Tag: KY-Sen

• NY-20: One day left to go in the special election. The district’s most popular politician, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, is appearing in GOTV robocalls blanketing the district.

The Times-Union finds that there’s been a flood of money into the race in the last few weeks from Republican third party groups. Of the $1.1 in independent expenditures since last Tuesday, $300K were Democratic, while $800K were Republican.

Also, Libertarian candidate Eric Sundwall, who got kicked off the ballot last week because of a challenge to his petition signatures originated by Republicans, has endorsed Scott Murphy (seemingly more out of spite than out of agreement on the issues). His dozens of supporters may not make a big impact on the election, but it’s yet another news story that’s a black eye for Jim Tedisco.

• KY-Sen: Lt. Gov Dan Mongiardo picked up an important endorsement in the Kentucky senate primary: from his boss, Gov. Steve Beshear. (Important in the sense that it would be kind of awkward if he didn’t get that endorsment.)

• OH-Sen: Two big endorsements for SoS Jennifer Brunner in the Ohio senate primary: one from a major union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and one from Caroline Kennedy, who hosted a NYC fundraiser for Brunner.

• AK-Sen: With the possibility of a Lisa Murkowski/Sarah Palin primary in the 2010 Alaska senate race looming, here are some numbers that might give Palin some pause. A primary against Murkowski wouldn’t be the cakewalk for Palin that some had supposed. Hayes Research didn’t test a head-to-head, but they found that Palin’s approve/disapprove (among all voters, not just GOPers) is 60/35, while Murkowski is even better at 72/21. Palin’s “very negative” is 21%, while Murkowski’s is only 7%.

• OR-05: In response to the news that two-time loser Mike Erickson is considering another race, Blue Oregon comes up with a helpful list of somewhat more credible candidates as the GOP tries to dislodge Kurt Schrader before he gets entrenched. Former and current state legislators that get a mention include former majority leader Wayne Scott, as well as Bill Kennemer, Kim Thatcher, Vicki Berger, and Vic Gilliam.

• Redistricting: Believe it or not, the state of Ohio is hosting a “redistricting competition” to see who can come up with the best map for the state. Some of the criteria they’re using to judge entrants (like “compactness”) might be anathema to hardcore partisans, but the contest could still be fun nonetheless. The sign-up form is here. (D)

• CT-Sen: Looks like Robbie Simmons is going to have some company in the GOP primary for the nod to take on Chris Dodd; state Sen. Sam Caligiuri, the former mayor of Waterbury, is expected to announce his candidacy tomorrow. (J)

From Roll Call:

A source close to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway said this week that the Democrat will run for Senate in 2010 and that he is expected to announce his candidacy as soon as early April.

This is hardly a surprise — Conway has been leaving strong indications over the past several months that he was inclined to jump into the race.

His decision will set up a major primary battle against Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who is seeking a rematch with Jim Bunning after a narrow loss in 2004. Republicans will be hoping for something nasty to emerge out of it, but even a lightly-battered Democratic nominee would stand a good shot against the increasingly beleaguered Bunning; in an open seat situation, a contentious Dem primary could prove problematic depending on whether or not Secretary of State Trey Grayson would be able to have the GOP field to himself.

In game theory there is game called entrance deterrence.  The idea is that when a person or firm challenges an incumbent it goes along two nodes of thought.  The first is the challenger’s decision to go against the incumbent.  The second is whether the incumbent fights the challenger, or defers to him.  This game will be able to predict both what Specter and what Bunning are doing this election season.

If the challenger decides not to play, his payout is 0 for the challenger and 2 for the incumbent.  If the challenger decides to fight, then it’s the incumbents turn to make a decision.  If the incumbent fights then his payout will be -1 to the challengers 0, and if he defers to the challenger it will be a payout of 1 to each.

As two-bit challengers appear against incumbents from time to time, it should be clarified that this game only applies when two factors are present.  The first is that the incumbent is in danger of losing his election either due to his low popularity, or his opponent’s high popularity.  The second factor is that there is gain from leaving the senate, such as a high paying job, or prestige of being a retired senator who didn’t lose.  

An example of this is the election of Mark Warner.  Last cycle John Warner was considering retirement, but wasn’t sure.  Mark Warner threw out hints that he would run.  John could say that he will fight mark regardless of what mark does, but that is unlikely.  The payoffs show that should mark run, and john fight, john will have a payout of -1, worse than his payout of 1 should he defer to mark, and retire gracefully.  

This payout comes from john either losing a fierce election with mark, ending his long running senate career in disgrace, or eking out a bare win, where he will be in the extreme minority, and his reputation still varnished.  Thus, when it became clear that john’s plans not to retire were bluffs, he realized the most logical move would be to retire.  This is what happened.  If you replace mark with Toomey (scary I know) and Warner with specter, you have the reasons why specter will retire should Toomey run.  There are variables of course, but if specter can’t independents in the primary he will retire, soon after, or shortly before Toomey announces.  

This should suggest that Bunning will retire, as a plausible republican challenger would defeat him, but there is a flaw in this plan.  This all depends on logic, Bunning’s potential challenger has to realize the payouts described above, as does Bunning.  If Bunning is Crazy, and playing illogically, then the challenger won’t play.  Why bother running, when your payoff will be 0 either way.  Either 0 for not running, or 0 for losing to bunning/winning but getting beaten up, to go onto lose to your democratic opponent.  This is what bunning wants us to think.

I theorize that he understands this game and the payouts, that’s why he has been playing up the whole “I’m crazy” shtick of late.  He’s trying to convince his opponents that he would not act logically at this game.  That if he was challenged he might defer, he might fight, he might find a third option.  Either way it would be better not to enter at all.  The reasoning is that the number of votes he loses by acting crazy is less than that he’d lose by losing the primary (where the general election votes are irrelevant) or winning the primary bloodied up and broke.  

This assumes that he’s sane, eccentric, but sane.  He has had a tendency to act weird, but the type of crazy being described here is not that of bunning.  It suggests a sincere lack of logic, not simply acting weird.  Take Bunning’s performance back in 2004, it’s weird, but not illogical.  Considering his money, the partisan tilt of Kentucky, and the fact that bush was expected to do well, he probably figured he could phone it in.  Lazy and stupid, but there was logic to it.

Furthermore, consider his recent acts of

crazy.  It’s all stuff that only would anger liberals, and the political class.  Suggesting that Ginsberg will die soon, picking fights with Cornyn and the NRCC, it’s not the kind of stuff that would anger conservative primary voters.  He’s not expecting much help from either the political class or liberals to begin with, so there’s little to nothing to lose by fighting with them.  There is logic in his eccentricities.  

This of course assumes that bunning is eccentric, but not illogical.  If he is in fact crazy crazy then everything stated is wrong, but the only way to tell that is to wait until a challenger appears and see what he does.  If he defers, then bunning is still logical, if he keeps on trucking, he’s not.  If no challenger appears then all we will know is that it worked.  

Game theory has numerous applications in politics that are still being understood.  This game shows why other politicians retired and will show why specter will retire.  It will also do what few thought possible: explain Jim Bunning.

Is the stubborn sumbitch teetering? Check out this teaser from Roll Call:

But after stressing repeatedly that he will run again in 2010, Bunning seemed to leave the door open to not seeking re-election on Tuesday, saying that he will make a decision on whether to stay in the Senate race within the next few months.

What’s more, the Junior Senator from Kentucky seems to be getting slightly more… self-aware. From the AP:

“When they recruit someone to run against you in a primary it puts doubt in people’s minds that you are going to finish the race,” Bunning told reporters. “Therefore they’re waiting and waiting and waiting, and that makes it, it’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Meanwhile, Bunning is lapping up the profuse support of his colleagues:

“I’ll support the nominee of our party,” Rep. Hal Rogers said Tuesday when asked about whether he was supporting Bunning.

Rep. Ed Whitfield likewise said that Bunning “is the only [Republican] candidate for U.S. Senate who has announced. So, at this point, I’m supporting him.”

Can’t you just feel the love?

With Bunning momentarily backing off from his staunch statements that he is without question running for another term followed by melancholic ruminations about “self-fulfilling prophecies”, perhaps Cornyn and McConnell are having some success in forcing the 77 year-old Senator to re-evaluate his options.

Come on, you old bastard: you can’t let them win!

From the AP:

Bunning said during a conference call Tuesday that McConnell and Texas Sen. John Cornyn have put doubts about his 2010 candidacy into the minds of possible donors. Bunning claimed McConnell and Cornyn, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have tried to recruit someone to challenge him in the GOP primary.

This race is the gift that keeps on giving. McConnell and Cornyn are clearly trying to starve Bunning into retirement, but it’s becoming an increasingly plausible scenario that a stubborn but cash-strapped Bunning may emerge as the Republican nominee for this seat in 2010 — at which point Cornyn and McConnell may find themselves falling over ass-backwards in order to refill the old coot’s coffers. It doesn’t get much better than this.

(H/T: P’co)

• CA-45: After years of letting California’s 45th district (the most Democratic-leaning district in California still represented by a Republican, where Obama won 52-47) lay fallow, the Democrats actually seem to have a top-tier (or close to it) challenger lined up. Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet just started a campaign committee for a face-off against Mary Bono Mack. The openly gay Pougnet has been mayor of the city of 40,000 since 2007.

• KY-Sen: Dr. Dan may get some company in the primary. 39-year-old Attorney General Jack Conway has announced “there’s a good chance” he’ll run for Senate in 2010. Subtexts in other quotes suggest that he’s been negotiating with Rep. Ben Chandler and Auditor Crit Luallen, who may be stepping aside for him.

• CO-Gov: Now this seems unexpected. Ex-Rep. Scott McInnis, after butting heads with more conservative elements in the state GOP and studiously avoiding the 2008 and 2010 senate races in Colorado, has chosen a much more uphill battle: he’s running for governor against Democratic incumbent Bill Ritter. He may still face a primary battle against up-and-coming state senator Josh Penry (who used to be McInnis’s press secretary).

• PA-Gov, PA-06: Jim Gerlach acknowledged in an interview that people have been soliciting him to run against Arlen Specter in the 2010 senate primary (which would turn it into moderate/moderate/fiscal wingnut/religious wingnut chaos). However, he’s still charging full speed ahead on his gubernatorial bid instead.

• MI-12: Here’s one of the least likely places you could imagine for a heated primary, but it may happen. State senator Mickey Switalski will challenge 14-term incumbent Sander Levin in this reliably Dem (65-33 for Obama) district in the Detroit suburbs. (To give you an idea how long Levin has been around, he’s Carl Levin’s older brother.) This doesn’t seem to be an ideological challenge as much as Switalski is term-limited out of the state senate in 2010 and needs somewhere else to go.

• CA-10: San Francisco city attorney analyst (and former political editor for the San Francisco Examiner) Adriel Hampton has announced his candidacy for the open seat being vacated by Ellen Tauscher. What may be most memorable about this is that his may be the first ever candidacy announcement made by Twitter; he faces long odds against state senator Mark DeSaulnier (who won’t announce until Tauscher’s resignation is official).

• New Dems: One other musical chairs item left in the wake of Tauscher’s resignation is who takes over as the chair of the New Dems. The New Dems have five vice-chairs, but it looks like the hyper-ambitious Joe Crowley has enough support nailed down to take command bloodlessly. The CW is wondering whether this will complicate Crowley’s efforts to join House leadership (he lost a caucus vice-chair bid in 2006), but my question is what the heck is a New Dem doing in NY-07 (which went for Obama 79-20)?

• FL-20: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Miami Herald on Saturday that she successfully battled breast cancer over the past year. We wish her good health as she continues her recovery. (D)

• Maps: For those of you who enjoy seeing maps breaking things down by congressional districts, here’s a new one from real estate site hotpads.com: which CDs have the highest foreclosure rates.

After nary a peep in months from the office of Dem Rep. Ben Chandler on the subject of a potential challenge to GOP crumb-bum extraordinaire Jim Bunning, Chandler tells the AP that he’s considering making a bid after receiving encouragement from the DSCC. He’s even gone so far as to meet with Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear on Friday to discuss his potential run. (Hat-tip: Senate Guru)

If Chandler were to jump in, this would set up a primary battle with Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo. Attorney General Jack Conway and state Auditor Crit Luallen are also considering the race, with Conway seemingly being the most eager of the pair to run. However, in a recent interview with Page One, Conway said he was “regularly speaking” with both Luallen and Chandler about a bid, and I would expect both of them to back off if Chandler pulls the trigger.

Meanwhile, Jim Bunning is already casting aspersions on wide swaths of his home state:

At a Fourth District Lincoln/Reagan Day Dinner in Boone County, Bunning said, “I need your support to offset Lexington, Louisville and some other people who don’t think like we do in Northern Kentucky.”

True, Bunning didn’t go so far as to call these folks “fake Kentuckians”, but I still don’t think a strategy of polarizing the vote around the Cinci ‘burbs is going to cut it for him.

• NJ-Gov: Another day, another ugly poll for Jon Corzine. This time, it’s this month’s installment of the Quinnipiac poll. Not much change from last month: Chris Christie leads Corzine 46-37, up a bit from 44-38. This despite 61% of voters not knowing enough about Christie to form an opinion of him!

• KY-Sen: Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson may be the guy on the GOP’s wish list for the Kentucky Senate seat, but he said yesterday that he’s running for Senate only if Jim Bunning retires. (What are the odds on that?) Meanwhile, state senate president David Williams is accusing Grayson and Bunning of being in cahoots to shut him out of the race. Good times.

• CT-Sen: You gotta love Joe Lieberman, always there to lend a helping hand. Lieberman announced that he’s supporting Chris Dodd for re-election, even though Dodd supported, y’know, the Democrat in the 2006 general. As Lanny Davis puts it, “Being a mensch and a friend is more important than carrying a grudge.”

• CO-04: Nice to see that someone can get a job in this economy: Marilyn Musgrave has emerged from months of post-defeat seclusion to take a leadership position with something called the Susan B. Anthony List, apparently a bizarro-world EMILY’s List that supports anti-abortion female candidates for office. (No word on whether Anthony plans to sue to get her name back.) It’s unclear whether this is permanent or Musgrave is staying close to donors until a rematch in CO-04.

• KS-01, KS-04: Mike Huckabee (who overwhelmingly won the Kansas caucuses) is wading into the primaries to fill the two safe GOP seats left vacant by the Jerry Moran/Todd Tiahrt scrum for the open senate seat. He’s endorsing state senator Tim Huelskamp in KS-01 and state senator Dick Kelsey in KS-04. RNC member Mike Pompeo is also expected to run in KS-04, while ex-aide to Sam Brownback Rob Wasinger and businessman Tim Barker are already running in KS-01.

• Maps: Here’s a nice resource to bookmark, from Ruy Teixeira and the Center for American Progress: it’s a collection of interactive maps showing state-by-state 04-08 and 88-08 shifts, along with piles of 08 exit poll data.

• MN-Sen: As if you needed one more reason not to donate to Republicans, the Norm Coleman campaign accidentally made public 4.3 GB of donors’ personal data, including credit card numbers and security information.

Jim Bunning:

In his latest call with scribes earlier Tuesday, Bunning again didn’t disappoint. While acknowledging that he has conducted polling on his prospects for winning a third term, the irascible Kentucky Republican refused to reveal the results.

“It’s none of your goddamned business,” Bunning told reporters. “If you paid the 20 grand for the poll, you can get some information out of it.”

Page One Kentucky has picked up a pretty wild piece of chatter:

Rumor has it that Jim Bunning is so spitting mad that he’s telling people he’ll just resign and let Steve (Beshear) appoint someone. […]

UPDATE: Spoke with one of Bunning’s staffers and they don’t deny it. WTF. Granted, it only means he probably said it.  But was it in frustration or was he serious?

This is probably not going to happen, but Bunning is one crazy sumbitch, so I guess we can let our imaginations run wild. If he actually went through with it, expect Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear to give his Number One, Dan Mongiardo, a quick promotion to DC.

UPDATE: Hilarious:

Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) told a room full of lobbyists this week that he’d resign his Senate seat early if he doesn’t get campaign money from national Republicans, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation.

But Bunning insists he’s going to run for reelection and says that the sources are “lying.”

“It’s not true,” Bunning said in a statement. “I intend to fulfill my obligation to the people of Kentucky. If you are going to write something like this, you’d better make your sources known because they are lying.”

It’s very likely that Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn have been working overtime to tighten the purse strings of Bunning’s major fundraising sources, so this story kind of makes sense — Bunning is threatening to pull the rug out from underneath the GOP caucus if donors don’t start opening up their wallets for him. Looks like a few more people are gonna have to take a chomp out of this shit sandwich.

(H/T: sicembears)