diary.)

• King County Executive: The first poll is out in the race to lead King County (which puts you in charge of 1.8 million constituents, and is a frequent stepping stone to Washington governor). In a bit of a twist, the Republican (it’s an ostensibly nonpartisan race, but everyone knows who’s what) is in the lead in this dark-blue county: former TV news anchor Susan Hutchison is at 20%, followed by two county councilors from Seattle proper (Dow Constantine at 6 and Larry Phillips at 5) and two Eastside state legislators (Fred Jarrett at 7 and Ross Hunter at 3). All the Dems (each of whom is largely unknown outside his district) added up together beat the widely-known Hutchison, though, so whichever Dem survives the primary seems likely to pull this out in the general election, in Nov. 2009.

• Mayors: Republican Dan Sullivan beat Democrat Eric Croft to replace Mark Begich as Anchorage mayor yesterday, 57-43. (Sullivan has the advantage of being the son of former mayor George Sullivan.) Discussion underway in benjso99‘s diary. Also, yesterday in Detroit, Dave Bing defeated newly-minted mayor Ken Cockrel by 4 points. (Which makes him the second legendary NBA point guard to ascend to mayor, following Sacramento’s Kevin Johnson.)

JMM Research for John Garamendi (dates unknown, likely voters):

John Garamendi (D): 24

Warren Rupf (R): 17

Mark DeSaulnier (D): 13

Joan Buchanan (D): 10

(MoE: ±5%)

Lt. Gov. John Garamendi has been shopping around for the just-right elected office for a long time now, and with Rep. Ellen Tauscher leaving behind an open seat in the U.S. House to head to the State Dept., he might just be ready to settle down. Garamendi got into the race late (after finally pulling the plug on his faltering 2010 gubernatorial campaign), with state Senator Mark DeSaulnier already having gobbled up many key endorsements. Still, Garamendi is in a strong position in his own internal poll, beating his two Democratic opponents combined, DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan. (The only other poll of this race was a Buchanan internal from late March which, not surprisingly, gave her the lead.)

Garamendi’s position is largely thanks to his high name recognition: 80% know him, with 35/12 favorables. DeSaulnier is known by 39%, with 16/13 favorables, and Buchanan is known by 45%, with 17/12 favorables. The Republican polled, Contra Costa County Sheriff Warren Rupf, is known by 20%, with 9/9 favorables.

Rupf has not announced for the race, and doesn’t really seem likely to run; he is, however, probably the strongest GOPer in the district. (San Ramon mayor Abram Wilson and former Assemblyman Guy Houston are other Republicans who’ve been linked to this race.) They were polled en masse because in the primary special election, all candidates are listed together in one pool, and if no one candidate receives more than 50% (unlikely with three top-tier Dems in the race), then the top vote-getter from each party advances to the general.

UPDATE: More discussion in californianintexas’s diary.

• FL-Sen: Word on the street is that Charlie Crist will announce his plans regarding the Senate race on Monday. It sounds like he’s eager to jump in as soon as possible after the end of the legislative session, to keep Marco Rubio from gaining any traction. If Crist’s exalted-sounding riposte to Rubio’s smacktalk yesterday is any indcation, he’s already staking out the post-partisan high ground.

• NH-Sen: Over in what Dean Barker calls “Cloud Hampshire,” Andy Smith of UNH still thinks there are more Republicans than Democrats in the Granite State. That could be why the notoriously unreliable pollster finds John Sununu, Jr. “leading” Paul Hodes 46-41. Take it for what it’s worth – i.e., not very much at all. (D)

• MN-Gov: Ellison Endorses Entenza! Rep. Keith Ellison from Minneapolis lent his support to Matt Entenza, the former state House minority leader (and a friend of Ellison’s from law school).

• OR-04: Republicans have recruited Springfield Mayor Sid Leiken to run against longtime incumbent Peter DeFazio. Don’t be misled into thinking this D+2 district represents a good opportunity for the GOP – DeFazio is very popular (he won with 83% last year). More likely, the GOP is hoping DeFazio will run for the governor’s mansion, leaving this seat open. (D)

• TX-17: GOP candidates once again are lining up for the opportunity to take on Rep. Chet Edwards. But Edwards keeps on finding a way to win in this wildly red district (at R+20, it’s the 19th most-conservative seat in the entire country), and he isn’t even on Frontline this year. Meanwhile, the Republican field is very much unsettled. (D)

• FL-24: State Republican chairman Jim Greer just announced that he won’t take on freshman Dem Suzanne Kosmas this cycle. Yet another recruiting failure for Pete Sessions & the NRCC. (D)

• Mayors: There are two mayoral elections in big cities today: Detroit and Anchorage. Detroit is a Dem-on-Dem duel where there’s not much ideological difference and it’s more of an insider/outsider clash; Kenneth Cockrel, who took over as mayor after Kwame Kilpatrick resigned, is up against businessman (and Detroit Pistons great and NBA Hall of Famer) Dave Bing. Anchorage residents are choosing between Democrat Eric Croft and Republican Dan Sullivan to replace now-Sen. Mark Begich. Anchorage Mayor was an important stepping stone for all two of Alaska’s prominent Dems: ex-Gov. Tony Knowles as well as Begich.

One year ago I tried out an experiment where I plotted US Representatives’ voting records against the presidential lean of their districts, in an effort to identify what representatives were not the most liberal or conservative, but who most overperformed or underperformed their districts. After some hemming and hawing, it was called the PVI/Vote Index. The point of the exercise was to give some clarity and focus to one of the most frequently heard refrains of the liberal blogosphere: “We’re going to primary that ratfink so-and-so,” usually delivered without much consideration as to what kind of candidate that district might actually support.

It’s time to revisit the topic, partly because another year has gone by, and aggregators have released another year’s worth of data, letting us look at the 110th Congress as a whole (instead of just 2007). Also, with the creation of the blogger/labor Accountability Now PAC for purposes of nudging (or primarying) recalcitrant Dems, with Progressive Punch adding a similar function to their website, and with even the Cook Political Report (subscription req’d) tipping a toe into this type of analysis, it seems like other people are starting to zero in on who is and isn’t a good fit for his or her district.

As before, the Index is based on a pretty simple idea: rank every district from 1 to 435 in terms of how Democratic its presidential voting record is, rank every representative from 1 to 435 in terms of how liberal his or her voting record is, and find the difference, with a larger difference in one direction or the other meaning that representative is overperforming or underperforming the district’s lean. (There are a host of methodological issues that go along with this assumption, and I’ll discuss some of them over the fold. In the meantime, let’s get right to the numbers.)

Let’s start with Democrats who are underperforming their districts (in other words, Democrats whose voting records are less liberal than their district composition would ordinarily support):

We need to talk methodology briefly. I’ll do this as a Q&A in order to make it a little livelier.

What the heck is DW/N? As my primary vote-aggregating resource, I’m using DW/Nominate scores, which are a tool I used in a number of vote-scoring-themed diaries last summer. The main advantage DW/N has over other scores is that they aggregate absolutely every vote, instead of cherry-picking. (ADA ratings and CQ party unity scores, for instance, pick so few votes that it’s terribly insufficient gradation among representatives; nearly all Dems have an ADA score of 90, 95, or 100, while nearly all have a CQ score in the 96-98 range… which is why I don’t use either of those metrics.) In each case, I’m using the DW/N score of whatever representative ended the session holding the seat, even if someone else held it the majority of the term.

On the other hand, most everyone else (Progressive Punch, National Journal, CQ, the ADA) uses a 0-100 score, with 100 being most liberal, which is easy for people to mentally convert to the A-B-C-D-F grading scale. By comparison, DW/Nominate scores are difficult to interpret. The scores generally run from – 1 (most liberal) to 1 (least liberal). The scoring algorithm seems to measure similarities between voting records among representatives; a number further away from 0 indicates a greater amount of distance between your record and those of other reps. In fact, if your voting record doesn’t look anything like anybody’s elses, you can exceed the 1 to -1 range (as with Ron Paul’s 1.4).

You may recall last year, to do this project, I created one averaged-out liberal rating using both Progressive Punch and National Journal scores. While I’d very much like to use Progressive Punch scores again — I think they do the best job of the “just right” amount of vote cherry-picking and turning it into an easy-to-understand score — they’ve already turned their attention to the 111th Congress now in session and their old scores from the 110th have already vanished from public view.

And rather than try to average out DW/Nominate and National Journal scores, I’ve just decided there’s too much apples and oranges going on there. This is partly because of the different scoring techniques, which results in some odd discrepancies… National Journal’s method is insensitive to ‘purity’ votes (i.e. voting against something not because you disagree but because it doesn’t go far enough) so the furthest-left or right members of the caucuses (like McDermott, Kucinich, Stark, DeFazio, Woolsey, Waters, or Capuano for the Dems, or Paul for the GOP) tend to get buried in mid-caucus or even treated as centrists.

More importantly, though, there are 19 seats for which there is no National Journal composite score for both 2007 and 2008, mostly because the seat changed hands in a special election (or because of a lot of absences, either for sickness or leadership duties). As a result, what I’ve decided to do is run entirely separate tables based solely on National Journal numbers. As you can see, many of the same people appear relatively in the same places. Members for whom there are scores, and the PVI of their districts, are rated 1-416 instead of 1-435. (The missing parties are Pelosi, Lantos/Speier, Millender-McDonald/Richardson, Crenshaw, Norwood/Broun, Rush, Hastert/Foster, Carson/Carson, Jindal/Scalise, Baker/Cazayoux, Wynn/Edwards, Meehan/Tsongas, Wicker/Childers, Andrews, Gillibrand, Gilmoor/Latta, Pryce, Davis/Wittman, and Cubin.)

Here are the tables based on National Journal composite scores instead. (There is a rating for both 2007 and 2008, so I averaged the two to get one score for each. Again, representatives and districts are ranked only 1 to 416 in this series, because scores aren’t available for 19 seats.) Here are the underperforming Dems:

• KY-Sen: It wouldn’t occur to me to assign great meaning to Jim Bunning’s decision to skip attending the Kentucky Derby this year, but apparently that’s a big deal, as there’s lots of behind-the-scenes elbows-rubbing with potential donors. It’s one more clue in the retirement puzzle, in view of GOP SoS Trey Grayson’s formation of an exploratory committee, supposedly with Bunning’s blessing, and the likelihood that Grayson’s emergence will further dry up Bunning’s fundraising.

• FL-Sen: With Gov. Charlie Crist poised to make a decision on whether or not to run for Senate upon the end of the Florida legislative session Friday, former state House speaker Marco Rubio has kept turning up the heat on him, suggesting that he’s running in the primary with or without Crist. Regarding Crist’s support for the stimulus package, said Rubio: “If you agree with Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe on some of these issues, you might as well become a Democrat.”

• LA-Sen: David Vitter posts some mediocre numbers in a new poll from Southern Media & Opinion Research. He gets an approval rating of 58%, but only 30% say they would definitely vote to re-elect him (with 28% saying definitely not and 35% open to an alternative). Most ominously, only 35% of white voters said they would definitely vote to re-elect. In related news, potential primary challenger Stormy Daniels is embarking on a “listening tour” of Louisiana. I got nothing here; make up your own lascivious pun.

• OH-17: Turns out that Gov. Ted Strickland talked the 36-year-old Rep. Tim Ryan out of jumping out of a promising House career and into the #2 slot on his ticket. (Strickland said that when he does announce his Lt. Gov., it’ll be a “huge surprise.”)

• Redistricting: Dave’s Redistricting blog is about to release a new feature that should keep SSP’s many redistricting fans awake into the wee hours: a free and allegedly easy-to-use Flash-based online redistricting tool. It sounds like it’s only based on Census population data and not precinct-level voting data, but even that would be a huge help for tinkerers like us. Keep your eyes peeled for the tool’s launch some time this week.

• PA-Sen: Rep. Joe Sestak is actually sounding likelier to jump into the Senate race than he did before Arlen Specter’s party swap. Interviews this week find him taking on a more belligerent tone and staking out an outsider position. Sen. Bob Casey, however, is moving right away to say he’ll support Specter no matter what happens in the primary.

• IN-Sen: A Hamilton Campaigns poll finds Evan Bayh with ridiculously high favorables: 74/23, with even 61% from Republicans. He also has $11.4 million in the bank. You think with that level of popularity maybe he could drop the defensive crouch and stop reflexively opposing his party’s agenda?

• CA-32: As the May 19 special election primary fast approaches, Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu and state Senator Gil Cedillo have started going at each other hammer-and-tongs. Cedillo’s camp has sent out mailers charging Chu with giving special tax breaks to corporate campaign contributors; Chu’s camp responds that they were “routine refunds of overpaid sales taxes.” Chu leads in fundraising and endorsements, but will need to make substantial inroads into the Latino vote in this district with a Latino majority but a large Asian bloc.

• CA-45: We’ve known for a while that openly-gay Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet was intending to challenge Rep. Mary Bono Mack in this newly-blue district (still R+3), but he made it official earlier this week.

• AR-St. House: Here’s one I’m still trying to wrap my head around: until this week, there was actually a Green Party member in a state House of Representatives. And it wasn’t Vermont, Maine, or Oregon: it was Arkansas, of all places. Well, that ended this week, as State Rep. Richard Carroll of North Little Rock switches to the Democratic Party today. (The effect of the switch is minimal: Dems now control the House 75-25.)

• Swingnuts’ Delight: Everything you ever wanted to know about the awesome delicacy that is chocolate babka. Stick around here long enough and DavidNYC might send you one! (Hat-tip: reader RC)

• PA-Sen: Apparently, Arlen Specter’s campaign has only received 15 requests for donation refunds so far in the wake of his switch to the Democratic Party. The returned funds only add up to a paltry $15K. (J)

The NRSC has launched a new robocall targeting Specter, by linking him to the NRSC’s arch-enemy… George W. Bush? (It replays Bush’s 2004 endorsement of then-GOPer Specter.) Apparently, the goal is to soften Specter up among the Dem electorate to lose a Democratic primary to a more reliable Dem, who would then be a little more vulnerable to Pat Toomey in the general… or something like that? This is one of those moments when you can’t tell if the GOP is crazy like a fox, or just crazy.

Specter bringing his decades of seniority with him over to the Democratic caucus is angering some key Democrats who get bumped down the totem pole as a result, according to The Hill. Specter could find himself wielding the gavel in an Appropriations subcommittee, or even back in charge of Judiciary if Patrick Leahy takes over Appropriations in 2010.

Specter’s switch has the whining flowing among some of the GOP’s sourest senators: Jim Bunning says the GOP “coddled” Specter for too long, while Jim Inhofe shows his grasp of GOP dead-ender logic, saying that Specter’s fleeing the party is a sign of conservatism’s strength and presages a comeback. In much the same way that if my house is on fire, that indicates that its value is about to go up, because it’s finally clearing out all that clutter.

• FL-Sen: The DSCC is pulling out all the stops against Charlie Crist, and he hasn’t even taken any steps toward getting into the Senate race yet. They’ve launched a new TV spot (airing in the Tallahassee market) that attacks Crist for leaving Florida in financial disarray to jump to Washington, and attacks his heavy-on-socializing, light-on-work schedule.

• CO-Sen: The GOP’s Weld County DA Ken Buck is trapped in the grey area between candidate and not-candidate for Senate; his website is up and running and has a “donate” button, but hasn’t filed his official paperwork and denied Monday’s reports that he was officially in.

• RI-Gov: Lincoln Chafee seems to be having similar problems on just how official a candidate he is, too. His exploratory committee is open and he said he “is” running when appearing on Rachel Maddow on Tuesday, but then issued a release yesterday walking that back, to “my intentions are” to run for governor.

• WI-Gov: The GOPers aren’t waiting any longer for Gov. Jim Doyle to publicly announce his re-elections; Milwaukee Co. Scott Walker launched his campaign yesterday. Walker (who briefly ran in the primary in 2006) doesn’t have the race to himself, though; last week, Mark Neumann, who represented WI-01 from 1994 to 1998 and then lost the 1998 senate race to Russ Feingold, announced his candidacy, touting his support from Tommy Thompson surrogate James Klauser.

• AL-Gov: Not one but two more Republicans are sizing up the governor’s race, although neither one seems top-tier material: Hoover mayor (in the Birmingham suburbs) Tony Petelos, and Bill Johnson, the head of the Alabama Dept. of Economic and Community Affairs. (Johnson has a colorful backstory that wouldn’t help him much in the primary.)

• OR-Gov: Local Republican pollster Moore Insight polled potential Dem candidates for governor on their favorables. Ex-gov. John Kitzhaber and Rep. Peter DeFazio posted pretty similar numbers: 49/21 for Kitz, 48/17 for the Faz. (Kitzhaber has higher negatives among Republicans, thanks to all those vetoes he handed out.) Former SoS Bill Bradbury is at 29/10, and Steve Novick, who barely lost the 2008 Senate primary, is at 14/4.

• GA-01: Long-time Rep. Jack Kingston has often been the subject of speculation in the Georgia governor’s race, but he confirmed that he’ll be running for re-election to the House. Interestingly, he’s supporting state senator Eric Johnson in the race instead of fellow Rep. Nathan Deal, but that’s because Johnson is a fellow Savannah resident and his son’s godfather.

• VA-10: The subject of much retirement-related speculation due to age and a rapidly bluening seat (now R+2), Rep. Frank Wolf confirmed he’ll be running for re-election in 2010. He may face state senator Mark Herring or delegate David Poisson.

• OH-18: Rep. Zack Space has been added to the DCCC’s defense-oriented Frontline program. Space was the target of an NRCC TV spot earlier, but this isn’t so much a question of newfound vulnerability as it’s confirmation he’s done flirting with a Senate run and committing to his House seat for 2010.

• CA-36: Suddenly embattled Rep. Jane Harman has hired Clinton-era fixer Lanny Davis to help her negotiate the legal and PR minefield she finds herself in, regarding the wiretap imbroglio. 2006 primary challenger Marcy Winograd is revving up her efforts, sensing Harman’s weakness. Winograd, who earned 38% in 2006, has begun raising funds for another try.

• NY-20: Republican Jim Tedisco says that he is “not planning” on seeking a rematch against freshly-minted Democratic Rep. Scott Murphy, but refuses to explicitly rule out a run. (J)

• WA-08: One more tea leaf that Suzan DelBene may be left holding the bag in WA-08: State Rep. Ross Hunter, one of the first Dems to crack the GOP stranglehold on the Eastside and a potentially strong contender in WA-08, is running for King County Executive. The already-crowded Exec race is in Nov. 2009, not 2010, but indicates Hunter’s interests lie locally, not in DC.

• Votes: The 17 Democrats who voted against the Obama budget are all familiar dissenters, and most of them are in difficult Republican-leaning districts: Barrow, Boren, Bright, Childers, Foster, Griffith, Kratovil, Kucinich, Markey, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Minnick, Mitchell, Nye, Taylor, and Teague.

Monmouth University/Gannett (pdf) (4/23-27, registered voters, 1/12-14 in parentheses):

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 35 (38)

Chris Christie (R): 39 (36)

Jon Corzine (D-inc): 37 (45)

Steve Lonegan (R): 33 (29)

(MoE: ±3.7%)

These polls showing Jon Corzine losing to Chris Christie in the New Jersey governor’s race are getting pretty repetitive, but this one caught my eye because I can’t quite tell whether Corzine is coming or going. On the one hand, Monmouth’s trendlines show marked decline for Corzine, who went from winning by 2 in January to losing by 4 now against US Attorney Chris Christie, and barely beating former Bogota mayor Steve Lonegan instead of stomping him. Corzine’s favorables are also down to 43/47, down from 49/38 in January.

On the other hand, Corzine didn’t start trailing in any polls until January, and a 4-point deficit is Corzine’s best showing in months among any pollster. (He was down by 7 in the mid-April poll from Quinnipiac, which actually was improvement over March’s numbers. And he was down by 9 in the early April poll from FDU.) So, I’m wondering to what extent Corzine’s fate is inextricably linked to the economy, and if he, like everything else around us, hit some sort of bottom in recent months and is slowly starting to tick up.

Yacoubian Research for WMC-TV (4/23-27, likely voters):

Steve Cohen (D-inc): 65

Willie Herenton (D): 14

Unsure: 21

(MoE: ±5.2%)

Steve Cohen faces an unusual challenge: his Memphis-based D+23 seat is as safe as can be in the general election, but as a white guy representing a district that’s almost two-thirds African-American, he’s consistently vulnerable in the primary. (As you’ll remember, Cohen won a heated primary in 2008 against Nikki Tinker, although that race will be remembered more for its sliminess than a close margin, as Cohen won with 79%.) When five-term Memphis mayor Willie Herenton announced last week that he was “seriously evaluating” a primary challenge to Cohen, on its face, that seemed like about the biggest possible challenge Cohen could face.

A new poll commissioned by a Memphis TV affiliate, however, suggests that Herenton doesn’t make the transition from strong-on-paper to reality very well, as he loses to Cohen by a sweeping margin. Herenton, who’s been in office since 1991, has apparently had ample time for the citizens of Memphis to get sick of him. Herenton won his most recent election in 2007 with only 42% of the vote (following pre-election polling indicating only 20% support for his re-election). Herenton also announced his resignation in 2008 in order to jump over to running Memphis’s public schools, then promptly reversed himself and continued being mayor when that deal fell through. Herenton seems to be floundering around, looking for a mayoral exit strategy, and that perception must be even stronger within the city.