Tag: Richard Codey

• AZ-Sen: There are conflicting messages in Arizona in the wake of that surprising Rasmussen poll showing J.D. Hayworth almost even with John McCain in a Republican primary. Arizona’s other senator, Jon Kyl, says Hayworth isn’t likely to run, saying that he’s better-off hosting his radio show. Hayworth himself, on the other hand, just sent an e-mail to his supporters, saying he is in fact considering a race against McCain but first needs help paying down his campaign debt from his 2006 race. A prelude to a real race, or just some conveniently-timed grifting from some easy marks?

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina is trying to play up her pro-woman cred, even if it means coming off very ideologically confused: she said she would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, even though that gives Chuck DeVore a lifetime’s worth of ammunition to use against her in the primary. But yesterday she said she “shares Sarah Palin‘s values.” Um, all of them?

• IL-Sen: The NYT had a story yesterday giving voice to David Axelrod’s concerns about Alexi Giannoulias’s electability and his regrets about not recruiting Lisa Madigan, which got a lot of play elsewhere. They strangely left out one piece of information, though: Axelrod’s former consulting firm is working for the David Hoffman campaign.

• MA-Sen: More endorsements came out in the Massachusetts special election primary. AG Martha Coakley got the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, while Rep. Michael Capuano got the endorsements of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters and Black Women for Obama for Change.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): Yet another poll shows Kirsten Gillibrand in so-so shape, as Marist dribbled out the last few results from the poll where the other results were released last week. Even as she gets better-known she still has a middling approval rating (3% excellent, 22% good, 39% fair, 12% poor, 24% unsure). Gillibrand loses 47-45 to ex-Gov. George Pataki, although that race looks very unlikely now (this same sample had Gillibrand down 54-40 to Rudy Giuliani, which still theoretically could happen). One item of good news for Gillibrand, though: she finally nailed down the endorsement of former colleague Jerry Nadler.

• IA-Gov: Here’s one more guy who has the potential to get teabagged to death in his GOP primary: ex-Gov. Terry Branstad. Branstad endorsed and raised money for Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson in the 2000 Senate race. Branstad rival Bob vander Plaats says that, as a result, using the same logic that pervades all movies about time travel, Branstad is directly to blame for the current health care bill. And while he’s at it, Branstad is also responsible for the deaths of millions, because he didn’t find a way to kill Hitler.

• MA-Gov: Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker already announced his running mate for 2010, and is fits with his financially conservative, socially liberal, insidery approach: he chose state Senate minority leader Richard Tisei. Tisei, one of five Republicans in the Senate, recently came out as gay.

• NV-Gov: There’s a new poll of the general election in the Nevada governor’s race, taken by PMI (a firm that previously did a poll of the GOP primary for a conservative website, but this one seems to be taken for the seemingly nonpartisan Nevada News Bureau). They only try out one permutation, assuming that Democratic Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman follows through on his threat to run as an indie. Republican former AG Brian Sandoval wins with 35, followed by Goodman at 28 and Democrat Rory Reid at 21.

• OR-Gov: Anti-tax initiative activist Bill Sizemore is kind of like herpes; he goes away, but is never permanently gone. With the GOP field now in shambles, Sizemore surprised everyone by announcing that he’ll run in the gubernatorial primary in 2010. He’s been out of jail for almost a year, so OK… but he may be headed back there if he follows through, as he’s under an injunction preventing him from raising political money. He plans on challenging that in court, though, at least to the extent to be able to raise individual campaign funds and not more initiative funds. If he somehow prevails in the GOP primary, this could lead to a replay of the 1998 governor’s race (where John Kitzhaber demolished Sizemore, 64-30).

• LA-02: With early entries by a few heavyweights, maybe we’ll be spared a large and chaotic Democratic primary for the right to beat accidental Rep. Joe Cao in 2010. State Rep. Juan LaFonta, long interested in the race, made official that he’s running; he joins fellow state Rep. Cedric Richmond in the hunt.

• NV-02: Do it! Do it! Reno attorney Ken McKenna has apparently been listening to the subliminal voices in his head, and was motivated to pull the trigger on a run against Rep. Dean Heller. (He’ll still face a Democratic primary against elderly ex-state Sen. Jack Schofield.) McKenna represents both personal injury plaintiffs and those accused of Breaking the Law, but he’s best known for his ill-fated suit against Judas Priest over a fan’s suicide. If he thinks he’s likely to win this race, he has another thing coming.

• PA-03: Ooops, this isn’t going to endear him much to the party base. Paul Huber, a local businessman who got into the GOP primary field to go against Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, was registered as a Democrat from 1975 until just recently. He switched to the GOP earlier this year. In his defense, he claims he was a “Reagan Democrat” and finally got driven out of the party because of, well, all the usual right-wing grievances.

• PA-06: Various developments in the 6th: on the Dem side, state Sen. Daylin Leach pulled his Doug Pike endorsement and switched to neutral, now that it looks like there’s an actual race between Pike and Manan Trivedi. On the GOP side, state Rep. Curt Schroder is facing a difficult primary against wealthy pharma exec Steven Welch, but got a boost via endorsements from seven nearby conservative legislators — including Berks County’s Sam Rohrer, who’s looking at a longshot gubernatorial bid.

• PA-11: Anti-immigration wacko wants to run for higher office, but needs supporters to pay down his campaign debt first? Sorry to keep repeating myself, but that’s happening in PA-11 too. Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta has been talking up another run at Rep. Paul Kanjorski, and has set a pre-Christmas deadline for a final decision. But in the meantime, he’s focused on raising donations to pay for his last run while considering his next one.

• VA-10: Republican Rep. Frank Wolf has proven extremely tough to pry out of his swing district, and it’s not looking like 2010 will be the year either. Attorney Patrick Lewis, who seemed to be the best bet here, has shuttered his campaign, leaving only two even less-known Dems (Richard Anthony and Dennis Findley) in the field.

• CA-LG: As many had expected, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked state Sen. Abel Maldonado to take over as Lt. Governor (now that John Garamendi is in the House). Maldonado is a sometimes-moderate who was one of Ahnold’s biggest allies in the Senate, who broke with other Republicans on budget issues (and probably earned too much of their wrath to survive a 2010 re-election). The Dem-held state legislature is mulling over whether to approve the appointment, which they certainly have the numbers to reject. Calitics is all over it, though, because Maldonado not only has little likelihood of remaining in office come 2011 (Dems he might face would be either state Sen. Dean Florez or LA city councilor Janice Hahn), but also because it would open up SD-15. The 15th is Democratic-leaning turf on the central coast; combined with another opening in SD-12, that’s a route to get over the magic 2/3s hurdle in the state Senate and actually pass a decent budget.

• NJ-St. Sen.: Guess who’s kicking himself for not taking over for Jon Corzine during the gubernatorial race’s low-water mark this summer. Now Richard Codey isn’t just not Governor, but now he isn’t even state Senate President anymore. Codey may be beloved by the state’s electorate, but not by his colleagues: he got bounced out of his position to make way for new leader Stephen Sweeney.

• Mayors (pdf): It looks like the anti-incumbent sentiment extends all the way down to local races too (OK, that’s not news; Greg Nickels and Tom Suozzi will certainly confirm that for us). A new Clarus poll of next year’s Washington, DC mayor’s race finds a 43/49 approval for mayor Adrian Fenty. Fenty leads the field, but at only 34%, followed by three city councilors: Vincent Gray at 24, Kwame Brown at 13, and Michael Brown at 6.

• RNC: If you went to college in the 1990s, you may remember the purity test that got passed around freshman dorms, which went a little like this:

I have:

1) solicited anonymous sex in the airport men’s room

2) claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail while actually visiting my mistress in Argentina

3) given a patronage job to the cuckolded husband of my mistress

4) texted an underage page about the size of his member

5) attempted to strangle my mistress

Wait, that’s not it. Anyway, the RNC is passing around a new purity test for future Republican candidates, which they have to score 80% on if they want official party money and support. (There’s been some public pondering whether worldly fellows like Mike Castle or Mark Kirk would even make the cut on this test.) And now the Washington Times (wait, they’re still in business?) is reporting that this test may even apply to NRSC and NRCC money as well.

• Photo of the Day: Some days I just don’t know whether to weep for my country, or stand back and laugh my ass off at it.

• House: Congratulations to Rep. John Garamendi, who was sworn in yesterday, and Rep. Bill Owens, who was sworn in today. Garamendi and Owens are joining the Democratic caucus as quickly as possible so that they can be eligible to vote on healthcare reform this weekend. (D)

• AR-Sen: Remember how yesterday NRSC chair John Cornyn caved to the party’s right flank, and said that he wouldn’t spend money in primaries or endorse in the future? Well, that lasted about a day: turns out that state Sen. Gilbert Baker, the GOP’s best shot in Arkansas, will be having a fundraiser in Washington DC on the 19th… at the NRSC. (The NRSC did announce that it still didn’t amount to endorsement, and that other Arkansas candidates were still welcome to have fundraisers at the NRSC. Uh, call me when there’s actually a fundraiser for head teabagger Tom Cox at the NRSC building.) More generally, CQ has a nice overview of the tightrope Cornyn is walking as he tries to make some inroads in swing states in 2010.

• CA-Sen: Perhaps in an attempt to give some cover to Cornyn (whose hand-picked candidate, Carly Fiorina, is raising the ire of the Chuck DeVore-supporting right wing), eight GOP Senators all endorsed Fiorina yesterday: a couple from leadership (McConnell, Kyl), the moderate women (Snowe, Collins, and Murkowski), some chit-cashing from last year (McCain and Graham), and one from total right field (Coburn). Tom Coburn’s endorsement is especially surprising in view of fellow wackadoodle Jim DeMint’s endorsement of DeVore. DeMint, for his part, is still attacking John Cornyn’s recruitment efforts today, perfectly encapsulating the right-wing mentality while saying “He’s trying to find candidates who can win. I’m trying to find people who can help me change the Senate.”

• FL-Sen: After Charlie Crist’s bizarre denials that he ever supported the Obama stimulus package, the White House left Crist out to dry yesterday, saying that, yes, in fact, he did support the stimulus.

• KS-Sen: This may fall under the “endorsement you don’t want to tout too loudly” category, although with most of the big-name endorsements so far going to Rep. Jerry Moran in the Kansas Senate race, Rep. Todd Tiahrt will probaly take what he can get. Former AG and Senator John Ashcroft endorsed Tiahrt.

• MT-Sen: Here’s what has the potential to be one of 2012’s hottest Senate races, already shaping up. Rep. Denny Rehberg, the state’s lone at-large Congressperson, met with the NRSC concerning a possible run at Jon Tester.

• CA-Gov: With ex-Gov. Jerry Brown suddenly finding himself with the gubernatorial primary field to himself for now, a familiar face has popped up yet again. Dianne Feinstein, who all year has alternately expressed interest and dismissed rumors of her interest, is now back to saying that she still hasn’t ruled out a gubernatorial run. She’ll wait to see what proposals for fixing the badly-broken state the various candidates put out before deciding whether or not to get in herself.

• IL-Gov: Somehow this got lost in all the shuffle surrounding Election Day, but it’s kind of important: after a short period of being the subject of speculation, Jim Ryan made it official that he’s running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Illinois. He probably becomes the frontrunner in the GOP field, by virtue of name rec: he was the state’s Attorney General from 1994-2002, and lost the 2002 governor’s race to Rod Blagojevich. The rest of the GOP field is a hodge-podge of state Senators and county-level officials, with state GOP chair Andy McKenna maybe the best known of the rest. Ryan’s biggest problem may be hoping people don’t confuse him with imprisoned ex-Gov. George Ryan or weird-sex-fan and 2004 Senate candidate Jack Ryan.

• MN-Gov: Another gubernatorial entry that seemed to fly below the radar this week is also a big one: Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak filed to run for governor yesterday. The well-liked Rybak seems like one of the likeliest candidates to prevail in the very crowded Democratic field.

• NJ-Gov: There are going to be a lot of coulda-shoulda-wouldas in the next few weeks in New Jersey, and here’s a big one already. State Senate leader (and former acting Governor) Richard Codey says that the White House contacted him repeatedly over the summer about taking over for Corzine on the ticket, and that Corzine and Codey even discussed it. Codey deferred to Corzine’s decision to stay in — although Corzine nearly decided to pack it in. Reportedly, internal polls over the summer showed Codey beating Chris Christie by double digits.

• NY-Gov: David Paterson is going on the air with two different TV spots (including one where he admits to “lots of mistakes”), apparently trying to bring up his approvals before deciding whether or not to run again in 2010. Paterson is still looking to move forward on the contentious issue of gay marriage, though, planning to put it on the agenda for next week’s special session. It may not have the votes to clear the Senate, but it hasn’t really been put to the test yet. (The worry is that moderate Republicans in the Senate who might have been on board earlier may be leerier now, afraid of getting Scozzafavaed by the right.)

• NY-23: A rare bit of history was made on Tuesday, in that a seat flipping to the president’s party in a House special election (as opposed to a tough retention, as in NY-20) is highly unusual. The most recent case was in VA-04 in 2001, when Republican Randy Forbes picked up a swing district left open by the death of Dem Norman Sisisky. (Subsequent gerrymandering turned the 4th into a safe GOP seat.) The previous instances before that were in 1989, 1988, and 1983.

• TX-32: Pete Sessions Deathwatch, Vol. 3? One more article piles on the “loser” meme regarding Sessions’ series of NY-23 screwups — and it comes from his hometown paper in Dallas. Meanwhile at home, Sessions is now facing a primary challenge from the right, from financial analyst David Smith. Smith is upset about the Scozzafava thing, but mostly focusing on Sessions’ TARP vote. Still, a primary challenge from the right against one of the House’s most conservative members? Seems like that’d be like going after Tammy Baldwin from the left.

• WI-02: Oh, wait. But that’s exactly what some guy is doing. And he’s not just a rube who fell off the biodiesel-fueled organic turnip truck while reaching for his bong: it’s an actual member of the Board of Supervisors of Dane County (where Madison is). David de Felice is upset that Baldwin hasn’t pushed harder for single-payer health care.

• WI-08: Two different new entries in the Green Bay-based 8th. Physician and Air Force vet Marc Trager got into the Republican field to go against Democratic sophomore Rep. Steve Kagen, where businessman Reid Ribble seems to have the inside track based on fundraising and NRCC-touting so far. And yet another random right-winger is imagining his own head superimposed on Doug Hoffman’s body: former Niagara mayor Joe Stern will run as a grassroots conservative independent in 2010.

• NY Comptroller: A piece on New York 1 speculates that NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson, fresh off a much narrower-than-expected loss to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, could challenge New York State Comptroller Bill DiNapoli in the Democratic primary next year. DiNapoli, you may recall, was appointed to the seat after Alan Hevesi resigned. Thompson said he’s not currently looking at the race, but says that nothing is off the table. (D)

• WA-Init: Referendum 71 was finally called by the press (for the side of equality). Although more votes remain to be counted in the currently 52-48 race, it would require a bizarre turnaround in King County (where it’s currently at 70% approval) to change the result. Meanwhile, Seattle‘s mayoral race is still up in the air; Mike McGinn leads by a 515-vote margin (out of 130,000 counted so far).

• Census: As expected, the Vitter amendment requiring the Census to include a question on citizenship was blocked by Democrats. Conservatives don’t want undocumented immigrants to count for apportionment, and there’s an added incentive for David Vitter, as Louisiana might be able to salvage its 7th seat if such legislation were passed.

• Primaries: MoveOn and DFA are allocating millions of dollars to potential primary challenges against any Democrats who join a Republican filibuster on health care. (The only one who’s on the fence about that and actually up in 2010 is Blanche Lincoln, and nobody of consequence has stepped up to primary her from the left yet, although Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has alluded to the idea.)

• Polling: Mark Blumenthal has a good wrapup of how the various pollsters did on Tuesday. As others have pointed out, IVR polls outperformed live pollsters, at least in the two gubernatorial races (even though they still got weird results in the crosstabs, especially on race). Blumenthal also analyzes what went wrong in NY-23 polling. Also on the polling front, it looks like Nate Silver may have succeeded in scaring off Strategic Vision LLC. As he reports today, not only did they never get around to suing him, but they haven’t released any polls since the imbroglio began, despite that this week’s election would be the prime time to do so.

• WATN?: Finally, we have sad news to report: the Mumpower has finally been contained. Republican Carl Mumpower, the out-of-the-box thinker who lost spectacularly to Rep. Heath Shuler in 2008, got bounced out of his position as Asheville City Councilor on Tuesday.

• 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.

In the midst of more pressing political developments, a small snippet in a Reuters article caught my attention today; among the names mentioned as potential candidates for Treasury Secretary in an Obama administration, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's name stuck out.  As we all know, Corzine has years of expertise in the financial world, having led Goldman Sachs before embarking upon his political career, first as a U.S. Senator, and now as Governor.  Frankly, I think he'd be an excellent Treasury Secretary . . . which opens up a slew of possibilities and questions in the horserace of New Jersey politics.

If Corzine ascends to the Cabinet, State Senate President Richard Codey will take over as Acting Governor for the fourth time (he took over when Christine Todd Whitman became the head of the EPA during Bush's first term, when James McGreevey stepped down amidst scandal in 2004, and when Corzine was hospitalized after a severe car accident last year).  Codey is probably the most popular politician in the state; we Jerseyfolk are known to badmouth our politicians and rate them poorly, even as we keep re-electing them, but Dick Codey stands out as the one pol with favorable ratings.   I would venture a guess that an overwhelming majority of voters in the state would be glad to actually elect him as Governor, after he would hypothetically serve out the remainder of Corzine's term.

And, frankly, that's a good thing, what with Chris Christie waiting in the wings on the GOP side, ready to take down a less popular Democratic candidate in the gubernatorial race.   Of course, Codey's name has also been floated out as a possible Senate candidate down the road, if, for example, Lautenberg decides that this coming term will be his last before retiring.  With Codey safely in the Governor's seat, the door would be wide open for such progressives as Congressmen Rush Holt and Frank Pallone, and perhaps even Newark Mayor Cory Booker.  Any one of them could keep the Senate seat safely in Democratic hands (and probably fend off the requisite primary challenge from Rob Andrews).  All of them are young, and could conceivably hold the seat for many years.

What I just outlined was the best case scenario: Treasury Secretary Corzine, Governor Codey, and, eventually, Senator Holt, Pallone, or Booker.  Will the stars align as such?  Discuss away!