Tag: Keith Fimian

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• CO-Sen: Republican Senate candidate Jane Norton has finally realized that she might be her own worst enemy. Having reeled off a serious of gaffes and wtf? moments that were captured on tape in recent months (sitting silently while a speaker called Barack Obama a “Muslim,” saying that Obama cares more about terrorists’ rights than protecting the country, and just recently saying that government shouldn’t be involved in health care at all), she’s decided that, rather than stopping saying dumb things, the best approach is to have that nasty Democratic tracker banned from all her appearances.

• NY-Sen-B: Ex-Rep. Harold Ford Jr. has gotten a green light of sorts (or at least a shrug of the shoulders) from David Paterson regarding a primary challenge, who said it was “OK” but that he might look for a different state to do it in. A new piece in the NYT today (who seem to have been interested in promoting his candidacy) may do Ford more harm than good, filled with details of helicopter flights and chauffeured cars that help paint him as an out-of-touch Wall Streeter, not exactly a position you want to run from these days (maybe most damning: “He has breakfast most mornings at the Regency Hotel on Park Avenue, and he receives regular pedicures. (He described them as treatment for a foot condition.)” Ford also might need to explain to the electorate when he decided that Kirsten Gillibrand was no longer acceptable; it turns out that he gave her $1,000 just seven months ago. Finally, with Ford making clear that he’s going to run against health care reform, and awash in a history of pro-life pronouncements, PPP’s Tom Jensen looks at New York exit polls and finds a way for Ford to get to 25% in the primary, but wonders where that other 75% is going to come from.

• PA-Sen: The Joe Sestak candidacy continues to have its desired effect: Arlen Specter just changed his position on the Dawn Johnsen nomination, and will vote for her confirmation, taking it to 60 votes. One possible unintended consequence, though: the more Sestak succeeds at pushing Specter to the left, the less opportunity for differentiating himself in (and thus a basis for winning) the Democratic primary.

• TX-Sen, TX-Gov: We have dueling rumors coming out of Texas, regarding Kay Bailey Hutchison. Fox’s El Paso affiliate is reporting that KBH no longer plans to resign her Senate seat, either before or after the Republican gubernatorial primary. However, a spokesperson from the KBH camp is now saying that report is wrong, and she will resign only when the health care and cap-and-trade debates are over.

• AZ-Gov: A serious primary challenge just hit Arizona Governor Jan Brewer in the eye, like a big pizza pie. State Treasurer Dean Martin put an end to the speculation and officially announced his candidacy today. (There’s still no report on whether CA-41’s Rep. Jerry Lewis will offer his endorsement, or if their feud is still continuing.) While Martin is the highest-profile GOPer to challenge Brewer so far, he’ll still have to fight his way through a crowd of other anti-Brewers, perhaps most prominently former state party chair John Munger.

• CT-Gov: It looks like the Republican gubernatorial field in Connecticut will be limited to Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele, rich guy Tom Foley, and now Larry DeNardis, a 71-year-old who most recently was president of the University of New Haven, but served one term in the U.S. House, representing New Haven from 1980 to his defeat in 1982. (Little known bit of trivia: the guy DeNardis defeated in that House race? Joe Lieberman.) State Senate minority leader John McKinney (who previously demurred from a CT-04 run) just reversed course and said he wouldn’t run; state House minority leader Lawrence Cafero, another potential candidate, also recently said ‘no.’

• IA-Gov: Here’s an iceberg on the horizon for the seemingly unsinkable Terry Branstad campaign: poor relations with the state’s religious right, coming to a head now with the prominent Iowa Family PAC endorsing rival Bob Vander Plaats and having unkind words for the insufficiently conservative Branstad, whom they won’t endorse for the general even if he is the nominee. (Discussion underway in desmoinesdem‘s diary.)

• MA-Gov: A day after PPP polled him as a Democratic fill-in for Deval Patrick in the gubernatorial race, SoS William Galvin said that, no, he wasn’t planning on launching a primary challenge against Patrick. Galvin, who’s been SoS since 1994, instead said he might be interested in moving to AG, assuming Martha Coakley becomes Senator.

• SC-Gov: Well, that was kind of anticlimactic. L’affaire Sanford wrapped up today with a quick censure vote of Gov. Mark Sanford that passed the state House by a 102-11 margin.

• FL-25: A longer CQ piece on the House landscape in Florida has an interesting tidbit that suggests that former Miami mayor Manny Diaz, who would have been a top-tier contender in the 25th had he run, won’t be running. Diaz has taken a fellowship appointment at Harvard’s JFK School, which would probably preclude a run. After Democrats running strong in all three Cuban-American districts in 2008, it looks like free passes will be handed out this year.

• MD-04: All previous indications had been that a primary challenge from the right against Rep. Donna Edwards was a go, but instead Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey had announced he won’t pursue that. He’d also been linked with possible runs for county executive and state Senate, so his next step is uncertain.

• NC-08: PPP adds a little information from yesterday’s poll of the 8th, which had freshman Rep. Larry Kissell comfortable against his GOP opposition. The possibility of a primary from the left, from attorney Chris Kouri, has been floated, but Kissell dispatches Kouri easily, 49-15. Only 29% of Democratic respondents in the district want Kissell replaced with someone more progressive, and 27% think Congressional Dems are too liberal vs. 12% who think they’re too conservative, suggesting (in tandem with his general election strength) that his occasional breaks from the party line may be helping more than hurting him.

• NH-02: Gonna make you Swett! The long-rumored  candidacy by wealthy Lieberdem Katrina Swett may be finally getting off the ground, as an invitation to a Jan. 31 Swett event says “Come meet our next U.S. Congresswoman!”

• OH-02: After looking into the possibility of an independent run against Rep. Jean Schmidt and probably Dem nominee David Krikorian, now Surya Yalimanchili (aka that guy from “The Apprentice”) says he’ll get into the Democratic primary instead, saying that his focus on jobs and economic growth is better served there.

• SC-01: After renewed interest in the race following the retirement announcement of GOP Rep. Henry Brown, 2008 candidate Linda Ketner has finally decided against another run. She instead asked her supporters to take a look at Robert Burton, already an announced candidate. On the GOP side, state Sen. Larry Grooms, a frequent Mark Sanford nemesis, cut short his long-shot gubernatorial bid, boxed out by bigger names like Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer and AG Henry McMaster. This might presage a run in the still-developing GOP field in the 1st, but he said that’s “unlikely” and he’d rather concentrate on the state Senate.

• TX-04: Add one more serious teabagger primary challenge to the ever-growing list, this time a challenge in the super-dark-red 4th to long-time Rep. Ralph Hall. Jerry Ray Hall (no relation, apparently) is throwing $350K of his own money into race in the fast-approaching March primary. It’s unclear what his beef with the conservative other Hall is (he was a Democrat until 2004 – albeit the most conservative one in the House — so that’s probably good enough).

• VA-11: Rep. Gerry Connolly (by virtue of his Dem-leaning suburban district) still seems the safest of the three Virginia freshman, but things got harder for him with the entry of another GOP challenger: Fairfax Co. Supervisor Pat Herrity (who narrowly lost the race to become County Chairman after Connolly ascended to the House). Herrity still faces a primary against self-funding Keith Fimian, who lost big-time to Connolly in the open seat race in 2008 and won’t get out of Herrity’s way; Fimian may still be able to beat the better-known Herrity based on his big cash stash.

• WA-02: No one has really thought of Rep. Rick Larsen as vulnerable lately, as he dismantled his at-least-somewhat-touted Republican opponents in the last two elections in this D+3 district. Still, a long-time foe has taken a look at the more favorable Republican landscape and decided to take another whack at Larsen. John Koster (a state Rep. at the time) ran against Larsen and lost in 2000, when it was an open seat following Republican Rep. Jack Metcalf’s retirement. Koster has spent most of the decade on the suburban Snohomish County Council (where he’s currently the only Republican).

• Election results: A lot happened last night, most notably the upset victory by Democratic state Del. Dave Marsden in Virginia’s state Senate district 37 by 317 votes, good for a pickup and a slightly bigger (22-18) Democratic edge in that chamber – which helps insulate against Bob McDonnell trying to Beshear the Dems back into the minority there. Also in Virginia, businessman Jeff McWaters held dark-red Senate district 8 for the GOP, defeating Democrat Bill Fleming by a 79-21 margin. Two other dark-red legislative districts (both made vacant because of Republican sex scandals) stayed in GOP hands, as California’s AD-72 was held by Chris Norby, 63-31, and Tennessee’s HD-83 was won 67-30 by Mark White. In New Hampshire, the field is now set in a potentially competitive general election to fill SD-16 on Feb. 16 (the swing district was vacated by GOPer Ted Gatsas, elected Manchester mayor). State Rep. David Boutin won the GOP nod; he’ll face off against Dem state Rep. Jeff Goley. Dems can push up to a 15-9 edge with a pickup here.

• FL-Sen: Looks like Charlie Crist has decided that, despite mediocre polling and worse fundraising from Marco Rubio, he’s facing a bigger threat in the primary than he is in the general. Crist came out in opposition to the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor yesterday, trying to shore up what remains of his conservative bona fides.

• IL-Sen/Gov: Here’s an explanation for why Chris Kennedy has been dawdling on declaring for the Illinois Senate primary: he’s considering whether or not to jump over to the Governor’s race instead. This seems very odd… not that he’d have a good chance in either race, but it seems like he’d have a better shot in a primary in an open seat race against Alexi Giannoulias, who has some vulnerabilities, than against Pat Quinn, who’s fairly popular and has the benefits of incumbency. Apparently Giannoulias’s fundraising scared him off.

• MO-Sen: Here’s an interesting tidbit out of Missouri, suggesting that former Treasurer Sarah Steelman is getting less and less likely to run in the GOP primary. Jeff Roe, who ran Steelman’s 2008 campaign, has started working for Rep. Roy Blunt. Blunt still faces a primary challenge from state Sen. Chuck Purgason, though, but he doesn’t pose the same level of threat that Steelman would.

• NH-Sen: This is a big surprise, as he’s been pouring a lot of money into advertising (for his STEWARD organization, though, not as a candidate) and starting to build a staff. Anti-tax businessman Fred Tausch announced today that he won’t be running in the GOP Senate primary after all (or for anything, including the House). Considering that he was lobbing bombs at AG Kelly Ayotte just a few days ago, this is a sudden change of heart. Former Board of Education member and 1996 gubernatorial candidate Ovide Lamontagne may still provide a challenge from the right, though.

• NY-Sen-B: Last night was the vaunted Bill Clinton/Carolyn Maloney fundraiser, which pulled in about $300K for Maloney’s House account. Meanwhile, the Albany Project has an interesting catch in this race. It turns out that there was one question from the internal poll in May that gave Maloney a 34-32 lead over Kirsten Gillibrand that didn’t get released to the public, and only came out in that City Hall News profile from a few days ago: “Asked whom they would vote for if they knew Gillibrand had the support of Schumer and Obama, people chose Gillibrand over Maloney 50-24.”

• IA-Gov: A fifth candidate officially got into the GOP field in the Iowa governor’s race yesterday: little-known state Rep. and pastor Rod Roberts, who represents a rural part of western Iowa. Roberts polled a whopping 1% in a poll last week by the Iowa Republican blog of the GOP primary field; the poll found Bob Vander Plaats leading the field with 46%, trailed by Chris Rants at 16%, and Paul McKinley and Christian Fong each at 3%. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver defeats Vander Plaats 48-39 and Rants 46-36.

• NV-02: Ooops, back to square one in the 2nd. Douglas County school board president Cindy Trigg, who said she’d run against Rep. Dean Heller in 2010, has backed out, saying she needs to focus on the school board for now instead.

• NY-23: The NRCC has gone on the air in the 23rd, launching pre-emptive TV attacks on state Sen. Darrel Aubertine before he’s even a declared candidate for the special election, for voting for new taxes in the state Senate. Meanwhile, word has leaked (perhaps from GOP rival Matt Doheny’s camp) that moderate Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava was in fact under consideration for the Democratic nomination, but that they were scared off by unpaid tax problems associated with her brother’s business (for which she’s listed as the COO).

• VA-11: Home inspection company owner Keith Fimian has decided on a rematch with Rep. Gerry Connolly in the now-blue 11th. Fimian, who can self-fund, lost the 2008 open seat race to Connolly, 55-43.

• NY-LG: A New York judge put the kibosh on David Paterson’s appointment of Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, issuing a temporary injunction to stop it, saying the state constitution does not appear to permit appointment to fill a vacancy in that position. Still, even if the appointment never goes through, it looks like it may have succeeded for Paterson, in terms of forcing Pedro Espada’s hand and breaking the state Senate deadlock.

• OH-AG: As was previously leaked, former Senator Mike DeWine announced today that he’ll run for state Attorney General. He’ll face off against Democratic incumbent Richard Cordray.

• Fonts: Ever wondered about the font that defined the Obama campaign in 2008? Here’s a profile of that “uniquely American” sans-serif typeface, Gotham.

• NRSC/NRCC: The NRSC and NRCC announced yesterday that Alaska governor Sarah Palin would headline their fundraising dinner in June, which is a big ‘get’ since she couldn’t be bothered to come out all the way to DC for CPAC. The Anchorage Daily News then reported that Palin wouldn’t be attending after all. Turns out that one hand of PalinCo doesn’t know what the other is doing… the appearance was arranged through SarahPAC, while the actual governor’s office had no idea this was happening. The NRCC and NRSC still say “that to their knowledge” she’s still coming.

• SC-01, SC-02: Linda Ketner is sounding a little iffy about a rematch against Henry Brown, worried about diminished African-American turnout in an off-year election (and also the costs; even wealthy philanthropists get hit by the recession). Former state rep. Mike Barber and state rep. Leon Stavrinakis are possibilities if she demurs. Next door, though, Iraq vet Rob Miller has begun fundraising for a rematch against Joe Wilson.

• OR-04: Peter DeFazio may get his first substantive challenger in ages; the GOP is recruiting Springfield (the district’s 2nd largest city) mayor Joe Quimby Sid Leiken to run. While DeFazio would still be a heavy favorite in such a race, he’s been mentioned frequently as a potential 2010 gubernatorial candidate, and in this D+0 district the GOP could be competitive with an open seat.

• VA-02, VA-05, VA-11: Southern Political Report takes a look at potential challengers to the three new Virginia freshmen. In VA-02, the only Republican in the race so far is Chuck Smith, an African-American, former chair of the Virginia Beach GOP, and an ex-Navy JAG, although moderate state senator Ken Stolle and Virginia Beach mayor Will Sessoms are eyeing the race. In VA-11, wealthy businessman Keith Fimian is interested in a rematch, but so is Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity, who recently narrowly lost the special election to replace Gerry Connolly as chairman of the Fairfax County Board.

• CT-Sen: Robbie Simmons may not have the GOP field to himself in his bid to unseat Chris Dodd: CT GOP Chairman Chris Healy tells The Hill that former Ireland Ambassador Tom Foley and state Sen. Sam Caligiuri will also run in the Republican primary. (J)

• AL-02: Add another name to the retread watch — state Rep. Jay Love says he’s considering challenging frosh Dem Rep. Bobby Bright in a rematch next year. Another name tossed around as a potential candidate for the GOP is none other than George Wallace, Jr., who lost an open seat race in this very same district as a Democrat in 1992 to Terry Everett. (J)

So far, few have had much to say about Keith Fimian, the GOP’s would-be successor to retiring Rep. Tom Davis. Aside from his wealth and his strong fundraising, Fimian has been a blank slate on the issues. But the Washington Examiner has been doing a bit of digging, and is revealing a portrait of someone startlingly out of step with the socially liberal, Democratic-trending Northern Virginia district that he’s attempting to represent in Congress:

An analysis of Fimian’s recent donors shows he’s collected more than $100,000 from dozens of members – or relatives of those members – of Legatus, a national organization of Catholic business executives created by Domino’s Pizza founder and pro-life activist Tom Monaghan. Fimian reports taking in more than $1.3 million by the end of June. Legatus is based in Ave Maria, Fla., a planned religious community also co-founded by Monaghan, who drew protests from civil libertarians when he reportedly outlined plans to ban pornography and contraception from the town’s stores.

While Fimian, also a member of the Legatus board of governors, makes no attempt to hide his association with the group, it could prove problematic in a district that has voted less and less faithfully Republican in recent years. He is running against Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly, a powerful Democrat.

Fimian said he’s pro-life and universally opposes the death penalty, but declined to elaborate on views on other social issues, arguing they are irrelevant to the 11th District.

Tom Davis was able to survive so successfully in the 11th district in large part due to his moderate approach to social issues. While Fimian may be attempting to campaign as a “business conservative” (of which there are many in the 11th), his pro-life views and associations with the likes of the utterly creepy Monaghan may prove to be an albatross come fall. That’s good news for Democrat Gerry Connolly.

Lake Research Partners for Gerry Connolly (7/10-14, likely voters):

Gerry Connolly (D): 52

Keith Fimian (R): 21

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Public Opinion Strategies for Steve Chabot (6/30-7/2, likely voters):

Steve Driehaus (D): 37

Steve Chabot (R-inc.): 50

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Got the salt shaker ready? Hot on the heels of the laughable poll released yesterday in NJ-07 come a couple more internal polls from big House races where Democratic pickups are likely. Surprise surprise: each one shows the person who commissioned the poll up by a huge margin.

The Virginia poll isn’t that bizarre: it probably reflects that most people in the district know exactly who Gerry Connolly is, as he represents most of them as Fairfax County Supervisor and just got out of a headline-grabbing primary with another well-known local Dem, Leslie Byrne. And few know who Keith Fimian is (he’s never held office; he’s independently wealthy from his home inspection business). I don’t expect to see Connolly double-up on Fimian in November like here, but he’s gotta be seen as a clear favorite.

And I do note one area of weakness in OH-01: Steve Chabot, who has represented Cincinnati since 1994, is polling only right at the 50% danger mark in his own poll? Driehaus, who is a state representative (and thus familiar only to a portion of OH-01) can only go up from here, but Chabot may be near his ceiling. This one will be close (like almost every race for Chabot).

H/t JeremiahTheMessiah