Author: Crisitunity

• NY-20 (pdf): This morning’s update from the BoE has Scott Murphy’s lead increasing a bit, up to 56 votes. Brace yourself for later today, though, when Saratoga County (Jim Tedisco’s base) is scheduled to report absentees for the first time.

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter picked up an important backer in the 2010 primary: NRSC chair John Cornyn (who’d, of course, like to limit the number of seats lost on his watch). “As I survey the political landscape of the upcoming 2010 elections, it’s clear we need more candidates that fit their states,” said Cornyn. Although Cornyn doesn’t mention his name, he obviously has in mind a guy who doesn’t fit his state: Pat Toomey, who just happened to officially announce his long-rumored Senate bid yesterday.

• MN-Sen: No surprise here; Norm Coleman, having lost the election yesterday according to a three-judge panel, has filed an appeal with the Minnesota Supreme Court. Election law blogger Rick Hasen looks at yesterday’s opinion and the difficulty Coleman will face in getting it reversed.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio reported raising $250,000 in the last month since opening his exploratory committee, a solid start. Meanwhile, Kendrick Meek continued to dominate the labor endorsement front, picking up the nod from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, AFL-CIO.

• IL-10: State senator Susan Garrett says she’ll decide within the month whether or not to challenge Mark Kirk (sounding like she’s trying to wait as long as possible to see if Kirk jumps into the senate race and leaves an open seat). Kirk has turned back a number of serious challenges in the 3rd-most Dem-leaning district still occupied by a Republican (won by Obama with 61% of the vote).

• NV-02: A credible Democratic challenger to Dean Heller has materialized. Douglas County school board president Cindy Trigg plans to announce her candidacy next week. This district, once a Republican stronghold, went for McCain by less than 100 votes.

• ID-01: Walt Minnick just got some fundraising help from an unexpected place. Former two-term GOP senator from Idaho Steve Symms is headlining Minnick’s April 23 breakfast fundraiser.

• NRCC: Campaign Diaries has the full list of all 43 Dems targeted in the GOP’s big radio-spot-and-robocall blitz.

• Where Are They Now?: Tom Feeney: just took a job with noted think-tank the Heritage Foundation, to focus on “community outreach.” Bob Ney: just got the 1-3 pm slot on a conservative talk radio station in Moundsville, WV. Chris Chocola: just made it official, that he will be replacing Pat Toomey as head of the Club for Growth. Vito Fossella: just pled guilty to DWI and will serve four days in Alexandria city jail.

• Red Menace: Spencer Bachus (AL-06) just announced that he is holding in his hand a list of 17 socialists in Congress. We all know about Bernie Sanders; anyone care to hazard a guess who the other 16 are?

A quote from today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal neatly (and hilariously) sums up the state of the 2010 senate race in Nevada:

Nevada Republicans have been frustrated by the lack of a clear opponent for Reid, a Democrat who would be considered vulnerable if he weren’t running unopposed.

The article, however, is focused on Sharron Angle, who may wind up, at the very least, preventing Reid from being unopposed. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, she’s a former assemblywoman from Reno who finished a super-close second in the 2nd District primary in 2006, sandwiched between then-SoS, now-Rep. Dean Heller and Dawn Gibbons, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of then-Rep., now-Gov., soon-to-be-unemployed Jim Gibbons. In 2008, she ran in the GOP primary against state senator Bill Raggio (currently the minority leader) from the right, but lost that too.

With top-tier candidates like Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki sidelined by an indictment for misappropriation of state funds, and ex-Rep. Jon Porter settling in on K Street, the Nevada GOP bench doesn’t have much left on it. The national and state parties, nevertheless, haven’t expressed much interest in Angle. She says the push to run has come from “supporters,” and that she…

wasn’t recruited by the state GOP or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but she said she hopes to talk to them if she gets the commitments she’s hoping for.

Meanwhile, Harry Reid continues to put the “$” in “Vega$,” raising $2 million in the first quarter, with over $5 million cash on hand. If he continues to raise at that clip (in an inexpensive media state like Nevada) and he faces Angle (whose current fundraising goal is $100,000 by May) in the general, this once-thought-vulnerable race may wind up being a footnote in 2010.

• NY-20 (pdf): The latest update from the state BoE this morning shows Scott Murphy’s lead down to 25, as the absentee count proceeds (and a few readjustments are made to recanvass numbers). We’re still waiting on any absentee numbers from Saratoga County (Tedisco’s base) and most from Washington and Warren Counties (Murphy’s base).

Also, there’s been some research into what happens in NY-20 ends in a true tie (and no, apparently “Thunderdome” is not involved after all). Under NY law, coin tosses are not allowed in state or federal races, so the governor has the choice of either holding another special election for which the candidates will need to be re-nominated (allowing Libertarian Eric Sundwall another shot at the ballot), or else postponing the whole matter until the general election in Nov. 2009.

• IL-Sen: Roland Burris is getting slammed even by his one-time supporters now. Rep. Danny Davis told Chicago Public Radio that Burris needs to “hurry up” and announce whether or not he’s running for re-election in 2010. Davis’s sudden hurry is personally motivated, though, as Davis also stated publicly for the first time that he’s considering running for that senate seat himself. (It seems like he wouldn’t want to do it with Burris in the primary, though, as that would split the African-American vote.)

• OH-Sen: Ex-Rep. Rob Portman may not have much name recognition or charisma, but he does have one advantage: lots of money. Today he reported raising $1.7 million in Q1, and is sitting on $3.1 million total. Lee Fisher, by contrast, announced last week that he raised $1.1 million, while Jennifer Brunner hasn’t reported yet.

• NY-Sen: Here are some tea leaves that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy isn’t going to be running against Kirsten Gillibrand in the senate primary: she raised $145,000 in the first quarter (for House re-election, but that could be transferred if she switched to the senate race), with $262,000 CoH. (Also-rumored challengers Reps. Steve Israel and Carolyn Maloney have much bigger stashes; they haven’t reported for Q1, but have $1.7 million and $1.1 million CoH, respectively.)

• DE-Sen: Along the same lines, it looks like Mike Castle isn’t gearing up his fundraising machine toward a run for the open senate seat in Delaware in 2010. (On the other hand, he’s raised enough that retirement doesn’t seem in the offing.) Politico catches that he raised only $73,000 in Q1, with $841,000 CoH.

• FL-Sen: Rep. Kendrick Meek got another big “get” in his so-far-successful quest to nail down all the building blocks to cornering the Democratic nomination. He got the endorsement of the national AFSCME today, one of the nation’s largest unions.

• MN-Sen: Digging by Senate Guru and Down with Tyranny reveals that one of the Minnesota Supreme Court justices who’ll be hearing Norm Coleman’s whinings is Christopher Dietzen, who has donated thousands to Republican candidates, most significantly to Norm Coleman himself, creating a rather clear basis for recusal.

• AL-Gov: Former “Ten Commandments” judge Roy Moore, who lost the 2006 gubernatorial primary to Bob Riley, is looking for another try, now that it’s an open seat. With a fractured-looking GOP field, it’s possible Moore could sneak through the primary this time, which, given his polarizing nature, might actually give the Dem a small advantage in the general.

• NYC-Mayor: NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg solved the term limits problem, but he had one more problem to overcome: getting a ballot line from some party. To solve that dilemma, he’s returned to his shallow Republican roots, remaining a registered independent but picking up the GOP ballot line by getting the endorsement of three of the boroughs’ GOP chairs. In a display of ‘post-partisanship’ at its finest, he’s reportedly also trying to secure the ballot line of the left-leaning Working Families Party.

• OH-17: In a move guaranteed to provoke a huge collective sigh of relief, Ohio senate minority leader Capri Cafaro said that she won’t run for the open seat left behind by Rep. Tim Ryan, assuming he runs for Ohio Lt. Gov. in 2010. “I don’t know if I can get as much accomplished on the federal level,” she says.

• PA-04: Republicans seem to be coalescing around state representative (and minority whip) Mike Turzai as a challenger to Rep. Jason Altmire in this slowly-reddening district in Pittsburgh’s suburbs. Turzai lost the 1998 election in the 4th to Ron Klink by a fairly wide margin. The 4th’s most prominent GOPer, Lynn Swann, has already declined.

• AR-01: A likely GOP candidate has already surfaced to run against Marion Berry (no, not the DC mayor) in this rural district that had one of the most alarming rightward shifts over the decade. In the ‘can’t make this stuff up’ department, businessman Eric Crawford already boasts wide name recognition from doing the radio farm report.

• IL-11: Real estate investor and big-money GOP donor Henry Meers Jr. has filed to take on freshman Rep. Debbie Halvorson in the 11th. However, some in the local GOP instead favor Iraq War vet and former McLean County board member Adam Kinzinger. (Kinzinger is from the rural part of the district, while Meers and Halvorson hail from Will County in the Chicago suburbs.)

• NRCC: The NRCC is going on the offense against 43 different House dems for “rubber stamping” Nancy Pelosi’s “San Francisco-style budget” (and its socialistic promise of Rice-a-Roni in every pot). Oddly, they’re singling out OH-18’s Zack Space (certainly not one of our most vulnerable members) with a TV spot. Nine other Dems get radio spots, while robocalls target the rest (including other entrenched members like Charlie Melancon and Chet Edwards).

• Polltopia: Our friends at Public Policy Polling are once again letting readers decide which Senate race they’ll poll next. The choices this time: Colorado, Connecticut, and Illinois. Go get your democracy on, and tell us which state you voted for (and why) in the comments. (J)

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (4/6-8, registered voters):

Brian Moran (D): 24

Terry McAuliffe (D): 19

Creigh Deeds (D): 16

(MoE: ±5%)

Brian Moran (D): 36

Bob McDonnell (R): 37

Terry McAuliffe (D): 33

Bob McDonnell (R): 40

Creigh Deeds (D): 31

Bob McDonnell (R): 38

(MoE: ±4%)

Research 2000 polls the Virginia governor’s race for the first time, finding that ex-Delegate Brian Moran has a small advantage in the primary over former DNC chair Terry McAuliffe. A recent PPP poll had Moran and McAuliffe tied, but gave Moran the momentum (McAuliffe had previously led), and found McAuliffe with higher negatives. That’s mirrored here: Moran’s favorables are 36/33 while McAuliffe is the only candidate in net negative territory at 35/36.

Moran fares slightly better in the general than the other Dems because of his solid base in northern Virginia (he used to represent Alexandria), winning NoVa against Bob McDonnell 49-21. McDonnell wins the rest of the state 43-31, though, and sports impressive favorables of 48/31. Once the Dem primary is over and the winner can aim his fire at McDonnell instead of the other Dems, though, maybe his negatives can get driven up. McDonnell’s support for the GOP-led House of Delegates’ decision to reject federal stimulus money for unemployment benefits provides a good opening.

* MD-HD-30: Progressive blogger and founder of Think Progress Judd Legum is running for a seat in Maryland’s House of Delegates. MD has an unusual system whereby the top three finishers in each party’s primary all face each other in the general election, and the top three from that pool all become delegates for that district. The 30th HD went for Obama 52-48, but a few years ago, an out-of-step, conservative Republican snuck through in the third slot by just a handful of votes. Judd (whose blog is here) is taking on this malefactor. We wish him the very best of luck! (D)

* NY-20: The see-sawing continues: at the end of counting yesterday, the semi-official BoE tally had Scott Murphy up by 8 votes. The four counties that hadn’t returned full results for paper ballots, though, were four of the pivotal ones: Saratoga (Tedisco’s base), and Washington, Warren, and Essex (Murphy’s base). The Albany Times-Union puts Murphy’s lead at 34, including some additional numbers from Essex. The Hill, as of this hour, is reporting a 46 vote lead for Murphy as more absentees seem to start trickling in.

* SC-Gov: Rep. Gresham Barrett, one of the House’s most forgettable members, posted surprisingly strong fundraising numbers in his quest to become South Carolina governor: $371,000 in the first quarter, with more than $1 million CoH. He faces a crowded field, most prominently AG Henry McMaster, who raised $287K.

* CA-32: Here’s a strange twist in the CA-32 special election: another Chu has filed to run. Betty Tom Chu, a city councilor and former mayor in Monterey Park, jumped in as a Republican. (She used to be registered as a Democrat and holds nonpartisan office.) There are rumors of bad blood between the two Chus, but this may not necessarily be a dirty trick to sabotage Judy Chu. Although it’s an all-in-one-field primary (where the top vote-getter from each party advances), Betty Chu will have an R next to her name, helping somewhat to differentiate her from Judy Chu. The real confusion may be in the general, which could therefore be Chu vs. Chu.

• NJ-Gov: The latest poll of the New Jersey governor’s race shows that things aren’t getting any worse for Jon Corzine, but he is settling into a deep rut. Fairleigh Dickinson finds that he loses 42-33 to Chris Christie, the same 9-pt margin as their previous poll one month ago (41-32). Corzine’s approval rating is 40/49, and he beats even nuttier GOPer Steve Lonegan by only 37-36. There is some good news, though: he’d still win in a Democratic primary, if for some reason senate president Richard Codey or Newark mayor Corey Booker challenged him.

Could An incumbent Democratic governor of New Jersey come back after trailing by double digits in the polls for most of the campaign? It happened once before, when Gov. Brendan Byrne beat Republican Raymond Bateman, despite being down as much as twelve points in September of 1977. “Hopeful” at Blue Jersey does some excellent digging through the archives to tell Byrne’s story. (D)

• VA-Gov: National politics just injected itself into the Virginia governor’s race in a big way, as the GOP-held House of Delegates rejected $125 million in federal stimulus funds that would have extended unemployment benefits. Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell supported his party’s callous move.

• AK-Sen: Ted Stevens just filed his exploratory paperwork to get his old job back, by running for senator in 2014 (when he’ll be 91). Don’t actually expect to see Ted 2.0, though; his spokesman says it’s just a receptacle to receive donations that came in after the November election.

• FL-Sen, NH-Sen: In other unlikely comeback news, though, this one appears to be for real: Bob Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has filed the paperwork to run for Senate again… in Florida, where he now lives. This seems odd, since there are political titans jostling for the Florida nomination while the New Hampshire nomination still seems to be pretty much free for the asking. (As an indication of how far down the totem pole the NH GOP is looking, Ovide Lamontagne, last seen losing the 1996 gubernatorial race, is now eyeing NH-Sen.)

• AR-Sen: Mediocre polling and pressure on EFCA seem to have gotten Blanche Lincoln worried, but she may be able to breathe a little easier after her first quarter fundraising haul: $1.7 million, with $1 million of that coming at a campaign kickoff event headlined by Joe Biden.

• MI-Gov: Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson has announced that he won’t seek the GOP nomination for the governor’s race next year. Patterson narrowly led the primary field in a recent poll, so that leaves a wide-open field with a possible advantage to 2nd-place finisher Rep. Pete Hoekstra.

• TN-Gov: State senator Roy Herron entered the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, joining former state house majority leader Kim McMillan and Nashville businessman Ward Cammack. Mike McWherter, son of former governor Ned McWherter, also seems a likely candidate.

• PA-06: We have at least a warm body lined up in PA-06: Doug Pike, who hasn’t held elected office but wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer for a number of years, was an aide to Paul Tsongas, and is the son of Rep. Otis Pike (of New York). A better-known candidate may still crop up, especially if Rep. Jim Gerlach follows through on his likely plans to bail on his increasingly-Democratic seat (Obama won 58-41) and run for Pennsylvania governor instead.

It’s been widely rumored for several weeks, but today it became official: Kentucky AG Jack Conway will be running for the Democratic nomination in the 2010 Senate race.

Attorney General Jack Conway said today that he will seek the Democratic nomination next year for the U.S. Senate seat held by Republican Jim Bunning….

The attorney general is expected to kick off his campaign with a press conference Monday attended by Luallen, Chandler, U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, and perhaps other Democratic leaders who are backing him.

This comes hot on the heels of yesterday’s blockbuster PPP poll that showed every possible Democrat beating Jim Bunning. The poll showed Rep. Ben Chandler in the best position vis a vis Bunning, leaving me momentarily wondering if Chandler would try elbowing Conway aside, but it looks like the informal troika of Chandler, Conway, and Luallen have successfully resolved the issue of who gets to run for Senate, and will all be appearing together. (The same poll shows Conway beating Bunning by 9, so we’re still in great shape with him.)

This won’t be an uncontested primary. Far from it, as Conway will still need to get past Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who doesn’t match up as well against Bunning according to PPP, but has the advantage of having come within a few points of Bunning in 2004, and who has the endorsement of Gov. Steve Beshear. As with the Democratic primary in Ohio, the trick will be keeping the primary competitive enough that the candidates get the free media needed to raise their profiles going into the general, but keeping it from lapsing into the negativity that can wound the primary winner going forward. (H/t MediaCzech and generalleeferd.)

Time for another installment in the slicing ‘n’ dicing of our presidential-election-results-by-congressional district dataset. One interesting thing I noticed (that has sort of a “well, duh” feel to it if you think about it for a minute) is that the districts that had the largest raw numbers of votes for Obama or for McCain were rarely the same districts that gave them the best percentages.

The raw vote numbers instead can point to a variety of factors: districts that experienced rapid population growth since redistricting, districts that started out the decade with high population (for instance, some at-large districts haven’t grown much, but have always been very big), districts in civic-minded states (like Wisconsin and Oregon) where turnout is always high, and low-income minority-majority districts (where, despite increased turnout for Obama, overall turnout is still comparatively low).

District	Rep.	Obama votes	District	Rep.	Obama votes
WA-07	McDermott	308,226	TN-01	Roe	75,255
PA-02	Fattah	298,834	AL-06	Bachus	74,657
WI-02	Baldwin	286,089	TX-08	Brady	74,545
NC-04	Price	275,205	NE-03	Smith	73,099
MD-04	Edwards	270,377	GA-09	Deal	70,366
CA-08	Pelosi	266,210	TX-29	Green	66,808
IL-02	Jackson	260,869	TX-19	Neugebauer	65,020
CA-09	Lee	260,662	AL-04	Aderholt	58,863
OR-03	Blumenauer	260,128	TX-11	Conaway	58,326
IL-07	Davis	255,470	TX-13	Thornberry	53,860

The biggest Obama vote totals tended to come in districts that don’t necessarily have the highest PVIs, but are the some of the most stereotypically “liberal” districts centered on mostly-white cities with left-leaning traditions (Seattle, Madison, San Francisco, Portland). Some of the more relatively affluent African-American-majority districts round out the list. (The lowest Obama totals did in fact come from the districts with the worst Obama percentages, with one big exception: TX-29, which Obama won easily, but has the fewest total votes of any district.)

District	Rep.	McCain votes	District	Rep.	McCain votes
FL-05	Brown-Waite	249,328	CA-35	Waters	27,789
WI-05	Sensenbrenner	243,597	CA-33	Watson	27,672
AL-06	Bachus	243,465	CA-31	Becerra	25,441
MT-AL	Rehberg	242,763	NY-12	Velazquez	23,504
GA-03	Westmoreland	235,263	NY-06	Meeks	22,302
FL-01	Miller	234,185	NY-11	Clarke	20,709
FL-04	Crenshaw	233,446	NY-10	Towns	19,677
CO-06	Coffman	229,715	IL-04	Gutierrez	18,453
TN-07	Blackburn	229,068	NY-15	Rangel	14,954
FL-06	Stearns	228,651	NY-16	Serrano	8,437

The highest McCain vote totals mostly came in rapidly growing suburban districts that lean Republican (MT-AL is also here, simply by virtue of its size). Half of these districts are ones where Obama got at least 40% of the vote, so these aren’t necessarily the most right-wing territory (heh, except for AL-06). However, these are districts that will need to shed population with 2012 redistricting, so their Republican lean may leach out into currently neighboring districts. (The districts with the most pitiable McCain totals tend to overlap the districts with the highest PVIs.)

District	Rep.	Total votes	District	Rep.	Total votes
MT-AL	Rehberg	491,092	TX-15	Hinojosa	167,821
FL-05	Brown-Waite	446,316	NY-16	Serrano	167,443
NC-04	Price	438,937	CA-43	Baca	164,830
CO-06	Coffman	437,740	CA-34	Roybal-Allard	142,774
WI-05	Sensenbrenner	421,962	CA-31	Becerra	142,662
WI-02	Baldwin	414,638	IL-04	Gutierrez	139,546
DE-AL	Castle	412,412	AZ-04	Pastor	132,076
MN-06	Bachmann	412,408	CA-20	Costa	129,561
FL-06	Stearns	408,014	CA-47	Sanchez	128,277
FL-07	Mica	401,966	TX-29	Green	108,507

For context, here are the districts with the highest and lowest total number of votes. The districts with the greatest numbers of votes are mostly ones we’ve already seen, depending on whether they lean Democratic or Republican. The lowest totals are in Hispanic-majority districts, where citizenship and language barriers are at issue.

• IL-05: Congratulations to our newest House member, Mike Quigley. The Cook County Commissioner won the special election in this safe Dem seat last night, defeating GOPer Rosanna Pulido 70-24 (with the balance going to Green Party candidate Matt Reichel). (There were only about 34,000 votes cast in this election, compared with about 58,000 in the primary, since that’s where all the action was.)

• AK-Sen: Gov. Sarah Palin will not be challenging Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the 2010 senate primary; in fact, she’ll be assisting Murkowski with raising money (despite simmering tensions between the two factions). It remains to be seen whether she’ll be running for re-election as governor in 2010, or bailing out after one term to focus on the 2012 presidential race (which, geographically speaking, is hard to do from Alaska).

• VA-Gov: If there’s one thing Terry McAuliffe is good at, it’s raising money. He raked in $4.2 million in the first quarter for his gubernatorial campaign. He started April with $2.5 million CoH as the race heads toward the June 9 primary.

• IA-Gov: With Iowa’s Supreme Court having effectively made same-sex marriages legal, the 2010 governor’s race could turn into a proxy referendum on the issue (with Gov. Chet Culver unwilling to amend the state constitution to block the courts). And this may draw a higher-profile challenger to the race: nutty GOP Rep. Steve King, whose name has been occasionally associated with this race, says the sudden rise of this issue makes him “more likely” to enter the race.

• GA-Gov: As noted by fitchfan28 in diaries, state House minority leader Dubose Porter has thrown his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination for Georgia governor. He joins AG Thurbert Baker and former SoS David Poythress as announced candidates, with former governor Roy Barnes scoping out the race as well.

• NJ-12: Rush Holt may receive a credible challenge in 2010, from Fair Haven mayor Mike Halfacre, who just filed exploratory paperwork. Fair Haven is in Republican-leaning Monmouth County; the district as a whole, though, is blue, if not overwhelming so (Obama won 58-41).

• EFCA: In the wake of yesterday’s announcement that Blanche Lincoln would oppose EFCA’s current form, two more moderate Dem wafflers got off the fence in favor of EFCA (or, more technically, in favor of cloture): Mark Udall and Mark Warner. Campaign Diaries has a very handy head count, indicating that possible passage is still very close, and an unpacked version of the bill (for instance, containing the binding arbitration portion, leaving ‘card check’ for another year) may still be passed.

• CfG: With Pat Toomey about to leave the helm of the Club for Growth to pursue his senate bid against Arlen Specter, they need someone new to wave the sword for the circular firing squad. Looks like the job may fall to yet another ex-Rep who brought the crazy to a swing district, Chris Chocola. (Chocola got bounced from IN-02 in 2006 by Joe Donnelly.)

• Omaha-Mayor: In last night’s Omaha mayoral all-party primary election, former GOP Rep. Hal Daub (himself a former Omaha mayor) squeaked into first place with 35.6% of the vote to Democratic concilman Jim Suttle’s 34.3%. Republican Councilman Jim Vokal came in third, picking up 28.2% of the vote. New Nebraska Network’s Kyle Michaelis argues that despite the Republican candidates picking up more votes overall, Daub’s weak finish is not a good sign for his chances in the general election. (J)

PPP (4/2-3, registered voters):

Ben Chandler (D): 47

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 33

Jack Conway (D): 42

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 33

Crit Luallen (D): 42

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 34

Dan Mongiardo (D): 43

Jim Bunning (R-inc): 36

Ben Chandler (D): 40

Trey Grayson (R): 34

Jack Conway (D): 37

Trey Grayson (R): 33

Crit Luallen (D): 34

Trey Grayson (R): 36

Dan Mongiardo (D): 36

Trey Grayson (R): 40

(MoE: ±4%)

We’ve had lots of clues that Jim Bunning is in trouble: a Research 2000 poll from January showing him in dead heats with Democratic challengers, reports of “lousy” fundraising, and not-so-private efforts by Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn to give him his gold watch and usher him out the back door. But now we have a poll, via PPP, that shows just how dire things have gotten for him. Bunning’s job performance approval is 28/54 (notably worse than anything Chris Dodd has put up lately), and only 42% of Republicans approve.

Bunning loses by fairly wide margins to all four of his potential Democratic challengers, most significantly losing by 14 to Rep. Ben Chandler. (Chandler, AG Jack Conway, and Auditor Crit Luallen all seem to be in a semi-friendly standoff over which one gets to run; maybe these numbers will prompt Chandler to jump.) Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo is the only candidate in the race; although he would seem to have a name rec advantage from having run against Bunning in 2004, Mongiardo actually fares the least well, winning by ‘only’ 7. Mongiardo is the best-known of the Big 4, but has the highest negatives too, with 41/34 favorability. (The Lexington-based Chandler is at 38/28.)

The best favorability numbers in the poll, however, belong to Republican SoS Trey Grayson, who’s at 46/19. In head-to-heads Grayson also fares much better than Bunning, losing to Chandler by 6, to Conway by 4, and narrowly beating Luallen and Mongiardo. This points to one potential danger for Democrats: that Bunning is hitting his nadir too early, giving him plenty of time to shuffle off into retirement and allow the more likable Grayson time to ramp up for a competitive run. Of course, that scenario presupposes a rational Bunning interested in doing what’s best for the whole state GOP, not just for Jim Bunning.

PPP also polls state senate president David Williams as a potential GOP candidate (Williams met with Cornyn regarding a possible run). However, Williams fares even worse than Bunning in head-to-heads, losing 45-30 to Chandler, 43-29 to Conway, 41-31 to Luallen, and 43-32 to Mongiardo. I initially assumed the problem with Williams is he’s a little-known state legislator, but he seems as well-known as the Democratic candidates; he just has lousy favorability ratings (28/41). So for the GOP, it’s starting to look like Grayson or bust.