Author: DavidNYC

Marist College (11/18, registered voters, Oct. in parens):

David Paterson (D-inc): 51 (51)

Rudy Giuliani (R): 41 (42)

Undecided: 8 (7)

(MoE: ±4%)

So, a slightly wider margin than we saw in the Siena College poll the other day, but not too much difference. Unlike in the Siena survey, though, Paterson’s approvals have dropped somewhat, to 51-37 from 57-34. Still, not too shabby given the financial crisis.

Marist also tested Paterson against Bloomberg, but to me, that’s not even a question worth asking. Bloomsberry just spent a huge amount of political capital on his definition-of-self-serving move to extend term limits in NYC. He’s running for mayor in 2009. There is quite literally no way, no how he could do that then turn right around and run for governor. However, there is one interesting tidbit here: Paterson trailed His Bloominess by 11 in October, but leads by 4 now. Make of that what you will.

Anyhow, I also tend to doubt Rudy will even run – his “leaving the door open” statement the other day was so half-hearted. But it at least remains a possibility. And I’d love to see Paterson wipe the floor with him.

Right now we’re in a bit of a holding pattern with the presidential results by CD project. Most states haven’t yet certified final vote tallies, and some haven’t even finished counting. But the good news is that we have some preliminary numbers for the following states:

Connecticut

Iowa

Kentucky

Minnesota

New Hampshire

Rhode Island

Virginia

West Virginia

You can find these by clicking on the links in the “Calculations” column (column E) in the collaborative spreadsheet.

On the flipside, we still need links to official data sources for the following states:

Alabama

Florida

Indiana

Louisiana

Mississippi

New Jersey

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Tennessee

Utah

If you know the proper links to official results for any of these states, please enter them as a TinyURL on the spreadsheet. Even if official 2008 results haven’t yet been released (and as I say, in most states they have not), links to where you expect the official data to show up at some point would be greatly appreciated.

As always, please share any thoughts about this project in comments. Also, a couple of helpful resources from the US Census Bureau:

• Congressional District Data Tables: Contains tables of information about CDs broken up in a variety of ways, such as which counties are in which CD and whether or not they are split (example: Alabama).

• Detailed CD Maps: These offer much greater detail than the maps you’ll find at the National Atlas.

SSP’s Official Approved Movie List™:

2001: A Space Odyssey

Airplane!

Aliens

Back to the Future

Batman Begins

Dark Knight

Empire Strikes Back

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ghostbusters

Goldfinger

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Dem

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Office Space

Pulp Fiction

Return of the Jedi

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Rahm

Star Wars

This Is Spinal Tap

Wayne’s World

What’s on your list?

As our fellow Swingnuts are well aware, President-elect Obama’s cabinet appointments can and likely will have big reprecussions for downballot races throughout the nation in coming years. So James and I, out of a deep desire to help John Podesta and his extremely busy transition team, have put together the following list of suggestions so that Obama can, well, maximize his impact on the country:

Secretary of Interior: Mark Begich

Secretary of Defense: Ike Skelton

Secretary of Commerce: Byron Dorgan

Attorney General: Charlie Justice

Patent Office Commissioner: Jim Matheson

FCC Commissioner: Jeff Van Drew

SEC Commissioner: Walt Minnick

EPA Administrator: Kathy Dahlkemper

OMB Director: Alex Sink

White House Chaplain: Tom Perriello

Drug Czar: Paul Carmouche

What other good ideas do you guys have?

A key win for Mary Jo Kilroy:

A federal judge in Columbus ruled Thursday that disputed provisional ballots must be counted in one of the nation’s final undecided congressional races. …

About 1,000 ballots are in dispute in the House race because of defects such as voters failing to both print and sign their names.

Marbley’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed last week by supporters of Stivers, who argued the ballots were invalid because they were missing either a printed name or a signature, or the two were interchanged on ballot envelopes.

In his ruling, the judge said the plaintiffs never disputed that the voters who used the provisional ballots were eligible, properly registered and voted in the correct precinct, and that not counting the ballots would disenfranchise legitimate voters. His ruling sides with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who had said the ballots should be counted because the problems were due to poll worker error.

Punctuating his ruling with a reading of Ohio’s voter fraud statute, Marbley called unfounded the plaintiffs’ contention that allowing the disputed ballots to be counted would promote fraud. He said election officials have ways to double-check the validity of all the disputed votes.

These thousand ballots are from Franklin County, the population center of the district and Kilroy’s base. It’s especially heartening to see the judge directly eviscerate classic GOP phony fraud claims. Marbley stayed his ruling, however, so that the Republicans can appeal. Presumably the Sixth Circuit will issue a ruling soon, hopefully affirming the district court.

In other OH-15 news, rural, red Union County completed its recount and Steve Stivers’s lead moved up to 479 votes. But that hardly seems like enough – there are apparently some 27,000 ballots left to be counted in Franklin, so it’s pretty difficult to see how Stivers will hold on. (Some of those ballots are provisionals which will be rejected, though.) In a way, this race is almost the inverse of WA-08, where early returns are liable to be reversed as the tally progresses.

Minnesota Public Radio has some great images of contested ballots currently being contested in the MN-Sen recount. Here are a few:

Anyhow, you can click through the link to register your opinion as to how each of these ballots should be counted (if at all). Pretty fascinating stuff.

We already know Chris Van Hollen is staying on for another term at the DCCC. But who will head up the counterpart committee, the DSCC?

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.) says he will remain Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman at least until the outstanding 2008 Senate races are resolved, but still is keeping coy about whether he ultimately intends to pass the gavel to Sen. Bob Menendez (N.J.) in January.

Schumer, chased down after a closed-door session with Senate Democrats to determine next year’s leadership lineup, at first declined to comment about his future. But when pressed, the two-time DSCC chairman said he would stay on at the campaign committee post for at least a few more weeks. Three Senate races remain in doubt, including Minnesota, Alaska and Georgia.

“I’m staying in to handle the three more races, and then we’ll decide what to do,” Schumer said.

A reporter had to chase down Schumer? That might be a first – this is a guy who would walk across 100 miles of broken glass barefoot to do a show on a 10-watt radio station out of Elmira. Anyhow, that’s why I like Chuck E. Cheese Schumer, and why I would hope he’d stick around for one more term at the DS.

However, if Menendez is the heir apparent, then it’s either now or wait until 2014 – I don’t think Menendez could or should run the committee while seeking re-election, especially since New Jersey is seldom easy. Still, Menendez is only 54, which is very young for the Senate (he’s among the most junior twenty members). If his destiny is to lead the DSCC, he’ll have ample opportunity to do so before long.

Some early reads from Siena College (PDF) (11/10-13, registered voters, Oct. in parens):

David Paterson (D-inc): 49 (51)

Rudy Giuliani: 43 (40)

Undecided: 8 (9)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Siena has actually been testing this matchup since July, and the numbers have stayed fairly constant, though this is the smallest margin yet seen. I personally think Paterson would beat Rudy, and probably handily at that, but I’d actually be a bit surprised if Rudy ran in the first place. I think he’d have the exact same sort of “doesn’t play well with others” problem that Spitzer had with the legislature, only worse. (Though maybe he’s not smart enough to realize that.)

But he’s put in such crappy efforts in his last two campaigns (for president and for senate in 2000) that I don’t think he has the fire in the belly for this one. And if he does for some reason want to run for president again in 2012, then this seat just isn’t an option for him, win or lose.

Siena also tested AG Andrew Cuomo against Rudy (July in parens):

Andrew Cuomo (D): 44 (47)

Rudy Giuliani: 46 (42)

Undecided: 10 (11)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

The odds of this scenario coming to pass are very slim. I very much doubt Cuomo would challenge a sitting governor in a primary, and it’s even less likely that he’d win. And even if both of those events somehow came to pass, he’d have less than two months to run a general election campaign, thanks to NY’s notoriously late primary. Anyhow, his numbers aren’t very good against Paterson (July in parens):

Paterson: 53 (51)

Cuomo: 25 (21)

Undecided: 22 (28)

As it happens, Cuomo’s favorability rating has soared lately, to an impressive 61-19 (it was 48-29 when he first took office). It looks like he’s inheriting the good part of Spitzer’s mantle in his crusade against the chiselers and wastrels at AIG. Paterson, however, is also doing extremely well: He’s at 64-19. But with looming budget cuts, these gaudy numbers could be vulnerable.

I still think a primary challenge by Cuomo – or, in fact, anyone else, like Hillary Clinton – is not in the cards for a variety of reasons. But Paterson might be able to avoid even the hint of a threat if Clinton takes the Secretary of State job and he in turn appoints Cuomo to her seat. We’ll see soon enough!

(Hat-tip: Political Wire.)

Then who would Gov. David Paterson appoint in her stead? Paterson needs to think about, among other things, a) removing potential threats to his governorship and b) earning some serious favors and goodwill. Picking AG Andrew Cuomo ships a contender off to DC, and would also let Paterson earn a second chit with an appointment to the Attorney General post.

Alternately (as Trapper John suggested to me), he could pick someone like Rep. Nydia Velazquez (NY-12), which might burnish his support among Hispanics and women. TJ also tossed out Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown as a dark-horse choice: young, African American, and from upstate. I in turn proposed ultra-dark-horse candidate DavidNYC, but I admit the odds of a second Jewish guy from New York City getting tapped to represent this state in the Senate are fairly slim.

There’s still no shortage of names out there, of course. As always, who do you think Paterson would pick, and who should he pick?

Update (James): From the NY Daily News:

Rep. Nydia Velazquez is the front-runner – for now, at least – to replace Hillary Clinton if she becomes the next secretary of state, a source close to Gov. Paterson said yesterday.

There are two other top contenders: Rep. Brian Higgins of Buffalo and Rep. Steve Israel of Long Island. Each would help Paterson with key constituencies when he makes his first run in 2010 for the post he inherited from disgraced Gov. Eliot Spitzer – upstaters in Higgins’ case and suburbanites in Israel’s.

Late Update (David): Looks like Clinton might actually accept, to my surprise. If true, let the games begin!

It’s never too early to start worrying about the 2024 elections.