Tag: Andrew Cuomo

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln is retooling her ad message quite a bit, now that it’s come crashing home to her that she actually has to suck up to that annoying Democratic base for a few weeks in order to win her runoff in two weeks. Her new ad features lots of Obama footage, and highlights her support of the stimulus package and… well, “support of” might be overstating it, so her vote for HCR. Compare that with her old ad saying “I don’t answer to my party. I answer to Arkansas.”

• IL-Sen: Jesse Jackson Jr. seems to be up to some serious no-good in the Illinois Senate primary, although the reason isn’t clear. He’s withheld his endorsement from Alexi Giannoulias so far, and now is going so far as to talk up his respect for Mark Kirk (they serve on Appropriations together) and float the idea of endorsing him. Is he using his endorsement as a bargaining chip to get some squeaky-wheel-greasing (like Jackson’s pet airport project – recall that he didn’t endorse 1998 IL-Gov nominee Glenn Poshard over that very issue), or is he war-gaming his own run against a first-term Kirk in 2016?

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena is out with a slew of New York data today. They find Kirsten Gillibrand in good position in the Senate race against three second-tier opponents; she beats Bruce Blakeman 51-24, Joe DioGuardi 51-25, and David Malpass 53-22. In the GOP primary, DioGuardi is at 15, Blakeman at 8, and Malpass at 4. I guess they want to be thorough, because they also took a rather in-depth look at the usually neglected NY-Sen-_A_. Charles Schumer beats Nassau Co. Controller George Maragos 65-22, Jay Townsend 63-24, Gary Berntsen 64-23, and Jim Staudenraus 65-21. Political consultant Townsend leads the primary at 10, followed by Maragos at 5, with some dudes Bertnsen and Staudenraus at 3 and 1. They even poll Schumer’s primary, wherein he beats Randy Credico 78-11.

• AK-Gov: DRM Market Research (not working for any particular candidate) polled the two primaries in the Alaska gubernatorial race (which aren’t until August), finding, as expected, GOP incumbent Sean Parnell and Dem Ethan Berkowitz with big leads. Parnell is at 59, with 9 for former state House speaker Ralph Samuels and 7 for Bill Walker. Berkowitz is at 48, with 17 for state Sen. Hollis French and 8 for Bob Poe. Diane Benson, who ran for the House in 2006 and 2008, is running for Lt. Governor this time, and leads the Dem primary there.

• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks is out with some details from an internal poll with one week left to go before the primary, needing to push back not only against an Artur Davis internal but today’s R2K poll. For some reason, there aren’t specific toplines, but Sparks is touting a one-point lead over Davis. The poll also sees Davis polling at only 43% among African-Americans.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Siena has gubernatorial numbers, too. Believe it or not, Andrew Cuomo is winning. He beats Rick Lazio 66-24, Steve Levy 65-22, and Carl Paladino 65-22. In the GOP primary, Lazio is at 29, Carl Paladino at 16, and Steve Levy at 14. How bad do you think state party chair Ed Cox is feeling that his hand-picked Killer-App party-swapper isn’t even polling ahead of a bestiality-email-forwarding teabagger? Well, Cox’s performance here and the Senate races has been so miserable that the latest local conspiracy theory is that Cox is throwing in the towel on the Senate race so that his son, Chris Cox, can have an unimpeded run against Kirsten Gillibrand in 2012. (Of course, the cart is a few miles down the road ahead of the horse; there’s no guarantee Cox Jr. can even make it out of the GOP primary in NY-01, let alone past Tim Bishop.)

• OK-Gov: I don’t know if Mary Fallin is feeling any heat here, but nevertheless, she put out an internal poll taken for her by Cole, Hargrave, Snodgrass & Associates. She leads both Dems, Lt. Gov. Jari Askins and AG Drew Edmondson by an identical 52-30 margin. (UPDATE: The Fallin campaign writes in to say this wasn’t an internal, but CHS acting on its own.)

• OR-Gov: Chris Dudley airballed his first salvo of the general election against John Kitzhaber. Dudley accused Kitzhaber of having tried to put the state in debt by borrowing to balance the state’s budget during the 2001 recession. Ooops… Kitzhaber did the exact opposite, as he fought against doing so, against legislators of both parties. (Ted Kulongoski eventually signed off on the idea in 2003, after Kitz was out of office.)

• PA-Gov: Maybe one of his younger, hipper staffers warned him that he was heavy-handedly barking up the wrong tree, as AG and GOP nominee Tom Corbett did a 180, pulling his Twitter subpoena to try and ascertain the identities of several anonymous critics.

• SC-Gov: Well, as is usually the case, the most salacious political news of the day is also the biggest. A South Carolina blogger, Will Folks, who used to be on Nikki Haley’s payroll is now claiming that he and Haley had an affair (prior to Folks’s marriage, but after Haley’s). Folks, believe it or not, is supporting Haley, but apparently wanted to get this out there as other candidates have been pushing oppo research on this to reporters. Haley had had some recent momentum, with a big ad buy on her behalf from the Mark Sanford camp and a corresponding lead in the most recent Rasmussen poll of the primary.

• TX-Gov: This is an internet poll by British pollster YouGov, so, well, have your salt and vinegar shakers handy. Working on behalf of the Texas Tribune and the Univ. of Texas, they find incumbent GOPer Rick Perry with a lead over Dem Bill White 44-35 (and similar-sized leads for the Republicans for all the other statewide offices downballot).

• Polltopia: Here’s some more hard evidence that pollsters are increasingly missing the boat by not polling cellphone users. A new Centers for Disease Control survey finds that nearly a quarter of the adult population is simply being missed by many pollsters (especially autodialers like Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, given limitations on auto-dialing cellphones). The CDC also hints at how cellphone-only adults are not just more urban, more poor, less white, younger, and more Internet-savvy, but also less “domestic” and more “bohemian,” which Nate Silver thinks indicates a different set of political beliefs, too. Given the statistically significant difference between Pew’s generic congressional ballots that include and exclude cellphone users, the cellphone effect seems to be skewing polls away from Dems this cycle — the real question is, are those cellphone-only users at all likely to show up in November?

• Demographics: Josh Goodman has another interesting piece in his redistricting preview series of population changes in big states, this time in Illinois. He finds the greatest population growth in the suburban collar counties of Illinois, also the most politically competitive part of the state these days. While these all trended sharply in the Democratic direction in 2008, the question is whether that trend hold without the Obama favorite-son effect this year.

At long last:

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced his campaign for governor with a video released early Saturday morning, finally making official his entrance into the race for governor this fall. …

He planned a formal announcement in downtown Manhattan later on Saturday.

Just don’t screw up.

• AK-Sen: Moose man endorses Some Dude. That’s SSP shorthand for: Todd Palin just endorsed Joe Miller, the right-wing lawyer who’s taking on Lisa Murkowski in the Republican Senate primary. Recall that Mr. Palin has had some fairly fringey politics in the past (as with his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party), so I wonder if this was done with his wife’s approval (or, given her busy schedule these days, whether he was even able to block out some time with her to get her say-so). Given her rumored brief interest in taking on Murkowski in the primary herself (back when she was still Governor rather than itinerant book-selling motivational-speaking grifter), and her long-standing beef with all things Murkowksi, I’d suppose yes.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina, trying to make up last-minute ground in the GOP primary against Tom Campbell, has thrown $1.1 million of her own money into her campaign. On top of previous loans to her campaign, that brings her total self-contributions to $3.6 million. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner were both heard scoffing loudly.

• CT-Sen: Chalk this one up to bad, bad timing. Linda McMahon just sent out a mailer proposing to “put Connecticut back to work” by “increasing offshore drilling and production” (um, in Long Island Sound?). The mailer features a large, lovely picture of a (non-burning) offshore oil rig.

• NH-Sen: Has Kelly Ayotte just given up on any pretense of trying to look moderate? She’s appearing at a Susan B. Anthony List (the anti-abortion group) fundraiser today, headlined by Sarah Palin, along with a supporting cast like Rep. Steve King. I know that she still needs to survive her GOP primary, but her main opposition these days is looking like moderate Bill Binnie, not right-wing Ovide Lamontagne.

• NV-Sen: Steve Kornacki looks at the Nevada Senate race and the “what if” scenario if Sharron Angle somehow wins the primary. History indicates that Harry Reid can’t pin too many hopes on winning just because the GOP puts forth its most extreme candidate… maybe the biggest case in point, the Carter camp’s hopes that wacko Ronald Reagan would make it out of the GOP primary in 1980.

• NY-Sen: Wow, there’s actually going to be a GOP primary for the right to get mulched by Chuck Schumer! Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, who’s only been on the job half a year, is already looking to move up. He’ll still have to get past political consultant Jay Townsend in the primary.

• UT-Sen: She stopped short of a formal endorsement, but fringey activist Cherilyn Eagar, who finished fourth at the GOP convention, said that Tim Bridgewater would be “an excellent senator” and complimented him on a “clean, honest race.” Eagar is back to her day job fighting the menace posed by gnomes.

• AL-Gov: I’m losing track of all the weird outside groups popping up to play dirty pool in the Alabama governor’s race. Today’s entrant is the mysterious New Sons of Liberty, whose main agenda seems to be Barack Obama’s birth certificate. They’ve reserved $1.1 million in TV airtime, although it’s unclear what they’ll be advertising about or on behalf of whom. The leader of a group, Basics Project, affiliated with the New Sons is mystified at where they would have gotten that kind of money, so it seems like they’re being used as a conduit for… well, somebody.

There’s also a new poll out of the Republican primary, by Republican pollster Baselice (on behalf of local PR firm Public Strategy Associates… there’s no word on whether any of the candidates are their client). They find Bradley Byrne barely leading Tim James 24-23. Roy Moore, who many thought would be the man to beat, is lagging at 18, with Robert Bentley at 12 and Bill Johnson at 2. The juicier numbers might be down in the AG race, where GOP incumbent Troy King is in all kinds of trouble. He’s losing 50-25 to challenger Luther Strange. There are three Dems in the AG field, most prominently James Anderson, ready to try to exploit the cat-fud fight.

• AR-Gov: One thing we didn’t mention in our writeup of Research 2000’s AR-Sen poll from yesterday is that they were the first pollster to throw the Arkansas Governor’s race into the mix. Incumbent Dem Mike Beebe routinely sports some of the highest favorables of any politician (64/24 here), and he seems immune from Arkansas’ reddish trend and the nation’s overall anti-incumbent fervor. He leads Republican former state Sen. Jim Keet, 62-19.

• CT-Gov: Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy picked up another potentially useful endorsement today as we make our way toward Connecticut’s endorsing conventions. He got the nod from Rep. John Larson, the #4 man on the House totem pole. UPDATE: On the GOP side, ex-Rep. Chris Shays has an endorsement of his own: Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.

• NY-Gov: It’s kind of more meta than we’d like, to report on an announcement about an announcement (about an announcement), but it sounds like we’re getting closer to pinning down a date from Andrew Cuomo. It’s being reported that he’ll announce his gubernatorial candidacy on or around May 25, the start of the state Democratic convention.

• AL-05: Rep. Parker Griffith is already up with a negative ad hitting one of his Republican primary opponents, Madison Co. Commissioner Mo Brooks, calling him a “career politician” and “big spender.” Brooks observed, perhaps correctly (although the Alabama primary is fast approaching), that an incumbent attacking a challenger is a big-time sign of weakness.

• GA-09: Former state Rep. Tom Graves, in the runoff for the special election in this seat against fellow Republican Lee Hawkins, got the endorsement from nearby Rep. Lynn “Uppity” Westmoreland. In a district this red, that may actually be a plus.

• MN-06: An unaffiliated independent, Troy Freihammer, may appear on the ballot, in addition to Independence Party nominee Bob Anderson. He needs 1,000 signatures by month’s end, though, so he may not make that hurdle. Getting him on might be a net plus for the Dems, as his website makes pretty clear he’s a Tenther and he’s only likely to take votes away from Michele Bachmann.

• OR-01: SurveyUSA is way down in the weeds here (although that’s because the poll where they get paid to do so, in this case by local TV affiliate KATU), with a look at the primaries in the 1st. In a four-way field on the GOP side, the NRCC’s preferred candidate, sports-industry consultant Rob Cornilles, leads at 31, beating mortgage broker John Kuzmanich at 19. The other guy whose name you hear in connection with this race, Stephan Brodhead (mostly because he somehow summoned up $298K CoH) is polling at all of 3, probably because his main campaign activity seems to be trolling the online comment sections of local newspapers and people have ascertained thusly that he’s a wackjob. Rep. David Wu is at 75% against token opposition on the Dem side.

• PA-04: What was supposed to be a victory lap for former US Attorney and loyal Bushie Mary Beth Buchanan has turned into a real dogfight with attorney Keith Rothfus, seemingly helped along by her apparent ineptitude at electoral politics. She’s currently drawing fire for a “deceitful” mailer which uses the National Rifle Association logo without its permission. Things have actually been going badly enough on the message-control front that improbable rumors have her dropping out of the race (with days to go), although her camp is saying her “major political announcement” is just a press conference to go on the offensive against Rothfus.

• Census: An interesting article from Stateline looks at what various states are doing to amp up Census participation. The real interest, here, is a neat map they’ve put together rating the states not on their overall participation percentages, but on the overall shifts in participation percentage from 2000 to 2010. Intriguingly, the biggest improvements in participation were clustered in the Deep South (especially North and South Carolina, both of which are on the cusp of adding another seat), while the Mountain West states suffered the most. California also seemed to fall off a bit, as budget limitations kept them from doing much outreach this time around, which could conceivably hurt their hopes of staying at 53 seats.

• Tonight’s Preview: Tonight’s something of a small palate-cleanser in between the meaty primaries of last Tuesday and next Tuesday. The main event is WV-01, where there are competitive primaries on both sides of the aisle. Most of the attention is focused on the Democratic side, though, where Rep. Alan Mollohan could be the first House incumbent to get bounced out this cycle. Despite already being rather conservative, he’s been challenged from the right by state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who’s attacking Mollohan over not fighting hard enough against cap and trade, and for his earmarking. Both camps have released internal polls giving them the lead. On the GOP side, there’s a three-way fight between the establishment fave, former state Rep. and state GOP chair David McKinley, former state Sen. Sarah Minear, and businessman Mac Warner. Warner has gotten nailed for tax liens on his businesses, but may benefit from the infighting between the two others. Polls in WV close at 7:30 pm ET.

The special election to replace Nathan Deal in GA-09 is also tonight. With Democrats a non-factor in this R+28 district, but a crowded field of various Republicans, the likeliest outcome is a June 8 runoff between the top two conservative Republicans, most likely former state Rep. Tom Graves (the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks pick) and former state Sen. Lee Hawkins (who seems to generate less enthusiasm on the ground but who has some geographical advantages). TheUnknown285 also points out a handful of other legislative special elections in Georgia today, all of which are very unlikely to change hands; the most interesting may be in SD-42, where Jimmy Carter’s grandson may be able to take over a blue seat in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Finally, two other things you might watch, if you want to get way down in the weeds: Nebraska is the only other state with regularly scheduled primaries for today, although the only one worth a look is the GOP side in NE-02, where Rep. Lee Terry faces a teabagger with some money, Matt Sakalosky. Terry is likely to win, but the margin will be worth watching, as he’s one of the Dems’ few offense targets this year. And New Jersey has a host of mayoral elections today. The big name here is Newark’s Cory Booker, expected to face no trouble with re-election; an open seat in Trenton may provide some interest, though.

UPDATE: Marcus in comments points out a big miss on my part: the state Senate seat in Massachusetts left vacant by Scott Brown is up for special election tonight, too. (Rather than a boring number, it has a name: “Norfolk, Bristol, and Middlesex.” Still not quite as mellifluous as a lot of the British constituencies that we all got a crash course in last week though… especially “Vale of Glamorgan.”) Democratic physician Peter Smulowitz (a netroots fave who won an upset in the primary) faces off against GOP state Rep. Richard Ross. There’s also a safe blue seat up tonight that will shortly belong to Dem Sal DiDomenico.

• NH-Sen: It looks like those missing Kelly Ayotte e-mails, which are at the center of the growing questions surrounding the collapse of Financial Resources Mortgage and what the AG’s office did (or didn’t) do, may be retrievable after all via backup systems. State legislative hearings into the matter are beginning on Friday, so this issue could get bigger in coming weeks.

• NY-Sen, NY-Gov (pdf): Marist has a slew of data out of New York, all of it good for the Dems. Kirsten Gillibrand breaks 50% against all of her GOP contenders, leading Joe DioGuardi 50-30, Bruce Blakeman 52-28, and David Malpass 52-28. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary at 31, to 13 for Blakeman and 12 for Malpass. Chuck Schumer also has little trouble with his one announced opponent, Jay Townsend; he leads 66-27. On the gubernatorial side, Andrew Cuomo wins just as convincingly. He leads Rick Lazio 65-25, Steve Levy 63-25, and Carl Paladino 67-22.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): Today’s Muhlenberg tracker sustains the Joe Sestak lead over Arlen Specter, at 47-43. In the gubernatorial race, Anthony Williams seems to be emerging as the closest rival to Dan Onorato; Onorato still has a big edge, though, leading Williams 33-15 with Joe Hoeffel at 10 and Jack Wagner at 9. Word is that Franklin & Marshall will also have a poll out tomorrow giving Sestak the edge. Barack Obama appears in the newest TV ad on Specter’s behalf, but it sounds less likely that Obama, always careful about overextending his political capital, will be actually showing up to campaign for Specter. Finally, if you haven’t already, it’s worth a look at Chris Bowers‘ analysis of Specter vs. Sestak on general election electability (as you might expect, it boils down to Specter being universally-known and Sestak having the upside).

• UT-Sen: Bob Bennett still isn’t ruling out a write-in candidacy in November, and will continue to weigh his options. Bob, for what it’s worth, everyone here at SSP agrees that a write-in candidacy would be pure awesome.

• WA-Sen: Some more investment sleaze-by-association for Dino Rossi. He was one of the initial investors who established the Eastside Commercial Bank in 2001, a bank that’s currently teetering on the edge after the FDIC required it to raise another $3 million in the wake unsound lending practices. He didn’t have any managerial control over the bank, but it’s one more paper cut for Rossi.

• CT-Gov: Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy announced his running mate choice today: state Comptroller Nancy Wyman. Rival Ned Lamont chose Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman (Malloy’s 2006 running mate) last week.

• OR-Gov, OR-Sen: SurveyUSA is out with a whole new gubernatorial primary poll (the one that got released last week was taken nearly a month ago; I’m not sure what the delay was about). Although the number of undecideds is dropping, the margins between the candidates is staying pretty much the same. For the Dems, John Kitzhaber is leading Bill Bradbury 59-25. On the GOP side, Chris Dudley leads Allen Alley 42-24 (while hopeless third and fourth wheels John Lim and Bill Sizemore are at 8 each). They also threw in Senate primary numbers, finding that Ron Wyden is pulling in 80% against some nobodies on the Dem side while the GOP side is a big question mark. Law professor Jim Huffman (the establishment’s choice to be sacrificial lamb) is at 20, while some dude Tom Stutzman isn’t that far behind at 13.

• FL-02: Here’s a race that wasn’t on anyone’s competitive list that’s suddenly bursting into view. An NRCC internal poll (by the Tarrance Group) that’s from mid-April but just got leaked to Chris Cillizza has no-name funeral home director Steve Southerland leading Rep. Allen Boyd, and not just squeaking it out, but up by a 52-37 margin. Boyd has a huge cash edge ($1.5 mil to Southerland’s $157K), although he’ll need to spend some first fighting a primary challenge against Al Lawson.

• HI-01: With news that the DCCC is pulling out, and polls giving a small but consistent edge to Charles Djou in the f’d-up jungle-style special election, SSP is moving our rating of this race to “Leans Republican” from “Tossup.”

• MI-01: Amidst all the hullaballoo over Connie Saltonstall’s dropout yesterday (wait, what’s the opposite of “hullaballoo?” how about “yawning?”), we missed another detail in the Democratic primary to succeed Bart Stupak: so too did Matt Gillard. That leaves state Rep. Gary McDowell as the only candidate left in the field, on this the last day of Michigan filings. That was easy.

• MN-06: We at SSP love us some taxes, but we’re also big fans of a certain something called “optics,” and state Senate DFLers created a mammoth screwup that, appearance-wise, really harms Taryl Clark’s chances against Michele Bachmann. Clark got stuck holding the Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky bag after she wound up casting the deciding vote in favor of a deficit-closing package that includes an income tax increase, after the vote was held open for her for 20 minutes deadlocked at 33-33. It may be a moot point as Tim Pawlenty has promised to veto, but still… (In her defense, Clark says she was delayed by a phone call with her son’s doctor.)

• NJ-03: Jon Runyan is getting accused of a “Rose Garden” strategy of campaigning in the GOP primary, sitting still and trading on his inevitability instead of, y’know, actually going out and debating with conservative opponent Justin Murphy. The John Adler camp is noticing too, and is out with their own “Where’s Jon?” video.

• RI-01: There’s a third contender in the Democratic primary to take over the 1st from retiring Rep. Patrick Kennedy. State Rep. David Segal is getting into the race, joining Providence mayor David Cicilline and former state Dem party chair William Lynch.

• WA-03: You keep hearing from Beltway media that state Rep. Jaime Herrera is the person to beat in the GOP primary for this open seat, but other than ex-Sen. Slade Gorton and her ex-boss, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, I’m hard-pressed to think of any endorsements of consequence for her. David Castillo has lined up most of the local support within the 3rd, and now he got endorsements from a variety of local leaders in the evangelical community, including Joe Fuiten (probably the most prominent Christian right leader in Washington) and ex-Rep. Randy Tate (who briefly led the national Christian Coalition after getting bounced out of office).

• WI-07: Here’s another primary in the north woods where the Dems seem to have coalesced and it’s all over but the shouting. At the same time as state Sen. Julie Lassa was officially announcing that she’d run to succeed retiring Rep. David Obey, fellow state Sens. Russ Decker and Pat Kreitlow announced they wouldn’t run. Perhaps making the difference: Lassa’s seat isn’t up for re-election this year, so it’s a freebie for her, while Decker and Kreitlow’s seats are up. With Dems holding an 18-15 margin in the Senate and the GOP on the offensive, it’s the safe choice not to open up seats in the Senate too.

• NRSC: Hmmm, speaking of optics, the NRSC is hosting an “intimate” (Hotline’s words; I don’t know if that’s how the NRSC billed it) fundraiser with the under-investigation John Ensign as host. No word yet on whether anyone plans to show up.

• DE-AG: Best wishes for a quick recovery to Beau Biden, who’s currently hospitalized today after a minor stroke. The 41-year-old Biden, who passed on a Senate race this year, is expected to fully recover.

• FL-Sen: That bell is tolling pretty loudly for Charlie Crist right about now, although it’s unclear today whether it spells a switch to an independent Senate bid (keep your fingers crossed) or an exit (if only temporarily) from politics. Crist’s camp has pulled all of its GOP-primary-related ads from Florida television. Florida junior Senator/Crist errand boy George LeMieux is downplaying this, saying no switch is imminent, but the NRSC is leaning on Crist even more heavily than before, trying to disabuse their endorsee of the idea of an indie bid.

• IN-Sen: I wonder if this will boost John Hostettler with his fundraising by hooking him up with a national base, or if he’s going to be more Peter Schiff than Rand Paul in the end? The former Rep., in his run for the GOP nomination in Indiana, now has the endorsement of Rep. Ron Paul, bringing together two of the very few GOPers to vote against the Iraq War. Meanwhile, state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, the dark-horse third-wheel in the GOP derby, is hitting the TV airwaves with an introductory ad, banking much of his small warchest on getting his name rec out of the basement with the primary only weeks away.

• KS-Sen: Rep. Mike Pence weighed in on the GOP field in Kansas, endorsing Rep. Todd Tiahrt over fellow Rep. Jerry Moran. There’s something of a social/fiscal conservative split on this race, where social conservatives love Tiahrt but fiscal hawks don’t, based on his long career on the goodie-doling Appropriations Committee. If nothing else, it’s interesting to see Pence, who tries to have a foot in each camp, choose sides, as he gears up for a possible presidential bid. Meanwhile, Moran is going up with his first TV spot, with a big buy in the Kansas City market.

• KY-Sen: More tasty cat fud in Kentucky, where Rudy Giuliani just endorsed Trey Grayson and, in doing so, slammed the bejesus out of Rand Paul on the 9/11 front, saying that Grayson “is not part of the ‘blame America first’ crowd that wants to bestow the rights of U.S. citizens on terrorists and point fingers at America for somehow causing 9/11.” Just the kind of softening-up of Paul we need for the general election.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Siena’s latest poll of the Empire State doesn’t contain any big surprises; even David Paterson’s 17/83 job rating isn’t that surprising anymore. In their first look at the post-George Pataki Senate landscape, they find that Kirsten Gillibrand is cruising against all of her seemingly interchangeable third-tier opposition; she beats Joe DioGuardi 46-27, Bruce Blakeman 46-26, and David Malpass 46-24. DioGuardi, apparently with the name rec that comes with a celebrity daughter (or maybe it’s from the two terms in Congress in the 1980s), has the edge in a Pataki-free GOP primary, winning with 24 to 7 for Blakeman and 5 for Malpass. On the gubernatorial side, Andrew Cuomo fares even better than Gillibrand, beating Rick Lazio 61-24, Steve Levy 58-23, and Carl Paladino 64-19. Lazio still has the edge in the GOP primary, at 29 with 15 for Levy and 13 for Paladino.

• WA-Sen: Strange that it takes a foul-mouthed blogger to notice the clues that Dino Rossi isn’t running that the Beltway press seems oblivious to. Goldy notices that minor candidate Chris Widener, another personal friend of Rossi, is saying the same thing as state Sen. Don Benton: if he’s running, why the hell isn’t he doing me the favor of calling me up and telling me to get out of the way? (Well, maybe because he’s a jerk?) Even more telling is that another minor GOP candidate, former NFL player Clint Didier, has commercial real estate mogul Kemper Freeman (one of Rossi’s big-name donors and a major insider player in the state GOP), as his campaign chair.

• FL-Gov: I’m wondering if Bill McCollum’s lead role in the pursuit of the GOP AGs’ lawsuit over HCR is suddenly taking a toll on him (voters are opposed to the suit by a 54-40 margin), or if Quinnipiac got an unusually Dem-friendly sample (it’s the same one that found Kendrick Meek with 4 of Marco Rubio in a head-to-head, and Obama gets a 48/46 approval). Either way, Quinnipiac has the nicest numbers we’ve seen out of the Florida gubernatorial race in a while. McCollum leads Democratic state CFO Alex Sink by just 40-36. McCollum leads state Sen. Paula Dockery 56-7 in the GOP primary; Sink leads Dockery 37-28.

• MD-Gov: Usually when a heavyweight jumps into the field, the random odds and ends get out, but the opposite happened in Maryland. Shortly after Bob Ehrlich got in, little-known rich guy Brian Murphy just announced his candidacy today. Murphy will be running against Ehrlich from the right and has the support of former state GOP chair James Pelura. Murphy also got a vote of confidence from former state Del. Carmen Amedori, who dropped her long-shot bid against Barbara Mikulski to sign on as Murphy’s Lt. Governor running mate.

• CA-36: At the state convention, incumbent Rep. Jane Harman managed to ward off Marci Winograd’s attempts to deny Harman the state party’s endorsement. After a floor fight, Harman won the endorsement with a 599-417 vote. The two will still face off in the Democratic primary (in a rematch of 2006).

• GA-09: Here’s a problem for Georgia Dems: they lost their only candidate in the 9th, pastor Mike Freeman. His name will still remain on the ballot for the May 11 special election to replace Nathan Deal, but he leaves behind a hole for the general election. Not that the absence of a Dem in this R+28 district would be noticed much, though.

• MA-09: Rep. Stephen Lynch has dodged a primary challenge so far, following his vote against HCR, but it seems like organized labor has found a candidacy that might stick. Mac d’Alessandro, a regional director for the SEIU, says he’ll take a shot at Lynch in the Democratic primary, although he has only a couple weeks to round up the necessary 2,000 signatures.

• MN-01: The Republicans had their endorsement convention for the 1st District and gave their nod to state Rep. Randy Demmer. While Demmer is hardly anyone’s idea of a moderate, he’s less polarizing than his main rival, former state Rep. Allen Quist (a Michele Bachmann ally). Quist sounds like he’ll honor the endorsement and not run in the primary.

• MN-02: On the Dem side, though, former state Rep. Shelley Madore has decided to keep running in the primary even though the DFL endorsement went to Dan Powers.

• NH-01: In a surprise to almost no one, Sean Mahoney (who made a big show of quitting his committee position on the RNC recently, ostensibly to protest Michael Steele) announced that he’s going to run in the GOP primary in the 1st for the right to take on Rep. Carol Shea-Porter. The primary that looked like a victory lap for former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta last year is now a four-way bar brawl instead.

• NY-24: Rep. Mike Arcuri is, all of a sudden, sounding kind of Stupak-ish in the wake of his getting bruised by all ends of the spectrum after his ill-advised ‘yes’ to ‘no’ switch on HCR; he won’t commit to running for re-election just yet. Either he’s particularly thin-skinned and vindictive about getting his widdle feewings hurt, or he’s looking at some particularly unappetizing polling numbers, especially if the Working Families Party runs someone against him.

• Special elections/Runoffs: Believe it or not, it’s a busy election night tonight. Top of the list is the special election in FL-19, where the successor to Robert Wexler will be chosen. In this D+15 district in the more middle-class parts of the Gold Coast, the Democrat, state Sen. Ted Deutch, is heavily favored. The parties haven’t gotten involved, and Republican Ed Lynch (who lost a lopsided decision to Wexler in 2008) is hamstrung by the presence of independent right-wing candidate Jim McCormick.

It’s runoff day in Texas, with almost all the action on the GOP side. TX-17, between self-funder Bill Flores and 2008 candidate Rob Curnock, and TX-23, between self-funder Quico Canseco and ex-CIA agent William Hurd, are the marquee races as far as the U.S. House goes. There are also some GOP runoffs in some state House races, an interesting mixed bag of open seat succession races, teabaggish challenges to GOP incumbents, and challenges to vulnerable Dems. Finally, there’s a culture war clash between just-very conservative and super-duper conservative in two statewide contests: one for the Supreme Court (with Rick Green, the former state Rep. known for punching the guy who beat him in 2002, representing Team Crazy), and one for the Board of Education (between Marsha Farney and Brian Russell, with Russell the movement conservative here).

Finally, there’s some state legislature action in Massachusetts, California, and Florida. Primaries for two state Senate seats are in Massachusetts, the ones held by now-Sen. Scott Brown and now-disgraced Anthony Gallucio. This is the de facto election in Gallucio’s dark-blue seat, seeing as how no Republicans are running, but the winner between state Rep. Lida Harkins and doctor Peter Smulowitz in the Dem primary will face off against GOP state Rep. Richard Ross on May 11 to succeed Brown. In California, there are two legislative specials; using the California system, each one will likely head to a runoff (unless someone in the cluttered fields breaks 50%). Both seats will likely turn out to be holds: SD-37 is in Republican exurban Riverside County, while AD-43 is in Democratic Glendale in LA County. And in the Florida Panhandle, dark-red HD-04 should be an easy Republican hold.

• AR-Sen: Looks like Blanche Lincoln picked the wrong week to stop acting like a Democrat. She got seriously outraised by Bill Halter in the first quarter, earning $1.3 million (Halter got $2 mil). She also spent more than she earned, running a blitz of TV ads, probably to the tune of $2 million, as her cash on hand dropped $700K –although it’s still a high $4.7 million. Still no word yet from the race’s key Republicans.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina filled in the last blank in the California Senate race; her fundraising total for the first quarter was $1.7 million, edging out Tom Campbell (who pulled in $1.6 million). Both GOPers lagged Barbara Boxer’s $2.4 million.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is still trying to find something that’ll stick to Marco Rubio, and he’s trying again to link ex-state House speaker Rubio to some of the other less savory elements among legislative leadership. He’s up with a new ad trying Rubio to another former speaker, Ray Sansom, who’s currently under indictment for charges of falsifying state budget items.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias is lagging Mark Kirk on the cash front; he raised $1.2 million last quarter, compared with Kirk’s $2.2 million. Giannoulias didn’t release cash on hand figures, which may not be too impressive either considering that he had to fight through a competitive primary.

• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP looked at the primaries only in the North Carolina Senate race (they’re on May 4). On the Dem side, former state Sen. Cal Cunningham is still within striking distance of SoS Elaine Marshall; she leads Cunningham 23-17, with Kenneth Lewis at 9 and 5% for assorted minor candidates. (Last month, Marshall led Cunningham and Lewis 20-16-11.) On the GOP side, Richard Burr is at 67%, with his closest competition, Brad Jones, at 7.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Quinnipiac finds a lot of same-ol’-same-ol’ in the Empire State: Andrew Cuomo crushing, and Kirsten Gillibrand crushing anyone non-Pataki. Gillibrand trails non-candidate George Pataki 45-40 but leads actual candidate Bruce Blakeman 47-25 (none of the other third-tier GOPers get polled); she’s also sporting her highest-ever approvals, at 47/25. (Pataki beats Blakeman in a GOP primary, 64-15.) On the Governor’s side, Rick Lazio is still poised to be GOP nominee; he leads Steve Levy and Carl Paladino 34-11-11 (note that the poll was in the field prior to the whole bestiality thing). Andrew Cuomo dispatches Lazio 55-26, Levy 57-24, and Paladino 60-24.

• OH-Sen: I’d assumed Lee Fisher had been on the air before, but he’s just now launching his first TV spots of his campaign with the primary only weeks away (apparently marshaling his resources for the general). Fisher also pulled down the endorsement of Cleveland mayor Frank Johnson, although he didn’t gain the backing of his own home town’s Democratic party (in Shaker Heights), which instead declined to endorse.

• PA-Sen: Here’s a bit of a surprise: Joe Sestak succeeded in his ballot challenge, getting last-minute conservadem entrant Joe Vod Varka kicked out of the Democratic primary, setting up a two-man fight against Arlen Specter. If Sestak’s going to have any hope of knocking off Specter, he’ll need to consolidate every anti-Specter vote (and also not have the Slovak-American vote — a big segment in western Pennsylvania — split).

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold had a successful fundraising quarter, considering right now he’s only running against the specter of Tommy Thompson. Feingold earned $1.34 million, leaving him with $4.26 million CoH.

• FL-Gov: Rick Scott has decided, rather belatedly, to throw his hat in the ring in the Republican field in the Governor’s race. If the name’s familiar, he’s a former hospital-industry businessman who funded much of the initial anti-HCR astroturfing efforts via his organization Conservatives for Patient Rights. He’s sound teabaggish themes about establishment candidate AG Bill McCollum (despite McCollum taking the lead on the GOP AGs’ anti-HCR lawsuit). Considering that state Sen. Paula Dockery is already trying to run against McCollum from the right and getting no traction, it’s hard to see Scott going anywhere with this, though.

• NM-Gov: Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, the lone Dem in the race, is dominating the fundraising front; she raised $1.1 million in the six-month reporting period and has $2.6 million CoH. Among the GOPers, former state party chair Allen Weh leads both in money raised ($691K, although $500K was a personal loan) and CoH ($544K). Dona Ana County DA Susana Martinez raised $428K and sits on $364K CoH.

• PA-Gov: Here’s a blow to, well, everybody in the Democratic field; after not being able to find two-thirds support for anybody, the AFL-CIO won’t be endorsing any particular candidate in the Dem primary. Former Philadephia city controller Jonathan Saidel got their Lt. Gov. endorsement.

• AL-05: Party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith (most recently in the news for forgetting his party-switch and billing the DCCC for expenditures) surprised his GOP primary opponents at a debate by asking them sign a unity pledge that the losers of the primary would campaign for the winner in November. No thanks, said both Mo Brooks and Les Philip.

• DE-AL: Looks like wealthy self-funder Michelle Rollins, the NRCC’s preferred recruit in the race, has some competition on the big bucks front in the GOP primary. Real estate developer Glen Urquhart just announced that he has $512K in his account (of course, $500K of that came from his own pocket).

• FL-08: Alan Grayson had another big fundraising quarter, thanks in large part to netroots moneybombing (especially his March event which brought in $500K). He raised $803K in the last three months, bringing his CoH total to $1.5 million (along with the possibility of writing checks to himself).

• HI-01: CQ has an interesting piece on HI-01 that focuses primarily on just how difficult it is (especially for “mainland” pollsters) to poll in Hawaii. With only two polls of this race having seen light of day so far, the main takeaway may be that anyone’s guess is as good as mine where the race stands.

• MI-01: One of the top Republicans on everyone’s candidate list for the newly-opened seat in MI-01 has said that he won’t run. State House minority leader Kevin Elsenheimer said he won’t run, even though he’s termed out of the House and needs something else to do. (Elsenheimer, from the Traverse City area, is disadvantaged by not coming from the Upper Peninsula portion of the district.)

• MS-04: Here’s one other eye-catching fundraising note: a Dem incumbent who got outraised by Republican opposition previously considered inconsequential. Rep. Gene Taylor raised $41K and has $221K CoH, while GOP state Rep. Steven Palazzo raised $125K and has at least $100K CoH. Let’s hope Taylor doesn’t hit the “snooze” button for another quarter. National Journal’s latest fundraising outline also has noteworthy numbers from Charlie Dent (PA-15), Dan Debicella (CT-04), and Rick Crawford (AR-01).

• Redistricting: With the Fair Districts redistricting initiative seeming destined to make the ballot in Florida, now the Republican-controlled legislature is trying to get its own redistricting initiative on the ballot, in an apparent effort to clarify (or gut) the Fair Districts proposals. The Senate’s proposal deals with the thorny questions of VRA-mandated districts and communities of interest, which aren’t addressed in satisfactory manner by the original initiatives, which forbid designing districts in a manner that is favorable to one party or the other.

• Demographics: Josh Goodman has an interesting look at population change in Texas, similar to some work we’ve done at SSP over the last few years; he finds that while Texas’s largest counties are becoming swingier, its fastest-growing counties are still pretty solidly Republican (although the growth in these counties is in demographics that aren’t likely Republican). Of course, the parts of the state that are becoming less and less of the state, percentage-wise — the rural parts — have become even more conservative than the fast-growing exurbs, so in a way that’s progress too.

• CA-Sen: Republican Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is still lagging in the single digits in polling, but prominent conservatives keep coming to his aid. He just got the endorsement of libertarian-minded Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake, and also of the Tea Party Express (the corporate wing of the teabaggers’ movement).

• DE-Sen: “Repeal!” of HCR has become the rallying cry for almost every Republican candidate for federal office lately, but Rep. Mike Castle has stood out from the crowd with his reluctance, saying repeal is not “realistic.” Now that’s turning into an issue in his GOP primary, where his far-right opponent, marketing consultant and occasional Fox News contributor Christine O’Donnell, is accusing him of “breaking faith” with Delaware voters by not supporting it. A few other of the more sensible GOPers running in blue states, like Rob Simmons and Tom Campbell, are also keeping repeal at arms-length.

• FL-Sen: Good news for Charlie Crist, I suppose: Mason-Dixon has polled the GOP primary, and they find that he’s losing to Marco Rubio by a mere 11 points (much less than a number of other pollsters, ranging from Rasmussen to R2K, have found): 48-37. Crist leads Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek 50-26, while Rubio leads Meek 44-29, although half of respondents didn’t know who Meek was. Meanwhile, you might have forgotten (as I often did) that ex-New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith was, as far as he was concerned, in the GOP primary as well. Well, not anymore: Smith shuttered his campaign today, citing (big surprise) fundraising problems.

• WA-Sen: If there’s one group that should be getting behind Dino Rossi’s possible Senate candidacy, it’s the Washington Association of Realtors. Not only are they a usually conservative-leaning organization with close ties to the builders’ lobby, but also Rossi is one of them: his day job is real estate salesperson. So, hot on the heels of yesterday’s R2K poll, here’s another problem Rossi needs to seriously contemplate: WAR just endorsed Patty Murray.

• CA-Gov: Remember Pete Wilson? The former Governor is largely responsible for turning the California Republican Party’s name into mud, among Latinos, in the 1990s with his support for anti-immigrant Proposition 187 — a decision that may have had short-term benefits but has turned into a long-term disaster as the state’s demographics change. The California Accountability Project is shining the spotlight back on Wilson in his new job: campaign chair for Meg Whitman.

• MI-Gov: Um, no. Just no. Mop-topped attorney Geoffrey Fieger is best known for his defense of Jack Kevorkian, but he also somehow wound up with the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial nomination and went on to lose to John Engler by a 62-38 margin after a slew of bone-headed remarks. Fieger now says he’s considering another run at the Democratic nomination.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Marist has a new poll of the New York gubernatorial race, finding that party-switching Suffolk Co. Executive Steven Levy is in for a rude reception from the GOP. He’s losing the primary to ex-Rep. Rick Lazio, 53-21. Andrew Cuomo dispatches either one, 61-30 against Lazio or 65-26 against Levy. Meanwhile, the saga of David Paterson (with a 16/80 job rating according to Marist) keeps getting sadder/weirder/yuckier, with a NYT article today about his attempts to secure an endorsement from the woman involved in a domestic dispute with one of his top aides.

• TN-Gov: The GOP side in the gubernatorial race shrank today, with the withdrawal of Shelby County DA Bill Gibbons from the race. He had the advantage of being the only western Tennessee candidate in the primary, but he never got very far on the fundraising front. Meanwhile, among what’s left of the Democratic field, beer baron Mike McWherter just got an endorsement from Memphis’s new mayor, A.C. Wharton. McWherter’s only remaining Dem opponent is former state House majority leader Kim McMillan.

• AR-03, PA-07: Mike Huckabee offered up two different endorsements, one right on his home turf. He endorsed former state Rep. Doug Matayo in the open seat race to succeed John Boozman in the dark-red 3rd. The other place seems kind of odd: endorsing ostensibly moderate Pat Meehan in the Dem-leaning, heavily Catholic, decidedly non-Southern-fried PA-07.

• HI-01: The final candidate list for the May 22 all-mail special election in the 1st is out. The only three candidates of consequence are, as expected, Colleen Hanabusa and Ed Case for the Dems, and Charles Djou for the GOP. With the winner-takes-all nature, minor candidates may weigh heavily on the outcome, but there’s a pretty even split with three extra no-name Democrats and four extra GOPers, as well as four independents.

• KS-03: Stephene Moore, the wife of retiring Rep. Dennis Moore, backed off slightly from reports yesterday that she was entering the race to succeed him. She said that she was going to continue thinking about it and would have a formal statement soon. Chris Cillizza has sources, though, who say it’s a done deal.

• IL-LG: It sounds like Pat Quinn has settled on something of an outsider (albeit one with a famous family name) for his Lt. Governor running mate: Sheila Simon, the daughter of former Sen. (and former LG) Paul Simon. She’s a law professor at Southern Illinois Univ., whose only political experience seems to be losing a race for Carbondale mayor. State Sen. Susan Garrett appears to have been bypassed over not supporting Quinn’s income tax plan, which Simon supports. Meanwhile, supporters of African-American Rep. Art Turner are warning of depressed black turnout in November if Quinn doesn’t opt for Turner instead.

• RNC: A decision from the trial-level U.S. District Court in Washington DC was a fundraising setback for the RNC, which wanted to be able to raise unlimited soft money from corporations and individuals but didn’t receive the green light to do so.

• CA-Sen: Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell is getting an endorsement that may boost his cred with the socially conservative right: from the man who couldn’t even beat Gray Davis, Bill Simon. Simon hopes socially conservative voters will still take a look at Campbell’s fiscal credentials.

• IN-Sen: Retiring Evan Bayh hasn’t said anything specific about what he’s doing with his gigantic $13 million federal war chest. But a spokesperson gives some hints: “What he has said is that you can expect him to help the Democratic Senate nominee in Indiana and to help like-minded Democrats – people who want to get things done, who are practical and who want to reach out and forge principled compromises.”

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway is pointing out an important ideological fracture line, which seems to have gotten little media attention in the Democratic primary in the Bluegrass State. Conway says he supports the health care legislation passed yesterday, while Dan Mongiardo has previously said he’d “throw it out and start over.”

• NH-Sen: Speaking of HCR, Kelly Ayotte was quick to abandon her previous flavorless, position-less campaign and get on the “repeal!” bandwagon. With Paul Hodes having been a “yes” in the House, this may become one of the marquee issues in this race, and by extension, the battle for the Senate.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has a new poll out of the Empire State which includes a couple head-to-heads in the Senate race. They just won’t let up on the George Pataki front, finding that he leads Gillibrand 45-39 in a hypothetical race, while Gillibrand leads actual candidate Bruce Blakeman 48-24. There are a couple other names on the “actual” candidate front they might want to try out instead — Joe DioGuardi and David Malpass — and now it looks like one more is poised to get in. Dan Senor apparently has enough Wall Street support behind him to go ahead and launch his bid. One other name who’s now saying she won’t run, though, is former Lt. Gov. and malfunctioning health insurer spokesbot Betsy McCaughey, who it turns out is backing Malpass.

• MI-Gov (pdf): It turns out there was a lot more meat to that Insider Michigan Politics/Marketing Resource Group poll than what got leaked on Friday. They also looked at the Democratic primary, finding state House speaker Andy Dillon in charge at 21, followed by Lansing mayor Virg Bernero at 9 and state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith at 6. They also did a whole bunch of general election permutations, all of which were won by the GOPers by suspiciously large margins (at least when compared with other recent polls): Mike Bouchard over Dillon 41-26, Mike Cox over Dillon 44-27, Peter Hoekstra over Dillon 43-27, Rick Snyder over Dillon 42-26, Bouchard over Bernero 45-23, Cox over Bernero 45-26, Hoekstra over Bernero 43-27, and Snyder over Bernero 44-24.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Naturally, Siena also has a gubernatorial half to its poll. They find newly-minted Republican Steve Levy’s entry to the field to be rather unwelcome: ex-Rep. Rick Lazio is beating him 45-16 in the GOP primary. Either way, Democratic AG Andrew Cuomo (with a 63/22 approval) seems to have little to worry about; in November, Cuomo beats Lazio and Libertarian candidate Warren Redlich 59-21-3, while beating Levy and Redlich 63-16-4.

• OH-Gov: John Kasich is still reaching out to teabagger nation as his core of backers, and consistent with that, he’s having Fox gabber Sean Hannity host a Cincinnati fundraiser for him on April 15. I sure hope Kasich gets a bigger cut of the proceeds than Hannity’s military charity recipients seem to.

• OR-Gov: The last big union left to endorse in the Democratic gubernatorial primary finally weighed in, and Oregon’s AFSCME went with ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber rather than ex-SoS Bill Bradbury, who’d gotten the teachers’ union endorsements. The AFSCME also endorsed newly appointed Treasurer Ted Wheeler in his primary bid against state Sen. Rick Metsger, and also, in an unusual step, endorsed two Republican state Reps. in rural eastern Oregon who voted “yes” on raising income taxes, probably figuring that non-wingnut GOPers is probably the best we’re going to do in those districts.

• LA-02: Republican Rep. Joe Cao probably ended any hopes of hanging onto his dark-blue (and 21.7% uninsured) seat by voting against health care reform yesterday, but just in order to emphasize the way in which he slammed the door shut on himself, he also compared abortion as a moral evil comparable to slavery. Because that’s a comparison just bound to go over well in his black-majority district.

• MA-10: Former Republican state Treasurer (from the 1990s) Joe Malone made it official: he’s running in the 10th to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Bill Delahunt. He’ll still have to get past state Rep. Jeff Perry in the GOP primary, though.

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi and Doug Pike traded union endorsements in their Dem primary battle in the 6th. Trivedi got the backing of the Iron Workers local, while Pike got the nod from the local AFSCME.

• PA-12: Bill Russell seems like he just can’t take a hint, despite the GOP uniting behind Tim Burns. Russell says he’ll write himself in for the special election between Burns and Democrat Mark Critz, in addition to continuing to contest the same-day GOP primary against Burns. Meanwhile, the pro-life Critz’s main opponent remaining, Navy vet Ryan Bucchanieri, got an endorsement that ought to give him a financial boost, from the National Organization for Women.

• WV-01: We’ve heard rumors that the local Democratic establishment wasn’t very enthused about propping up Rep. Alan Mollohan, who faces both a credible primary challenge and a self-funding Republican opponent. Here’s some of the first public whiff of that: the state Democratic chair, Nick Casey, says he won’t be taking sides in the primary battle between Mollohan and state Sen. Mike Oliverio (although he did predict that Mollohan would be the eventual victor).

• Redistricting: Cillizza has a little more background on the Democrats’ efforts to gear up for the 2012 redistricting battles, which we discussed last week in terms of the DLCC’s efforts. The DGA is getting in on the act, too, with a Harold Ickes-led effort called Project SuRGe (for “Stop Republican Gerrymandering”), also focused on maximizing Dem control of state legislatures.

• Votes: Lots of slicing and dicing in the media today regarding who voted which way, and why, on yesterday’s historic health care reform vote. Nate Silver has a bunch of nice charts up, which show that district lean and Reps’ overall ideology was much more determinative than whether the Rep. is considered vulnerable in November in terms of a “yes” or “no” vote. And Some Dude over at Salon has a more concise look at Reps who most mismatched their districts with their votes. Finally, if you want to see the “(some) Dems are still doomed” conventional wisdom in full effect, they’ve got that in spades over at Politico.

• Passings: Our condolences to the Udall family, which lost family patriarch Stewart Udall over the weekend. Udall, 90, was Congressman from Arizona and then John F. Kennedy’s Interior Secretary, and many of our environmental protections that we take for granted today bear his stamp.

• $$$: The fundraising quarter is almost over, and Adam B. is opening up another round of “We’ve Got Your Backs” over at Daily Kos (and cross-posted here), dedicated to showing some (financial) love to the House Dems in the most difficult districts who did the right thing on health care reform.

KY-Sen: Mmm, I love a good R-on-R dogfight, especially when the less palatable Republican has the upper hand. Trey Grayson, way behind in the polls to insurgent nut-winger Rand Paul, is getting the “weirdo” meme started nice and early, planting the seed that will compromise Paul’s electability in a general election. In a new ad, Grayson accuses Paul of having “weird ideas” on foreign policy that include the shut-down of Guantanamo and the deportation of “Al-Qaeda terrorists back to their home countries”. Paul has fired back with an ad of his own, accusing Grayson of supporting Bill Clinton in the ’90s and — gasp! — “issuing a welcoming statement” to Barack Obama after his inauguration. (JL)

NY-Sen-B: This isn’t really new news, I guess, since his name had already been floated. But it looks like GOPers in NY and elsewhere are putting increased pressure on former deputy White House Press Secretary Dan Senor to jump into the race against Kirsten Gillibrand. Personally, I love the idea of a former Bushbot running statewide in NY.

NY-Gov: AG Andrew Cuomo wisely handed off his investigation of Gov. David Paterson’s alleged misdeeds to an independent counsel, in this case the universally respected former chief judge of the state of New York, Judith Kaye. Speaking of which, how come no one is talking impeachment? New York law provides for it, even if it hasn’t been done in a hundred years.

MN-06: Alert! Alert! Crazybomb set to detonate in Minnesota on April 7! Sarah Palin to stump for Michele Bachmann! TAKE COVER!!!

PA-12: Republican bigwigs have chosen businessman Tim Burns as their candidate over 2008 nominee and BMW Direct frontman Bill Russell. The final vote was 85 Burns, 46 Russell, leading Russell to proclaim that “the fix was in.” While Burns is likely the strong candidate, the good news for Dems is that Russell vows to fight on, insisting that “This is the Republican Party of PA, not the Communist Party of North Korea.” I love the smell of cat fud in the morning.

Polling: Nate Silver takes a look at the house effects of the five most prolific polling firms this cycle. (This includes blechy Internet pollster YouGov, though.) And here’s a bit of info that confirms something we probably all believed: Rasmussen, R2K and PPP account for two thirds of all public Senate polls conducted this cycle. I wish more pollsters (SUSA, for instance) would step up.

• AR-Sen: Like I always say, flip-flopping at every opportunity is the best way to win elections. Then:

Lincoln: I Will Fight Reconciliation as Tool to Achieve Health Insurance Reform

Now:

Asked twice whether she was wavering on her previous statements to vote against a reconciliation bill, Lincoln said: “I’ll wait to see what’s in it.”

Considering she already voted for healthcare reform in the first place, this actually is probably the better move for her, believe it or not. (D)

• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: More evidence that the teabaggers and assorted other movement conservative aren’t takin’ kindly to outsiders coming in and imposing Jane Norton on them. Norton lost a GOP straw poll to right-wing Weld County DA Ken Buck after a Denver candidate forum sponsored by the Tea Partiers and 9-12ers. Interestingly, no-name Dan Maes also triumphed over ex-Rep. Scott McInnis on the gubernatorial side.

• LA-Sen: Rep. Charlie Melancon is going on the offensive, having a lot of ground to make up against David Vitter if polls are any indication. He’s filed an ethics complaint against Vitter for having violated federal law by sending out fundraising appeals on official Senate letterhead.

• NY-Sen-B: Hardcore movement conservative and – get this – former chief economist for Bear Stearns (!!) David Malpass says he’s weighing a run against Kirsten Gillibrand, presumably as a Republican. Jonathan Chait hits all the high points as to how badly out-of-touch Malpass is, and Paul Krugman zings him for an especially good bit of moranocity. If I were Gillibrand, I think I’d love to go up against a mouthbreather like this. (D)

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter got a boost from labor, with an endorsement from the United Auto Workers. Also, speaking of Pennsylvania, check out my latest installment at Salon.com, where I used the disparate polling in PA-Sen as a means of introducing the non-SSP-reading masses to the idea of polling likely voters vs. registered voters.

• WA-Sen: It looks like the NRSC hasn’t given up on trying to lure Dino Rossi into the Senate race, as Rossi has confirmed having had a conversation with John Cornyn about it. Rossi continues to maintain a “never say never” attitude about it in the face of questions. The NRSC may also have a Plan B if Rossi says no, that’s an upgrade from their current top candidate, state Sen. Don Benton. They’re also interested in former news anchor Susan Hutchison. Despite presenting a somewhat moderate profile and the advantage of running without an “R” next to her name in the nonpartisan race, she still managed to rack up only 41% while losing November’s King County Executive race. (Still, that makes her only a one-time loser, compared with Rossi’s two strikes.) Hutchison says that she’s undecided, and she’ll wait for Rossi’s decision to make her own.

• IA-Gov: One other candidate who’s not faring so well in the straw poll venue, despite an overwhelming consensus from the political establishment, is ex-Gov. Terry Branstad. He just lost a quick succession of three different county-level straw polls to social conservative Bob Vander Plaats, and these aren’t dinky rural counties either. Vander Plaats cleaned up in Woodbury County (his home turf of Sioux City), while earning narrow victories in Story County (Davenport Ames) and Dallas County (Des Moines suburbs).

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo may not be a declared candidate for Governor just yet, but he’s certainly fundraising like one. His camp is planning to hold a high-priced fundraiser in DC on March 22nd with some high-powered Democratic money players in attendance. (JL) Some of David Paterson’s nosediving approvals may have rubbed off a bit on Cuomo, if Marist‘s new snap poll (pdf) is any indication: Cuomo’s approval is down to a relatively human 54/39. Paterson is at an appalling 19/79, but 68% say he might as well still serve out his term with 28% saying resign. Still trying to find an upgrade from the lackluster campaign of Rick Lazio to go up against Cuomo, the GOP is meeting with conservaDem Suffolk Co. Exec Steve Levy (who’s been mulling a run in the Democratic primary) to try and get him to switch over to the GOP line to run for Governor.

• DE-AL: Republicans may have found an upgrade in the Delaware at-large seat, which has pretty much already slipped out of their grasp but where they can at least force former Democratic Lt. Gov. John Carney to work for it. They’re courting philanthropist Michele Rollins, the widow of former Republican Lt. Gov. John Rollins (and a former Miss USA) who has access to her former husband’s personal fortune.

• LA-02: Rep. Joe Cao seems to have read yesterday’s big expose of BaseConnect (the former BMW Direct) at TPM, and it seems to have been the first time he’d learned that they’re up to no good. He just severed all ties with the group, who’ve been doing his fundraising for the last year (and skimming off almost all his proceeds, which explains his terrible burn rate). Does this mean that no one from the NRCC was giving him any guidance on how to raise funds? It doesn’t seem like the kind of scam an incumbent would ordinarily fall for.

• NY-23: Doug Hoffman’s made it official – he’s going to try to win the Republican, Conservative, and Independence Party nominations, “and unite them, as one team, to defeat the agenda of Nancy Pelosi and Bill Owens.” Sounds like someone has seen the Lord of the Rings movies a few times too many. This also seems a wee bit delusional, since of course most of the Independence Party quickly embraced Owens (who seems like a good fit for them) when Dede Scozzafava abandoned the race at the last moment. (D)

• NY-29: Strike two names from the list of potential Democratic candidates for the special election to replace crumb-bum Rep. Eric Massa. Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton has announced that she won’t run for the seat, as has Monroe County DA Mike Green. (JL) On the GOP side, state Sen. Cathy Young has also just declined.

• PA-12: Barbara Hafer continues to attack the manner in which former Murtha aide Mark Critz was selected as the Dem nominee for the May special election – and by extention the people behind the process. Several Dems have gone on record expressing their distaste for Hafer’s attacks, and state party chair T. J. Rooney thinks they contributed to her being passed over. (D)

• TN-03: Democrats seem to have found a willing candidate, finally, to fill the gap in the open seat in the R+13 3rd (which looked like a promising race while former Insurance Comm. Paula Flowers was in it). Brenda Short decided to take the plunge; she used to be a Hill aide long ago for former Rep. Marilyn Lloyd (whose 1994 retirement turned the seat over to Rep. Zach Wamp, who’s finally vacating the seat to run for Governor).

• OR-Treasurer, OR-04: In something of a surprise, Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler today got named as interim state Treasurer, in the wake of the unfortunate death of Ben Westlund. Wheeler will still need to run again in a special election to be held as part of the November 2010 ballot; he’s confirmed he’ll run in that election but will face at least two prominent Dems: retiring state Sen. Rick Metsger (well-known from his time as local sports anchor), who filed yesterday before Wheeler’s appointment, and former Treasurer (and 2006 gubernatorial primary contestant) Jim Hill. Adding to the general sense of chaos is that it’s the last day of filing in Oregon, meaning now people are piling into Wheeler’s vacant seat as well. Finally, it looks like, with Springfield mayor Sid Leiken’s departure, OR-04 Rep. Peter DeFazio will merely face Some Dude: home-schooling activist Art Robinson.

• West Virginia: One other state where the filing deadline has passed is West Virginia. Despite the state’s red-ward trend (and significant challenges to both its Dem Reps., Alan Mollohan and Nick Rahall), one area where the GOP doesn’t look poised to make much of any progress is the state legislature, already thoroughly dominated by Democrats. In fact, if the Republicans won every race in the state Senate where they managed to field a candidate, they still would come up short on controlling the chamber. In the state House, they managed to leave 27 seats uncontested.