Author: DavidNYC

She said that she was working for the ABC News – it was as much of the alphabet as she knew how to use.

Post-Thanksgiving food coma = digest on a diet.

• FL-Sen: The 99th-most senior senator in the United States, George LeMieux, has been working his new colleagues on behalf of Charlie Crist. After James Inhofe endorsed Marco Rubio, LeMieux began trying to play the role of gatekeeper, urging other fellow senators to see him first before picking sides. Supposedly, LeMieux has told some of these people that a “shoe was about to drop” in the race – but the Miami Herald’s use of the past tense in that quasi-quote has me wondering if some expected bombshell failed to go off.

• IL-Sen: As the bank owned by Alexei Giannoulias and his family started failing over the last couple of years, it nonetheless paid out $70 million in dividends to him and his siblings. Giannoulias claims he only personally received a “minimal” portion of those dividends – except by minimal, he means $2.5 million. Unsurprisingly, his opponent David Hoffman is hammering him about this.

• NY-Sen-B: Chatter is heating up about NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson’s future. The NYT reports that folks close to Thompson say he’s considering one of three options: challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, challenging state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, or taking a breather and running for mayor again in 2013. The article focuses most heavily on a potential matchup with Gillibrand. Not only have her poll numbers been anemic, but the White House would probably have a hard time trying to dissuade Thompson, given that their public attempt to push another African American, Gov. David Paterson, out of his race.

In related news on the GOP side, Larchmont Mayor Elizbeth Feld said she’s considering a run. Feld got crushed in a run for the state Senate’s 37th district seat last year.

• CA-50: Solano Beach City Councilman Dave Roberts is dropping out of the race against Brian Bilbray because he and his partner are adopting two more children who are siblings of one of their sons. Roberts declined to endorse either of the remaining Dem candidates, Francine Busby and Tracy Emblem, but pledged to work with the winner to beat Bilbray next year.

• FL-08: The Republicans have “finally found” a candidate to take on Alan Grayson, rich guy Bruce O’Donoghue. That attitude, though, is indicative of the fact that the GOP establishment is ignoring Armando Gutierrez, the young carpetbagging real estate developer who’s been in the race since October. Who knows whether O’Donoghue will pass wingnut purity tests, but if he’s wobbly, he may be vulnerable to getting teabagged to death by Gutierrez. And if the power players continue to diss Gutierrez, that’s only likely to fuel teabag rage further.

• Polling: Another installment of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure from PPP. This time, the choices are Delaware, Georgia, Illinois primary, and South Carolina. Click the link to cast your vote.

It’s been over two months since we last took stock of the open seat situation in the House, so, once again, our crack team of open seat forensic analysts down at SSP Labs have put together a new edition of the 2010 House Open Seat Watch.

As always, we’ve compiled three separate lists: one of confirmed vacancies/retirements, another of potential open seats, and a third – available below the fold – of names that have dropped off the watch list. As always, please note that “age” in our charts reflects the incumbent’s age on election day, 2010. Blue boxes indicate a new entry (or an incumbent who has been shuffled between categories). All tables are sortable – just click on any column header to sort.

Amazingly, it’s mid-November and we still have zero true-blue, hang-up-your-spurs, spend-more-time-with-your-family retirements. At this point last cycle, about a dozen members (all Republicans save one) had decided to call it quits. And at least a handful had in 2005 as well. But so far this year, nuttin’. In fact, in a rare move, one guy even dropped off the “definite retirements” list: Danny Davis, who withdrew from his race for Cook County Board President to seek re-election to the House. Meanwhile, only two names are new to the watch list, while five come off:

A list of incumbents whose names we’ve removed from the Open Seat Watch is available below the fold.

Resolved vacancies.

The very off-topic derailment in this week’s open thread forced me to do something I’d never done before on this site – close comments on a post. I really, really did not enjoy doing that. It also made me wary of posting the summary chart of how the healthcare vote went. People did manage to stay on topic and remain civil for the first couple hundred comments. But I was very disappointed that in the end, a few people wound up derailing the thread yet again.

So we’re giving one-week suspensions to certain users. I’m not going to name names, but I’m posting this as a diary since we do not maintain contact information for our users. If, starting today, you logged in and found you can’t comment or post diaries, you’ve been affected. You’ll be able to participate again in a week. Consider this a serious warning.

I’m also going to say this once more: It’s a big Internets. If you want to gripe about policy or simply act uncivilly, there are tons of places you can do that. But not here.

The House passed the healthcare bill late last night, 220-215. Only one Republican, Joseph Cao (LA-02), voted in favor. Here are the Dems who voted no:

There was also a vote on an anti-abortion amendment, which passed 240-194. Sixty-four Democrats joined all Republicans in voting for this amendment. (John Shadegg voted “present.”)

P.S. I don’t like having to do this, but I’m going to remind everyone in advance to keep it civil on this thread. This is the place to discuss the electoral reasons why members of Congress voted the way they did, and the electoral impacts of those votes. Before you hit “post,” think about whether your comment falls under this description. If not, it’s probably off-topic.

UPDATE: In comments, DCal has a good summary of which Dems in R+3 or redder districts voted yes, and which Dems in R+2 or bluer districts voted no. Also, the NYT has a great interactive chart detailing the Dems who voted no.

Click here (and bookmark) this incredibly valuable tool. It’s the Swing State Project’s sortable calendar of filing deadlines, primary dates, and, where applicable, runoff dates in all fifty states. Very useful – try it! (We’ll also permalink it in the right-hand sidebar under “SSP Resources.”)

I also wanted to take this opportunity to ask: which states have party conventions instead of or in addition to primaries, and how do they each work? I know, for instance, that Minnesota, Connecticut and Utah all have conventions, but their effects on ballot access differ somewhat from one another. Convention experts, please enlighten us.

Yesterday, John Cornyn declared that the Republican Party establishment is afraid of its base:

“We will not spend money in a contested primary,” Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told ABC News in a telephone interview today.

“There’s no incentive for us to weigh in,” said Cornyn, R-Texas. “We have to look at our resources…. We’re not going to throw money into a [primary] race leading up to the election.”

But just a year-and-a-half ago, the grownups declared that they were going to take charge. Smarting after special election losses in deep red districts which featured a shabby parade of Republican nominees – Jim Oberweis (IL-14), Woody Jenkins (LA-06), and Greg Davis (MS-01) – John Boehner ordered Tom Cole to jump into the muck:

The NRCC will now wade into competitive GOP primaries when appropriate. This is a significant shift, as Cole’s policy has been to stay out of such contests even when the party believes one candidate would clearly be the best general election bet. In Illinois and Louisiana in particular, Republicans suffered because they fielded a poor nominee. The race to replace retiring Rep. Vito Fossella (R) in New York, which could draw several GOP contenders, could be the first high-profile test of the new policy.

I have to laugh for a moment regarding the Fossella succession – that was a shitshow for the ages. But in general, this move actually made some sense. After all, did the Republicans really want to drown their chances with more Randy Grafs?

It turns out the answer now is yes. Sure, Cornyn runs the NRSC, and here we’re talking about the NRCC. But no doubt Pete Sessions is running scared, too – after all, it was his NRCC that took serious heat from the teabaggers for backing Scozzafava in NY-23, and obviously that race is what inspired Cornyn’s newfound wimpiness. So I’m sure we’ll see a reluctance on the part of both campaign committees to meddle in primaries. The Republicans are terrified of their base – and they should be.

One of the nicest things about this particular win is that NY-23, at 13,200 square miles, is the fifth-largest district east of the Mississippi. The four bigger eastern districts are ME-02, MI-01, WI-07 and WI-03, all of which are already held by Democrats. So this is the biggest swath of bright blue we’re going to get to paint on this side of the Mizzip. Congrats, Bill Owens!

P.S. This is the sixth special election in a row that Dems have flipped from Republicans. Our streak began at the end of a GOP streak of five straight from 1994 to 2001. (Before that, according to Wikipedia, the longest streak appears to have been the eight seats the GOP flipped in succession from 1976 to 1980.)

Survey USA (10/30-11/02, likely voters for primaries, registered voters for general, 8/15-17 in parens):

Rand Paul (R): 35 (26)

Trey Grayson (R): 32 (37)

Other: 15 (20)

Undecided: 18 (17)

(MoE: 4.7%)

Dan Mongiardo (D): 39 (39)

Jack Conway (D): 28 (31)

Other: 18 (17)

Undecided: 16 (14)

(MoE: 4.1%)

Check out those GOP primary numbers. If Rand Paul knocks off Trey Grayson, that really would be quite the coup. The Paulists represent a different, weirder strain of outsider Republicans than do the teabaggers, but I almost wonder if they might make common cause in a race like this. On the other hand, I’ve gotten the sense that Greyson fits the mold of the tribal conservative, so he ought to satisfy the extremists despite his establishment cred. Despite his millions, Ron Paul’s high-water mark in the GOP primaries last year was just 24% (Idaho), so I’m a bit skeptical that Rand’s stronger fundraising alone is the reason for his surge – or perhaps this just means the comparison of son to father is imperfect. Either way, I’m eager to hear from folks on the ground in Kentucky. (And I also want to see if other pollsters confirm this movement.)

The Dem primary numbers are a bit frustrating. Despite getting crushed on the fundraising front and having several embarrassing tapes get released, Dan Mongiardo still leads Jack Conway. Not only do I like Conway far better, he performs better against both Republicans (more on that in a moment). Still, there are a lot of votes up for grabs, and the primary isn’t until May. What’s more, Mongiardo is beating Conway 2-to-1 among self-identified liberals (who make up a fifth of the Dem electorate); given that Conway is largely running to Mongiardo’s left, he ought to be able to make serious headway with that group. For his part, Conway just put out an internal poll from the Benenson Strategy Group showing him down just three points.

Dan Mongiardo (D): 38 (40)

Trey Grayson (R): 48 (46)

Undecided: 14 (16)

Jack Conway (D): 39 (37)

Trey Grayson (R): 43 (44)

Undecided: 18 (18)

Jack Conway (D): 44 (43)

Rand Paul (R): 39 (38)

Undecided: 17 (19)

Dan Mongiardo (D): 43 (43)

Rand Paul (R): 43 (41)

Undecided: 15 (16)

(MoE: ±2.4%)

The fact that Mongiardo has slipped all the way back to ten points behind Grayson troubles me, as does the fact that he’s tied with Paul. Meanwhile, Conway’s numbers have improved a touch. Still, a lot can and probably will change between now and election day. The real news, though, is that Mitch McConnell and his merry band of potentates have a lot to worry about right now.

12:05AM: Please join us in the new thread.

11:49PM: Mark Kleinschmidt narrowly beat Matt Czajkowski for the mayoral job in Chapel Hill, NC.

11:46PM: Oh, yeah, so the NYC mayoral race was officially called for Bloombo, but it wound up being close – just five points. A lot of people are going to have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do tomorrow.

11:44PM: 85% tallied and Owens still leads 49-45 – about 4,200 votes.

11:41PM: Democrat Anthony Foxx looks to have won the Charlotte mayor’s race by a little more than 3,000 votes. (All precincts are in.)

11:39PM: Out in California’s 10th CD, John Garamendi is up 56-40 with 22% in.

11:35PM: Taegan Goddard says that there are 10K absentees in NY-23.

11:31PM: Good guys with a narrow lead on Washington’s Ref. 71, 52-48. But remember, it can take a long time (even weeks) to count the vote in Washington.

11:28PM: Bad guys pull ahead, 51.6 to 48.4 in Maine.

11:27PM: Also in the NYC burbs, incumbent Dem Andy Spano (Westchester Co. Exec.) is getting destroyed, 58-42. Did anyone see that coming? Down in Hotlanta, Norwood is holding a lead at 45, with Reed at 37. This one looks headed to a run-off.

11:23PM: Ambitious Nassau County (Long Island) Executive Tom Suozzi is leading his Republican challenger by just 1% with half the vote counted. Suozzi would probably run for AG if Cuomo runs for governor – wonder if this might put a crimp in his plans.

11:22PM: Reid Wilson of The Hill: “Several GOP sources telling me they expect Bill Owens (D) to win NY23.”

11:00PM: We are down 52-48 in that PA Sup. Ct. race – 83% reporting. Not good.

10:57PM: A bright ray of sunshine? Owens leading 49-46 with two thirds in.

10:44PM: Dave Weigel says: “WHOA – Hoffman splitting Madison County, where he was leading 2-1 in Siena Poll. Getting ready to say ‘Congressman Bill Owens.'” You can get county results here.

10:33PM: The good guys have won in Kalamazoo.