Author: DavidNYC

Columnist Bill Minor thinks it’s possible:

Two theories were in play last week about Barbour’s choices: One, that he will start a young Republican such as Chip Pickering on a path to keep the Senate seat in GOP hands for decades. Or two – an intriguing scheme – that Barbour will name a seat-warmer who would not run for the unexpired term, so that Barbour himself could run and return to the Washington scene he loves.

Early on, Barbour said he would not appoint himself to succeed Lott, but that does not rule out him asking voters in November to elevate him to a higher level.

However, that scenario will depend on Barbour getting the court to OK his Nov. 4 special election date rather than the 90 days Hood’s team will argue.

Minor also thinks it’s “inevitable” that AG Jim Hood will go to court to force Barbour to call the election within 90 days. Let’s hope he’s right.

While we haven’t written anything about the primaries here at SSP, I’ve gotta say, the presidential horseraces on both sides have been fascinating, especially the Republicans and especially of late. I really have no clue how things will wind up.

So let’s open the floor to presidential primary talk – what do you think will happen? How will the early primaries go? Who will wind up being the nominees? And why?

UPDATE: I swear! I promise! The focus of this site will not change! This is just a one-off open thread. Down-ballot 4ever!

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Notable User Diaries

• The always-reliable Benawu is back with several updates on the Texas House race situation – here’s the most recent entry. The filing deadline is Jan. 2, and three districts appear to be without candidates.
• DGM surveys New Mexico’s wide open political scene.
• Nerds unite! NYPopulist is starting up a Fantasy Congress league. SSP Insider’s Tip Sheet says Louise Slaughter is your sleeper pick for the upcoming session.
• Progressive America bangs out a pair of diaries on Florida state legislative elections. The House is discussed here, and part one of the Senate begins here.

Paul (aka pacified) is the creator of the SoapBlox blogging platform – ie, the software which powers this site and many others, such as our friends Blue Hampshire, Burnt Orange Report, and many more. Paul is in the midst of working on some new SoapBlox features and is asking users for feature requests. So if you have any, please head over to this thread and fire away.

Also, Paul is taking SoapBlox open source and is looking for Java developers who want to help make this happen. If you are interested in getting involved, check out this thread and also this one.

The subscription-only Roll Call bagged an interview with DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen last week. Van Hollen explained that the D-Trip has plans (at least, as of now) to target forty Republican-held seats. Frustratingly, Roll Call didn’t reproduce the list online, but did include it in their print edition. Fortunately, were able to snag it from p. 15 of the PDF version on their website (note: this link will probably not point to the proper issue as of Jan. 7th, 2008):

District	Incumbent	Leading Dem Candidate	2006 D %age	2004 Bush %age
AK-AL	Don Young	Ethan Berkowitz	40	61
AZ-01		Ann Kirkpatrick	43	54
AZ-03	John Shadegg	Bob Lord	38	58
CA-04	John Doolittle	Charlie Brown*	46	61
CA-26	David Dreier	Russ Warner	38	55
CA-50	Brian Bilbray	Nick Leibham	44	55
CO-04	Marilyn Musgrave	Betsy Markey	43	58
CT-04	Christopher Shays	Jim Himes	48	46
FL-08	Ric Keller	Competitive primary	46	55
FL-09	Gus Bilirakis	John Dicks	44	57
FL-13	Vern Buchanan	Christine Jennings*	50	56
FL-24	Tom Feeney	Suzanne Kosmas	42	55
ID-01	Bill Sali	Competitive primary	45	69
IL-10	Mark Kirk	Competitive primary	47	47
IL-11		Debbie Halvorson	45	53
IL-14		Bill Foster	40	55
MI-07	Tim Walberg	Mark Schauer	46	54
MI-09	Joe Knollenberg	Gary Peters	46	51
MN-03		Terri Bonoff	35	51
MN-06	Michele Bachmann	Elwyn Tinklenberg	42	57
MO-06	Sam Graves	Kay Barnes	36	57
NC-08	Robin Hayes	Larry Kissell*	50	54
NJ-03		John Adler	41	51
NJ-07		Linda Stender*	48	53
NM-01		Martin Heinrich	50	48
NM-02		Competitive primary	40	58
NV-03	Jon Porter	Robert Daskas	47	50
NY-13	Vito Fossella	Domenic Recchia	43	55
NY-25	Jim Walsh	Dan Maffei*	49	48
NY-26	Tom Reynolds	Jonathan Powers	48	55
NY-29	Randy Kuhl	Eric Massa*	49	56
OH-01	Steve Chabot	Steve Driehaus	48	51
OH-02	Jean Schmidt	Victoria Wulsin	49	64
OH-14	Steven LaTourette	William O’Neill	39	53
OH-15		Mary Jo Kilroy*	50	50
OH-16		John Boccieri	42	54
PA-03	Phil English	Competitive primary	42	53
WA-08	Dave Reichert	Darcy Burner*	49	48
WV-02	Shelley Moore Capito	John Unger	43	57
WY-AL		Gary Trauner*	48	69

* Denotes repeat candidate

There are a number of notable absences on this list, such as PA-06, FL-10 and VA-11. These seats are obviously already on the DCCC’s radar and will likely make it on to “official” lists sometime soon. I’m surprised that they aren’t already, though, as a little prodding might help push crumb-bums like Tom Davis and Bill Young into retirement. Hell, Young already lives in Florida – retirement is just a shuffleboard game away.

And undoubtedly, some districts will slip off this list as time passes. In fact, there’s nothing particularly special about this list except for the fact that six challengers are already (or are about to) receive an influx of DCCC aid. (Brownsox has a good roundup here.) As we all know, inclusion on last year’s various “Red to Blue” lists could mean anything from full-blown establishment support to a mere “attaboy.”

But, food for thought nonetheless. So, who should the DCCC be backing who isn’t on this list? And which races, if any, are you surprised to see here?

Welcome to the Weekly Open Thread, Holiday Edition. Things are getting awfully quiet on the non-presidential horserace front, but I suspect that once the holidays are over and we’ve got our nominee figured out, things will heat up considerably.

In the meantime, for those of you with time off, I hope you all enjoy yourselves! Happy holidays!

Seen any good movies lately?

UPDATE: So I went and saw “I Am Legend” last night. Not bad, but could have gone in a much more interesting direction. Visually an impressive film. Amusingly, one major scene takes place right on the block where I work (you see my office building as Will Smith drives by) – but sadly, I never saw the movie being filmed.

But as some folks in comments discuss, the real treat is the Batman trailer. I did not get to see the alleged six-minute version (grr!), but even the brief preview I saw made it look unbelievably freakin’ awesome. I cannot wait.

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Notable User Diaries

• Plf515 offers a primer on polling. In another diary, plf takes a look at one particular formal model used to predict House election outcomes.
• They say you can’t tell the players without a scorecard. Fbihop has one for the fast-changing New Mexico political scene right here. Now, what did you want to tell the players?
• The worst thing, the very worst thing that Chrissy Shays has ever, ever seen in all his years in Congress? The absolute worst? Why, a bunch of ballplayers testifying about steroids. Tparty has the full story about the embarrassingly faint-hearted Republican from CT-04.

The federal filing deadline in Illinois, which has the earliest congressional primary in the nation, has already passed. The second-earliest primary is in Maryland, and their deadline is coming up in just a week. Here’s a look at the deadlines looming over the next couple months:

State	Deadline
Maryland	12/03/07
Texas	01/02/08
Ohio	01/04/08
Mississippi	01/11/08
West Virginia	01/26/08
Kentucky	01/29/08

You can find SSP’s complete, sortable calendar of all filing deadlines and primary dates at this link.

Man that was some good turkey.

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Notable User Diaries

A number of good ones this week, including:

• DGM walks us through every conceivable general election matchup in NM-Sen – Pearce-Chavez, Wilson-Udall, and so on.
• Texas Dem takes a wry but thoughtful look at the criteria which distinguish serious candidates from the jokers.
• Progressive America recaps the recent push to draft Dem Joe Garcia into the race in FL-25 against Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart.
• Finally, in a separate diary, PA also ranks the top ten Florida House contests and offers color commentary on each.

These are just a few of my favorite bits of Republican misfortune this year. I’m sure you can think of more.

• VA-Sen: A seat your party holds in a purple-trending state somewhat unexpectedly opens up. The good news is that you have an ideal successor, ready-to-go. He’s won hard-fought elections, cultivated a “moderate” record, and has tons of cash in the bank. What do you do? Well, obviously, if you are the modern Republican Party, you tell him to fuck off. Congrats and thanks to the VA GOP for running Tom Davis out of town by cancelling their primary and scheduling a wingnut festival instead.
• NY-19: The gall! The unmitigated gall! How could a Democrat ever dare to represent Westchester! Why, such things just aren’t done! Well, of course they are (after all, a Dem represents the 18th), but so said the NY GOP after 2006. So they set their sights on Rep. John Hall and rallied around uber-rich self-funder Andrew Saul. Only problem: After months of gangbusters fundraising, it turns out Saul’s up to his ears in ethics violations – and now out of the race. A Republican engaging in corruption? Why, such things just aren’t done!
• NJ-07: Here’s a job no Republican wants: food-taster for Markos Moulitsas. Here’s another job no Republican wants, either: United States Representative for New Jersey’s Seventh Congressional District. Within just a single day of this seat opening up, Tom Kean, Jr., Jon Bramnick and Bob Franks all took a pass. Three up, three down, end of the inning. Better luck in the next frame, compadres.
• OH-15: First there was Jim Petro. But Petro said no. Then there was Steve Stivers. But Stivers said no. Then there was Jim Hughes, but Jim Hughes said no. Then there was Greg Lashutka but Lashutka said no. Then, there was… three months of silence. And finally, Steve Stivers decided he was fer it after he was agin’ it, undoubtedly after Tom Cole twisted his arm 180 degrees behind his back. Hint to Republicans: Money won’t spring loose if you shove it the full 360. Nor will victory.
• CT-02: The NRCC called him a “heavyweight.” Thing is, Mike Tyson is also a heavyweight. No, Sean Sullivan doesn’t sport any facial tattoos, but he might as well be wearing a scarlet letter, given how unloved he is these days in DC. “Persona non grata,” declared one insider after Sully scraped together a miserable $25K in the second quarter. Personally, I prefer another Latin phrase: bigus dickus. Good luck, skipper.

Crumb-bums will be crumb-bums; they can’t help it – it’s just in their nature.

From CNN:

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert is expected to announce Thursday on the House floor that he is retiring from Congress, a senior aide to the congressman told CNN Wednesday.

The aide said that Hastert will announce his plans to retire tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. in an address on the House floor. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office provided the floor time to the former speaker to address his colleagues.

“His plan is to make his farewell address tomorrow on the House floor,” the aide said. “He is then going to decide at some point this year when he will step down.”

The aide said the effective date of Hastert’s resignation not yet been determined.

So, no telling when a special election would be. As many have speculated, Hastert may be gaming things so that the special won’t coincide with the Illinois presidential primaries on Feb. 5th, which will presumably feature favorite son Barack Obama, and consequently higher Dem turnout. (IL’s congressional primaries – the first in the nation – are also that same day.) Some background info on the timing of the special is available here.

Stay tuned.

(Hat-tip: pierredude)