Tag: Mark Kirk

• AR-Sen: The White House hasn’t given up on trying to put Blanche Lincoln over the top tomorrow; they’re out with a new Barack Obama robocall on her behalf, saying she’s “standing on the side of workers.” Greg Sargent’s head is busy exploding from all the logical disconnect, since Lincoln’s main argument is that Bill Halter’s union support is an indication of how he’s a tool of Beltway liberals.

• AZ-Sen: I know, I know, people pick up and move on from jobs all the time, and you shouldn’t read too much into it. But when your campaign manager and deputy campaign manager depart on the same day, in the middle of a dogfight against an insurgent primary opponent, it’s going to always send up red flags. John McCain’s camp maintains they weren’t fired but are moving over to the national GOP’s fundraising operations.

• CA-Sen: This isn’t a good time for Tom Campbell to be cutting back on advertising, with the June 8 GOP primary fast approaching and Carly Fiorina still within striking distance and pitching in a few million dollars of her own. He’s cutting back on TV ad buys for the campaign’s final two weeks (although certainly not going dark) and will be focusing on direct mail instead. This could mean he’s running low on money, feeling confident enough in the primary to start marshaling general election resources… or both.

• IL-Sen: I don’t know if it’s much of a sign of strength to release an internal poll that shows you tied, but it seems like the Alexi Giannoulias camp is eager to push back on the meme that he’s somehow been fatally wounded by the Broadway Bank saga. Greenberg Quinlan Rosner finds Giannoulias and Mark Kirk tied at 44-44. For comparison purposes, they also let it be known that their previous (unreleased) poll, immediately after the Feds’ seizure of the bank in late April, had Giannoulias in much worse shape, down 43-37, so it’s possible the worst of the damage has passed as the story slips down the memory hole.

• KY-Sen: Wow, turns out not only Democrats get to whine about Fox News’ selective treatment of the news. Trey Grayson is getting in on the act, griping about Rand Paul’s constant presence on the network and the softball questions he gets thrown. That’d be fine if he were, y’know, not trying to win the GOP primary, where questioning the almighty Fox is an act of heresy. (Ironically, at the same time Grayson was having his press conference to level the charges, Rand Paul was busy appearing on Fox.)

• CA-Gov: In the Fix endorsement hierarchy, this probably slots in as “12) The “Oh shit, do I have to accept this endorsement?” Endorsement.” Meg Whitman just got Dick Cheney’s endorsement, fittingly in an op-ed in the Orange County Register. Meanwhile, a new poll from M4 Strategies (on behalf of the Small Business Action Committee) finds Whitman in better shape than the last few polls have: they say she leads Steve Poizner 49-32.

• CT-Gov: Yet another pre-convention dropout, as the minor candidates jump out of the way. This time it was on the Republican side, as Danbury mayor Mark Boughton plans to pull the plug on his campaign and sign on as Lt. Governor Michael Fedele’s running mate.

• NM-Gov: The Albuquerque Journal polled the Republican gubernatorial primary, which, like many other primaries, has moved into “fast-approaching” territory (on June 1). They find a two-way duel at the top, between former state party chair Allen Weh and Dona Ana County DA Susana Martinez. Weh leads 31-30, while Pete Domenici Jr. has discovered that you’ve gotta have something more than name rec as a reason to run; he’s lagging at 10. Martinez was also the latest female politician to get the endorsement of Sarah Palin this week, so we’ll have to see if that gives her some momentum to break away.

• NV-Gov: Mason-Dixon, for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, also looked at the Republican gubernatorial primary in their most recent poll. (Recall they released the surprising results of Sue Lowden 30, Sharron Angle 25, Danny Tarkanian 22, John Chachas 3, and Chad Christensen 2 in the Senate primary last week.) They find, to no one’s surprise, that Jim Gibbons’ time is about done. Brian Sandoval leads the incumbent Gibbons, 45-27, with Mike Montandon clocking in at 6.

• OR-Gov: One more Republican gubernatorial primary, and this one actually is a surprise: while most pollsters (especially SurveyUSA) have given Chris Dudley a significant edge in Oregon, Eugene-based Lindholm says that Allen Alley is narrowly in the lead. Alley is ahead of Dudley 29-26, John Lim is at 10, and Bill Sizemore is at 4. One caveat: I’ve never heard of Lindholm before today, although they do maintain they aren’t working for any of the candidates in the race. At any rate, maybe there’s some potential for a surprise tomorrow.

• NY-13: Here’s some interesting cat fud in the primary in the 13th, where GOP state Sen. Andrew Lanza was seen going after GOP candidate Michael Grimm over campaigning at a Memorial Day event. Lanza had been associated with running for the seat himself, and says he’ll back ex-Rep. Vito Fossella in case the odd rumors about a comeback come true.

• NY-24: After refusing to commit to his re-election bid back in April after getting pressed from all sides on his HCR conduct, Dem Rep. Mike Arcuri announced today that he will indeed be seeking a third term. (J)

• OR-05: After some earlier suspicions that moderate state Rep. Scott Bruun, the NRCC’s preferred recruit, might not even get past teabagging businessman Fred Thompson (no, not the Fred Thompson), SurveyUSA polled the GOP primary and found that Bruun is very likely to prevail. Bruun leads Thompson 46-25, including 52-30 among the “already voted.”

• WV-01: Political scientist Boris Shor has attracted some good notices, at 538 and similar places, for his work on extrapolating DW-Nominate-type scores into the state legislatures. Looking at Mike Oliverio’s votes in the West Virginia state Senate (where he’s about as conservative as the average WV Senate Republican), Shor projects Oliverio as the most conservative Democratic member of the House, more so than even Walt Minnick.

• CfG: Speaking of Walt Minnick, he was one of only three Democrats to get the seal of good housekeeping from the Club for Growth. Minnick, Gene Taylor, and Bobby Bright all managed to break 50% on the CfG’s scoring system; in fact, Bright got up to 64% positive.

• Polltopia: PPP wants your input on where to poll next: California, Iowa, Michigan, South Carolina, or Washington? PPP’s Tom Jensen is also teasing that another NRSC-backed candidate is in some trouble, in a poll to be released tomorrow. Don’t leave us hanging, Tom!

Research 2000 for Markos Moulitsas’ Wonder Emporium (5/3-5, likely voters, 2/22-24):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 38 (43)

Mark Kirk (R): 41 (36)

Undecided: 19 (19)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 36 (47)

Bill Brady (R): 39 (32)

Undecided: 25 (20)

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 35

Bill Brady (R): 39

Scott Lee Cohen (I): 3

Undecided: 23

(MoE: ±4%)

Lots of yuck here from Research 2000, who see both Alexi Giannoulias and Pat Quinn’s fortunes slide. In the wake of Giannoulias’ family bank collapsing, his favorables have fallen from 49-34 in February to 38-46. It remains to be seen whether the worst is over in terms of the bad press that has consistently dogged Giannoulias for months like a set of nasty stink lines.

And as for those gubernatorial numbers… well, can anyone think of examples of incumbents who have polled in the 30s and survived in a general election (without a freakish third-party challenger muddying the waters)? Bill Brady may be wildly out of whack with his state, but 2010 could be just the type of year that allows a few nutters like him to slip through the cracks.

• AR-Sen: Americans for Job Security strikes back! They’re launching a new ad against Bill Halter on the outsourcing front… well, it’s pretty much the same ad, just not as, y’know, openly racist. They’re spending almost $500K on the TV ad buy, supplementing the large amounts they’ve already dropped in this race.

• FL-Sen: Mason-Dixon has a new post-party-switch poll of the Senate race. They find Charlie Crist with a narrow lead, at 38, compared with Marco Rubio at 32 and Kendrick Meek at 19, but they also warn that Crist’s sitting on a house of cards, as more than half of Crist’s support is from Democrats and that may erode as Meek gets better known (Meek is at 40% unknown). I trust Mason-Dixon more than the three other pollsters who’ve also released results this week, but they all seem to be reaching a sort of consensus on this race (Rasmussen at 38C-34R-17M, McLaughlin at 33C-29R-15M, and POS for Crist at 36C-28R-23M). Meanwhile, the candidates are fumbling around trying to pin down their respective bases with various flipfloppery: Rubio is walking back his previous disdain for Arizona’s immigration law, now saying he’s all for it, while the occasionally pro-life Crist is prepared to veto a bill requiring pregnant women to view a fetal ultrasound before being able to have an abortion.

• IL-Sen: This is probably good news for Alexi Giannoulias, although it was more a question of when it would happen rather than if it would happen, given the media’s tendency to get distracted by the next shiny object. A local TV reporter more or less called out Mark Kirk for incessant focus on the Broadway Bank scandal and asked him what else he was planning to talk about in the future, perhaps indicative of a growing media boredom with the story.

• PA-Sen/Gov: Today’s tracker in the Muhlenberg/Morning Call poll shows a narrower spread in the Senate race: Arlen Specter leads Joe Sestak 45-40. In the Governor’s primary, Dan Onorato is at 34, Joe Hoeffel is at 12, and Anthony Williams and Jack Wagner are at 8. Meanwhile, the Sestak camp is hitting Specter with a new TV ad focusing on what’s probably Specter’s biggest vulnerability in the Democratic primary: the fact that he was a Republican Senator for, y’know, three decades or so. The ad’s replete with lots of photos of Specter and G.W. Bush, together again. The tightening race and aggressive tone has the Pennsylvania Dem establishment worried, and state party chair T.J. Rooney is sounding the alarm, calling a possible Sestak win “cataclysmic” and making various electability arguments in favor of Specter.

• AL-Gov: We don’t have any actual hard numbers to report, but local pollster Gerald Johnson (of Capital Survey Research Center) has been leaking reports that there’s significant tightening in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, with Ag Commissioner Ron Sparks moving within the margin of error of Rep. Artur Davis. Davis’s numbers seem to have dropped following his anti-HCR vote. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Tim James‘ attention-grabbing, race-baiting ad seems to have had its desired effect. He just released an internal poll showing him taking the lead, with him at 26, Roy Moore at 21, Bradley Byrne at 20, and Robert Bentley at 7. (The previous James internal had Moore at 27, Byrne at 18, and James at 14.)

• CA-Gov (pdf): Another gubernatorial primary where there’s some tightening is on the Republican side is the GOP primary in California. Steve Poizner is touting an internal poll from POS that his him within 10 points of the once-unstoppable Meg Whitman, 38-28. It seems like Whitman lost a whole lot of inevitability once someone than her actually started advertising on TV, too.

• CT-02: That was fast… it was only a few days ago that former TV anchor Janet Peckinpaugh’s interest in running the 2nd became known. Now she’s officially launched her campaign, with Connecticut’s nominating convention fast approaching (May 21).

• PA-12: The DCCC paid for another $170K in media buys on behalf of Mark Critz, bringing their total investment in this special election up to $641K. (J) The GOP is bringing one more big gun to the district to campaign on Tim Burns’s behalf, too: Rep. Mike Pence.

• VA-05: In the wake of his surprising decision to join the Constitution Party, ex-Rep. Virgil Goode had to clarify several things: most notably, he said that, no, he’s not running in the 5th this year as a Constitution Party candidate (or as anything else), although he wouldn’t rule out a future run. Furthermore, he isn’t leaving the Republican Party; he doesn’t view membership as mutually exclusive. Meanwhile, Politico is wondering what’s up between the NRCC and the establishment candidate in the 5th, state Sen. Robert Hurt. Hurt hasn’t been added to the NRCC’s Young Guns list, despite their tendency to add anyone with a pulse everywhere else. The NRCC hasn’t added any names in this district and says they’d prefer to wait until after the primary — although in other contested primaries, they’ve added multiple names to the list, which suggests that they’re trying to lay low in this race, which has become a rather emblematic flash point in the establishment/teabagger rift this year.

• WA-03: Both Democratic candidates in the 3rd nailed down labor endorsements in the last few days. Denny Heck got the endorsement of the Boeing Machinists (maybe the state’s most powerful union) and the local IBEW, while Craig Pridemore got the nod from the pulp and paper workers.

• WI-07: With David Obey’s surprising retirement announcement yesterday, we’re moving the open seat in the 7th to “Tossup” status (from Likely Dem). On the one hand, it’s a D+3 district with a solid Democratic bench of state legislators, but on the other hand, GOP challenger Sean Duffy is sitting on a lot of money and establishment support, and there’s, of course, the nature of the year. CQ lists a whole herd of possible Democratic successors in the district: the big name on the list is probably Russ Decker, the state Senate’s majority leader. Others include state Sens. Julie Lassa and Pat Kreitlow, state Rep. Donna Seidel, and attorney Christine Bremer. Another area state Sen., Robert Jauch, has already taken himself out of the running. And one other Republican isn’t ruling out a bid, which could complicate Duffy’s path: state Rep. Jerry Petrowski.

• CA-Init: It looks like Californians will get the chance to vote on an initiative that proposes to move congressional redistricting to the same independent commission process as legislative redistricting, as the initiative just qualified for the ballot. I’m genuinely torn: on the one hand, the naïve idealist in me admits some fondness for compactly-drawn swingy districts, but on the other hand, Dems have a good shot at controlling the trifecta in California and with the ability to wring some additional Dem-leaning seats out of the map, control of the 2012 House may well be at stake here.

• NRCC: The NRCC promoted 13 members of its Young Guns framework to the top tier (the “Young Guns” level). This includes not only the aforementioned Sean Duffy, but also the winners of the three contested primaries in Indiana… and a surprise in the form of Morgan Griffith, who’s taking on Rep. Rick Boucher in VA-09 but who’s still sitting on a five-figure cash stash and on the wrong end of a 22:1 CoH ratio.

AR-Sen: The odious U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running ads on behalf of Blanche Lincoln, though they are refusing to say how much they are spending on their buy. As Salon says, with friends like these….

FL-Sen: Reid Wilson does some counting and finds that Arlen Specter has given back a rather amazing $1 million this election cycle, following his party switch. (Part of this was fueled by an aggressive campaign by the Club for Growth, which won FEC permission to contact Specter’s donors and push them to ask for refunds.) If Charlie Crist bails on the GOP, there’s no telling how much it might cost him financially, but the Specter precedent suggests it could be a hell of a lot.

IL-Sen: Even Mark Kirk is smart enough to skip an IL GOP fundraiser headlined by Sarah Palin.

IN-Sen: With the GOP primary just days away, Dan Coats has floated himself a $200K lifeline. I wonder if it will be enough.

NV-Sen: Fuck it – Sue Lowden knows that when you’re at the bottom of a 2,000-foot deep mineshaft, you should keep fucking digging until you’ve reached China. That’s why she is still advocating the barter system. While this prolonged episode of inspired insanity is not helping her win any elections, it is helping her become one of the most awesome candidates of 2010. Meanwhile, GOP primary opponent Danny Tarkanian is shish-kebobbing Lowden for her “poultry-based healthcare plan.”

OH-Sen: Quinnipiac should have a poll out of the Dem senate primary this morning.

PA-Sen: Michael J. Fox has cut an ad for Arlen Specter, citing his support for medical research. Fox had previously done an ad for Specter in 2004 as well.

FL-Gov: Mocking gun ownership? And pissing law enforcement off in the process? It sounds like a deranged GOP fantasy of something they think Dems would love to do, but in fact, the Republican Party of Florida is the guilty party here. They put out a shitty web video mocking CFO Alex Sink, who authorized the purchase of “advanced weaponry” for law enforcement officers who operate out of her agency. The state PBA blistered AG Bill McCollum (who posted the video on his website) for this offense, noting with irony that he’s the state’s chief law enforcement officer.

GA-Gov: Ex-Rep. Nathan Deal has come out in favor of Arizona’s draconian new immigration law, apparently the first Republican gubernatorial candidate in Georgia to do so. While Deal trails badly in the polls and isn’t very likely to win the GOP nod, in my opinion, he might succeed in driving the Republican field to the right on this issue.

NY-Gov: Steve Levy, the Dem-turned-Republican who is hoping to get buzz-sawed by Andrew Cuomo in the fall, is apparently “likely” to get the endorsement of the Queens Republican Party. In order to get a spot on the GOP ballot line, he needs the support of 51% of the state’s county-level parties (which are weighted by size), because he’s still a registered Democrat. He claims to be at around 45%, but it’s not clear if Queens is already included in that tally. If Levy pulls it off, this will be an extraordinary humiliation for Rick Lazio, a man I thought was incapable of being humiliated further.

FL-16: Shut up and go away.

ID-01: Some Very Wacky Dude dropped out of the GOP primary the other day. On his way out, Michael Chadwick attacked another candidate, Vaughn Ward, for representing “powerful special interest groups in New York City and Washington, D.C.” He also called Ward a “protégé and surrogate of the military-industrial-intelligence establishment” who will “vote to build up and sustain the Permanent War Machine.” I hadn’t realized this, but another Republican, Allan Salzberg, also bailed last week.

MI-01: Is it crowded in here, or is it just me? State Rep. Matt Gillard, a Democrat, is the latest to enter the race. He joins two other state Reps, Joel Sheltrown and Gary McDowell, as well as Connie Saltonstall, in the Dem primary field.

NY-14: Reshma Saujani may want to re-think her pro-bankster platform as she attempts to unseat Rep. Carolyn Maloney: A new Marist poll shows that even Manhattanites consider Wall Street to be “more of the problem” rather than “more of the solution” by a 49-31 margin.

NY-15: As Liz Benjamin observes, Assembly Adam Clayton Powell IV hasn’t gotten a whole lot of establishment backing in his attempt to unseat Rep. Charlie Rangel, but a few of his colleagues on the Assembly are hosting a fundraiser for him. Seems pretty minor to me, though.

NY-29: Republicans are citing a case from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in their attempt to force Gov. David Paterson to hold a special election to fill Eric Massa’s seat. The 6th Cir. ruled (PDF) that Art. I, § 2, ¶ 4 of the Constitution required then-Gov. Bob Taft of Ohio to hold a special election to fill Jim Traficant’s seat after he was expelled from Congress. However, there’s an old New York State Court of Appeals case, People v. Voorhis, 119 N.E. 106 (1918), which held otherwise – and if this goes before the federal courts in NY, the Second Circuit may very well rule differently from the Sixth.

Calendar: Be sure to bookmark SSP’s handy list of key primary & special elections in the very merry month of May.

• AZ-Sen, AZ-Gov: The signature by Gov. Jan Brewer (which may have helped her survive the GOP primary, but may also hurt her in the general) of Arizona’s new aggressive anti-immigrant law was the key motivating factor in a new Democratic candidate getting into the Senate race: civil rights activist Randy Parraz. He’ll face Rodney Glassman in the Democratic primary. (Why not the, y’know, Arizona Governor’s race instead? Apparently Glassman looks like easier primary opposition than AG Terry Goddard in the governor’s race… and at any rate, John McCain and J.D. Hayworth have both been beating the war drums on immigration.) And here’s an interesting take on the immigration law: ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo just came out in opposition to it, saying, “I do not want people here, there in Arizona, pulled over because you look like should be pulled over.” If even Tom Tancredo thinks you’re doing it wrong… you’re probably doing it wrong.

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon’s campaign doesn’t seem to be doing anything illegal here, but there’s still no good way to spin this: the campaign has been offering students an extra $5 bounty (on top of a flat hourly rate) for every Republican registered during a Univ. of Connecticut voter registration drive. It’s a practice that the DOJ has frowned upon.

• IL-Sen: In the wake of the seizure of the Broadway Bank, Alexi Giannoulias wasted no time in getting an explanatory ad on the air, laying it out in easy-to-grasp points: one, he hadn’t worked there in years and when he left it was fine, two, the broader economy took the bank down, and three, speaking of that economic downturn, don’t vote for unemployment-benefits-denying Mark Kirk.

• MD-Sen: OK, maybe all those Barb Mikulski retirement rumors will finally go away. She just had her campaign’s official kickoff event on Friday. She has 24 times the cash of her likeliest Republican opponent, Queen Anne’s Co. Commissioner Eric Wargotz.

• NC-Sen: Elon University’s out with another poll; they still aren’t doing head-to-heads, but have some assorted other numbers that Richard Burr would probably rather not see. His approvals (among flat-out everybody, not even RVs) are 28/37 and 26% say he “deserves re-election” with 44% saying “time for a new person.”

• NV-Sen: A poll for the Nevada News Bureau performed by PMI finds Sue Lowden leading the pack in the GOP Senate primary, at 41. Danny Tarkanian is at 24, Sharron Angle is at 17, and “someone else” is at 18. The poll was taken on the 22nd, shortly after Lowden laid out her support for trading chickens in exchange for poultices and tinctures.

• NY-Sen-B: Long-time Rockland Co. Exec Scott Vanderhoef has decided not to pursue a run against Kirsten Gillibrand, after having spent a month in exploratory mode, saying the money’s just not there. Vanderhoef probably found he didn’t have the name rec outside of Rockland Co. to have an advantage against the odds and ends in the GOP primary, let alone in the general.

• UT-Sen: Another poll of GOP delegates for the convention in Utah isn’t as bad for Bob Bennett as the one leaked to Dave Weigel last week, but it still looks pretty bad for him. Mike Lee leads the way among first-choice votes at 31%, followed by Bennett at 22% (and then Tim Bridgewater at 17% and Cherilyn Eagar at 10%). 41% of delegates say they will “absolutely not” vote for Bennett, so even if Bennett picks up the other 59%, he still can’t nail down the nomination at the convention (as there’s a 60% threshold).

• WA-Sen: Everyone seemed a little taken by surprise by Friday’s SurveyUSA poll of the Washington Senate race, which has non-candidate (for now) Dino Rossi leading Patty Murray 52-42 (and leading the various no-name GOPers actively in the race by 2 or 3 points). Even the Rossi camp is downplaying it, saying that their internal polling places Murray in the lead – which is an odd strategy for someone who got gifted an outlying poll, unless either he’s trying to rope-a-dope Murray into complacency or privately cursing the results saying “aw crap, now I have to run for Senate.” One of the no-namers, motivational speaker Chris Widener, got out of the race on Friday, which may also portend a Rossi run (or just having taken a stark look at his own finances). Murray’s camp may have gotten advance warning of the SurveyUSA poll, as on Friday they leaked their own internal from Fairbank Maslin giving Murray a 49-41 lead over Rossi, very consistent with R2K’s recent poll.

• IL-Gov: Oh, goody. Scott Lee Cohen, having bailed out/gotten booted off the Democratic ticket as Lt. Governor nominee after his criminal record became news, still has a political issue that needs scratching. He’s announcing that he’s going to run an independent bid for Governor instead. Considering how thoroughly his dirty laundry has been aired, he seems likely to poll in the low single digits; I have no idea whether his candidacy (which now appeals mostly only to the steroid-addled pawnbroker demographic) is more harmful to Pat Quinn, Bill Brady, or just the world’s general sense of decency.

• MI-Gov: When I heard a few weeks ago that Geoffrey Fieger (the trial lawyer best known for defending Jack Kevorkian and second-best-known for his awful turn as 1998 Democratic gubernatorial nominee) was pondering another gubernatorial run, I laughed it off. The new EPIC-MRA poll makes it seem a bit more serious, though… which, in turn, if he won the primary, would pretty much foreclose any Democratic shot at winning the general. They only polled the Democratic primary and find, thanks to name rec within the Detroit metro area, Fieger is actually comfortably in the lead at 28%. Andy Dillon is at 20, Virg Bernero is at 13, Alma Wheeler Smith is at 8, other is at 2, and 29% are undecided. Fieger hasn’t moved much to act on his interest, though, and has only three weeks to collect the necessary 15,000 signatures to qualify.

• FL-24: Karen Diebel earned the backing of Tom Tancredo in the GOP primary in the 24th, focusing on (with Tancredo, what else?) in the immigration issue. It seems less of a pro-Diebel endorsement than more of a slap against her GOP opponent Craig Miller, though; in a 2006 Miami Herald op-ed, Miller (who was at that point chairman of the National Restaurant Association) came out pretty solidly on the “cheap labor” side of the Republican split on immigration.

• GA-12: Democrats looking for an upgrade from ex-state Sen. Regina Thomas (who raised $10K last quarter and has $4K CoH) for a primary challenge to recalcitrant Blue Dog John Barrow are going to have to keep looking. State Sen. Lester Jackson decided to take a pass, and will stay neutral in the Barrow/Thomas race. He’ll focus instead of supporting the Senate bid of Labor Comm. Michael Thurmond (another rumored, but no-longer, challenger to Barrow).

• LA-03: Bobby Jindal just appointed Scott Angelle, the state’s Sec. of Natural Resources, to the vacant position of Lt. Governor. Why is this filed under LA-03? Angelle was rumored to be one of the top contenders to run for the 3rd (although it was unclear whether he was going to do it as a Dem or a GOPer… Angelle was a Dem in the legislature, but appointed by GOP Gov. Jindal to his cabinet). With Angelle saying he’ll return to his job at Natural Resources after a permanent replacement is elected, that means that former state House speaker Hunt Downer is pretty well locked-in as the GOP nominee in the 3rd, and the Dems aren’t likely to get an upgrade from attorney Ravi Sangisetty, making this open seat a very likely GOP pickup. (H/t GOPVOTER.)

• NY-01: Randy Altschuler got the endorsement from the Suffolk County Conservative Party on Friday, which guarantees him a place on the ballot if he wants it. He’ll still need to overcome Chris Cox and George Demos in the competitive three-way moneybags duel in the GOP primary (where the county GOP recently switched its endorsement from Altschuler to Cox). It’s unclear whether he’d keep the Conservative line if he lost the GOP primary, as that would create a NY-23 type situation and pretty much assure Rep. Tim Bishop’s safety. (Unlike the patchwork of counties in the upstate districts, all of the 1st is within Suffolk.)

• NY-29: The GOP would really, really like to have a special election in the 29th, despite David Paterson’s apparent intention to play out the clock until November (and prevent a possible GOP pickup, given the difference in strength between the likely candidates). Several GOP party chairs within the district are preparing a lawsuit that would force a special election; the state GOP plans to assist.

• OH-02: Bad news for Jean Schmidt: although she got the Hamilton Co. GOP’s endorsement in the previous two elections, she’s going to have to proceed without it this year. They’re staying neutral as she faces several primary challengers, most notably Warren Co. Commissioner Mike Kilburn.

• PA-12: In battling independent expenditures in the 12th, the GOP went large, as the NRCC plunked down $235K on media buys. The DCCC also spent $16K on media buys.

• SC-04: The dean at Bob Jones University (the crown jewel in the buckle of the Bible Belt, in Greenville in the 4th), Robert Taylor, has announced he’s supporting Trey Gowdy in the GOP primary instead of incumbent Rep. Bob Inglis. The occasionally-moderate Inglis (more stylistically than in actual voting substance, though) faces at least three right-wing competitors in the primary, but could run into trouble if he doesn’t clear 50% and gets forced into a runoff with one of them.

• WV-01: There are dueling internal polls in the 1st, in the Democratic primary. State Sen. Mike Oliverio was first to release a poll, saying he led Rep. Alan Mollohan 41-33. (One caveat: Oliverio’s pollster is Orion Strategies, owned by Curtis Wilkerson, who also just happens to be Oliverio’s campaign manager.) Mollohan struck back with a poll from Frederick Polls giving him a 45-36 lead over Oliverio, with the primary fast approaching on May 11.

• MA-AG: Despite it now being widely known that Martha Coakley has a glass jaw (or what’s something more fragile than glass? what do they make those fake bottles out of that they use in bar fights in the movies?), she may actually get re-elected Attorney General without facing any GOP opposition whatsoever this fall. Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that the GOP’s entire bench in Massachusetts just got elected to the Senate.

• Pennsylvania: The Philadelphia Inquirer has an interesting look at the changes in registration in Pennsylvania over the last decade. The Democratic Party grew substantially in the state’s east, gaining 550,000 registrations up to 4.3 million voters. The GOP shrank by 103,000 registrations down to 3.1 million votes. The Dems lost 20,000 voters in the state’s southwest, though; in 2002, 27.8% of the state’s Dems were in the Pittsburgh area, but that’s down to 23.8%. Contrast that with the Philadelphia metro area: in its five counties, the number of Republicans dropped 13.5%, from a million to 873,000.

• Redistricting: Here’s the last redistricting resource you’ll ever need: a handy map showing congressional and legislative redistricting procedures for all 50 states. There’s also an accompanying document (pdf) which goes into remarkable detail about the various processes, and even contains an appendix of some of the ugliest current gerrymanders.

• AR-Sen, IL-Sen: The hot potato that no one wants to get caught holding today is money from Goldman Sachs. Interestingly, Republican Mark Kirk is dumping his Goldman money, but Blanche Lincoln, who was trying to recast herself as anti-derivatives crusader last week, is saying there’s no reason for her to return contributions from Goldman employees. (She said she wouldn’t take money from companies receiving TARP funds, but Goldman never did.)

• CO-Sen: A subpar fundraising quarter from Andrew Romanoff, who’s going to have to expand beyond his base of the activists and party insiders if he’s going to knock off Michael Bennet in the Democratic primary. He brought in only $386K in the first quarter and spent most of that, bringing his CoH to $502K.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist hasn’t pulled the trigger on switching over to an indie bid… yet… but he is making two things clear, in an interview with National Review Online. He’s not dropping out of the Senate race (“damn right, I’m staying in this race,” he says), and he’s not switching over to be a Democrat. He says he’s undecided about the indie bid, and has until April 30 to make up his mind.

• IN-Sen: Jim DeMint seems intent on putting his stamp on every contested Senate primary he can find, even if it doesn’t seem likely to amount to much of anything. Case in point, Indiana, where DeMint just endorsed state Sen. Marlin Stutzman in the GOP primary. Stutzman is woefully underfunded and likely to finish third in the primary, but he’s probably the most akin to DeMint, as DeMint isn’t likely to throw his support to worn-out establishment figure Dan Coats or John Hostettler, who seems to be throwing his lot in with the Paulists instead.

• NC-Sen: The state Teamsters previously backed Cal Cunningham in the Democratic Senate primary in North Carolina, but that’s prompted a bit of a fissure. The Charlotte-area Local 71 is instead endorsing Elaine Marshall, leery of Cunningham’s statement that seemed to disapprove of the “card check” provision of EFCA (although he subsequently did a partial back-track).

• OH-Sen: Jennifer Brunner’s fundraising seemed to improve a little, as she’s done more outreach to the netroots this quarter. “Little” is all relative though, as it’s still a day late and few million dollars short; she raised $144K in the first quarter and spent $125K, leaving her with $79K CoH.

• PA-Sen: If there’s one guy who knows how to do negative advertising, it’s Arlen Specter, and he turned both barrels on Joe Sestak today (who’s also launching his own first TV spot today), going after not only Sestak’s frequent House absences but even his Navy record. Meanwhile, Pat Toomey channels Mike Dukakis, breaking one of the cardinal rules of campaigning: no funny hats.

• UT-Sen: If a new poll that Dave Weigel got a glimpse of is to be believed, the incumbent Senator least likely to be coming back next year isn’t Blanche Lincoln or Harry Reid, but… Bob Bennett? A poll of 1,000 delegates to the Utah convention suggests that Bennett is in no position to even make it out of the convention onto the primary ballot: he has the support of only 15% of delegates and second-choice support of only 5% more. Mike Lee has 35% first-choice support and 22% second-choice support, so if Lee consolidates the support of minor candidates as they’re knocked off subsequent ballots and breaks the 60% threshold on the final two-way ballot, he could nail down the nomination right there. (Of course, considering how poorly Bennett is faring, he might not even make it to the final two-way ballot, running the risk of getting knocked off earlier.) Bennett’s only hope is to make it to the final ballot and keep Lee from getting 60% there, which would let him get to the primary, where he might be able to get a majority among the non-activist, name-rec-driven public.

• FL-10: I can always count on Daily Kos’s Steve Singiser to find that stray poll that fell down the slot between the washer and dryer that everyone else missed. He points to a several-week old poll from Dem pollster Anzalone-Liszt that shows Democratic state Sen. Charlie Justice in surprisingly good shape, considering the nature of the year, his underfunded candidacy, the senior-heavy population of the 10th, and most of all that he’s running against the unsinkable Bill Young. Of course, he’s still down 49-34, so this still may not be Justice’s year.

• MI-01: Republicans look like they’ve gotten a state Senator into the race to replace the retiring Rep. Bart Stupak: Jason Allen. Allen has one major liability, though: not only is he not from the Upper Peninsula, where the district’s cultural center of gravity is, but his Traverse City-area house isn’t even in the district. There is a bit of overlap between his legislative district and the 1st, at least.

• NY-23: Hot cat fud a-flyin’ in the 23rd! Matt Doheny, the investment banker who lost the GOP selection process to Dede Scozzafava for the special election despite bringing bushels of his own money to the table, is still angling for the GOP nomination despite the presence of Doug Hoffman. And Doheny is getting some traction among the local GOP establishment, many of whom still resent Hoffman and his Conservative Party candidacy for essentially screwing up what would have otherwise been a slam-dunk. Doheny picked up the endorsement of the Oneida County GOP, and the backing of individual GOP chairs in three other counties. That institutional divide can also be seen in their fundraising; Doheny raised $363K last quarter, while Hoffman, despite his 15 minutes of fame, raised only $13K.

• PA-07: Aggressively pursuing ballot challenges against, well, everyone else on the ballot seems to have paid off for Democratic state Rep. Bryan Lentz. His final remaining Democratic primary opposition, political consultant Teresa Touey, got removed from the ballot after a number of signatures were invalidated, leaving Lentz the only Dem in the primary. He’ll face Republican ex-US Attorney Pat Meehan in the general to replace Joe Sestak.

• NRCC: The NRCC upgraded its “Young Guns” program again in the wake of first-quarter reports, bumping about a dozen challengers to the middle “Contenders” tier and adding 40 more (pretty much anyone who showed a pulse in their FEC reports) to the bottom “On the Radar” tier. It’s a long, long list, so click the link to see all the names.

• DCCC: CQ’s Greg Giroux takes a look at how the various members of the DCCC’s Frontline program (House seats playing defense) fared in the last fundraising quarter. Gabrielle Giffords leads in CoH, while Alan Grayson had the biggest one-quarter haul. To no one’s surprise, Larry Kissell and Carol Shea-Porter bring up the rear.

• Redistricting: The Sacramento Bee has a detailed look at the money-bags interests behind dueling redistricting measures. A big Republican donor, Charles Munger, is behind proposed Proposition 14 in California, which will be on the June primary ballot and proposes a citizen redistricting panel for congressional districts similar to the one in place for legislative districts. However, (usually) Dem donor Haim Saban is trying to get an initiative in place to undo Prop 11’s panel for legislative redistricting and giving the power back to the legislature, which is odd, since he supported Prop 11 when it was on the ballot. One other good redistricting piece: Josh Goodman looks at population shifts in New York over the last decade, which are subtle compared with fast-growing states but suggest that more legislative power will be consolidated in New York City next decade with or without the rejiggering for counting prisoners.

• 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.

• FL-Sen: Remember the good ol’ days of 2009, when Charlie Crist’s huge cash advantage would make him inevitable even if insurgent Marco Rubio somehow caught on with the teabagger set? Yeah, I’m having trouble remembering too. Rubio just brought in $3.6 million this quarter, the best of any candidate reporting so far. (Crist has yet to report, and even if he loses the quarter may yet lead in total cash.) Rubio may be getting himself into some trouble, though, with the all-important senior demographic in Florida, though, as his recent comments about changing Social Security (by, among others, raising the eligibility age) may not sit well with the state’s 3.5 million beneficiaries.

• IL-Sen: Looks like the biggest fundraising news today is coming from the GOP side of the aisle: Mark Kirk had a strong quarter, too, as he pulled in $2.2 million, leaving him with $3 million in the bank.

• NY-Sen: With all the state’s second-tier Republican talent interested in taking on Kirsten Gillibrand, where they might at least have some hope of an upset, no one’s signing up for the truly quixotic task of taking on Chuck Schumer in the other Senate race. That may change, as political consultant Jay Townsend is talking about stepping out from behind the curtain and trying his hand as a candidate. Townsend is currently working for Nan Hayworth’s campaign in NY-19.

• WI-Sen: A new Republican is stepping forward to run in the primary for the right to take on Russ Feingold… and, no, it’s not Tommy Thompson. Dick Leinenkugel, a former state Commerce secretary (an appointed position), plans to enter the race soon regardless of whether or not Thompson gets in. (Cillizza says, as far as Thompson goes, he’ll decide by early May and “most informed speculation seems to suggest he will take a pass.”) If Leinenkugel’s name is somehow evocative of hungover collegiate Sunday mornings, he’s from the family that owns the similarly-named brewery.

• GA-Gov: A sudden late entrant to the already-crowded Republican field in the Georgia governor’s race is bringing a lot of his own money with him. Ray Boyd is a wealthy real estate executive, and he kicked off his campaign by writing himself a $2 million check. He promises to reach out to the state’s teabaggers for support. The newest Insider Advantage poll of the GOP primary field doesn’t include Boyd; it finds Insurance Comm. John Oxendine with a solid lead at 26. Ex-Sos Karen Handel is at 18, ex-Rep. Nathan Deal is at 9, state Sen. Eric Johnson is at 5, and “Other” racks up 11, with 31% still undecided.

• MD-Gov: Ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich officially kicked off his campaign to get back his old job from Martin O’Malley in November. The DNC, however, is trying to tie Ehrlich today to his former #2 man, who’s gone on to rather overshadow Ehrlich for the last few news cycles: ex-LG and current RNC boss Michael Steele.

• MI-Gov: There’s another EPIC-MRA poll of the Michigan governor’s race, suggesting they’re going to be polling pretty frequently. This time, they find the likeliest matchup, Democratic state House speaker Andy Dillon vs. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, goes to Hoekstra, 40-33 (one month ago Hoekstra led 41-37). Mike Cox beats Dillon 43-34 and Rick Snyder beats Dillon 42-30, while Lansing mayor Virg Bernero loses to Hoekstra 42-29, to Cox 44-30, and to Snyder 42-26. Dillon leads the Dem primary 22-15 (with 11 for Alma Wheeler Smith), while Hoekstra leads the GOP primary at 27, with Cox at 21, Snyder at 15, Mike Bouchard at 13, and Tom George at 3.

• NV-Gov: Here’s some strategic thinking from the camp of Reid the Younger. The Committee to Protect Nevada Jobs (headed by Rory Reid’s consultant Dan Hart) is running ads bolstering incumbent Gov. Jim Gibbons and attacking GOP primary rival Brian Sandoval (who’ll provide a much more difficult opponent for Reid than the thoroughly-trashed Gibbons).

• RI-Gov: The Association of Democratic City and Town Chairpersons — the umbrella group for the Dem party chairs of each of the state’s 39 municipalities — issued endorsements for a number of key races. Maybe there’s some tension between them and the state party, as they endorsed Treasurer Frank Caprio for the Governor’s race (instead of AG Patrick Lynch) and in RI-01, Providence mayor David Cicilline (instead of former state party chair William Lynch, brother of Patrick). They also endorsed Jim Langevin in RI-02, where he faces a primary challenge from a state Rep.

• WY-Gov: Democrats in Wyoming seem to have moved somewhere back behind square one in their search for a gubernatorial candidate. Their seeming best bet in the wake of Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s decision not to go for re-election, state Sen. Mike Massie, has decided to run for state superintendent of public instruction instead, where he’ll face incumbent GOPer Jim McBride.

• DE-AL: The NRCC has to be happy to get something of an upgrade in the open seat race in Delaware, shaping up to be their likeliest loss in the House. Michelle Rollins, a wealthy philanthropist, has confirmed that she’ll run. She hasn’t run for office before, but the DCCC already started attacking her several weeks ago, indicating they take her (or at least her wallet) more seriously than the Some Dudes already running. Former Lt. Gov. John Carney is the Democratic candidate, and has had a long head-start on the race.

• MA-09: Progressives looking for a primary challenge to Stephen Lynch (in the wake of his “no” vote on HCR) will have to look somewhere other than Needham town meeting member Harmony Wu; she announced via Facebook that she won’t be running.

• MI-01: Seems like Rep. Bart Stupak got his feelings hurt after taking a serious pounding from the left, from the right, and from pretty much all points in between during his last-minute obstruction of the health care reform passage. He’s saying that, although he has the signatures prepared for another run, he’s not ruling out retirement this year. Assuming he runs again, he faces a primary from the pro-choice left as well as a general election challenge from angry teabaggers on his right. If he does retire, Menhen is already on top of it in the diaries, listing some potential replacement candidates.

• NY-23: Paul Maroun, a Franklin County Legislator who got passed over by local GOP heads in favor of Dede Scozzafava in the special election in the 23rd, had been planning to run in the primary this year, but just decided against it. That leaves only two remaining contenders, Doug Hoffman (who ran on the Conservative Party line last year and is still doing his part to cheese off the local GOP), and self-funding investor Matt Doheny.

• PA-15: Bethlehem mayor John Callahan keeps on being one of the Dems’ few bright lights among its challengers this cycle, pulling in $320K this quarter, with $825K CoH. For more numbers, Reid Wilson’s out with today’s fundraising wrapup at the Hotline, with other numbers worth checking out including everybody in PA-Gov and FL-Gov.

• DNC: Michael Steele rolled out the RNC’s gaudy committee fundraising numbers early as a means of distracting the media from, well, everything else that’s happening at the RNC. Unfortunately, that kind of backfired, as the DNC put out numbers that topped the RNC’s already-high numbers. The DNC pulled in more than $13 million in March (compared to $11 million for the RNC), showing (via the HCR victory) that nothing succeeds like success.

• RNC: Speaking of the RNC’s numbers, here’s an interesting accounting trick that’s just come to light: the RNC had a deal going with the Michigan GOP to give money back and forth to each other, in order to inflate the RNC’s fundraising numbers. Not really the day that Michael Steele would have chosen for this news to come out.

Public Policy Polling (4/1-5, Illinois voters, 1/22-25 in parens):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 33 (42)

Mark Kirk (R): 37 (34)

Undecided: 30 (24)

(MoE: ±4%)

It remains to be seen whether or not this mark represents something of a low ebb for Giannoulias in the wake of a recent flare-up of the cloud of bad press related to his family’s bank that continues to dog him — or whether we can take this as a warning sign of an extremely difficult campaign to come. At the very least, the biggest chunk of undecideds are Democrats:

The main reason Giannoulias is behind is that he’s getting only 54% of the Democratic vote while Kirk is winning 77% of the Republican vote. It’s not that a lot of Democrats are planning to cross over and vote for Kirk, but 36% of them are undecided right now compared to just 16% of Republicans. That suggests Democratic voters don’t really know what to make of Giannoulias’ problems right now so they’re just taking a wait and see approach to the race.

However, Jensen also adds: “There may not be a state in the country where Democrats have a weaker top of the ticket at this point than Quinn and Giannoulas.”

That doesn’t bode well for the gubernatorial portion of this poll, which will be released later this week.

IL-Sen: Have I mentioned lately that Mark Kirk is an utter wiener? No? Well, Mark Kirk is an utterly predictable wiener. After charging gung-ho in the direction of “Repeal!”, Kirk has decided to quickly drop his push to roll back healthcare reform, preferring instead to remind everyone how expensive it is.

NV-Sen: Here’s some bitter tea for fans of right-wing vote-splitting. It appears that Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian is facing criminal charges for theft relating to bad checks he allegedly wrote for his asphalt business. Ashjian won’t have to withdraw his candidacy if arrested, but headlines like these can’t help him syphon off any substantial amount of votes from the GOP’s flank.

PA-Sen: Arlen Specter landed a huge endorsement in his primary battle against Joe Sestak yesterday, with the news that the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has elected to back the five-term incumbent.

TX-Sen: Kay Bailey Hutchison will announce her future plans in San Antonio this morning, flanked by Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn. I think it’s probably a safe guess to say that she’s likely going to serve out the remainder of her term, despite her many promises otherwise.

FL-Gov: Republican Bill McCollum leads Democrat Alex Sink by 49-34 according to the latest Mason-Dixon poll of the race.

GA-Gov: 31 douchebags Republican state legislators have signed a resolution calling for the impeachment of Democratic AG Thurbert Baker after his refusal to challenge the constitutionality of the recent healthcare reform legislation. Baker, who has been struggling in the polls for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against ex-Gov. Roy Barnes, is probably enjoying the free publicity, if nothing else.

MA-Gov: State Treasurer Tim Cahill got busted for sending out a mass fundraising solicitation for his Independent gubernatorial bid to state legislators from his official e-mail account, which is a violation of Massachusetts campaign finance rules.

MD-Gov: Former Gov. Bob Ehrlich confirmed on Tuesday that he will attempt a comeback against Democrat Martin O’Malley this year.

AR-01: This one ranks pretty low on the list of unexpected political news. Retiring Democratic Rep. Marion Berry will endorse his former chief of staff, Chad Causey, for the Dem nomination to succeed him. Causey also recently picked up the support of the Arkansas AFL-CIO.

FL-19: At least one of these things may strain your credulity. Republican Ed Lynch, running in the April 13 special election to replace Democrat Robert Wexler in the House, says that his fundraising has seen “probably a thousand percent increase” since Congress passed healthcare reform, and that “polling we’ve done” shows him ahead of Democrat Ted Deutch. Of course, his campaign isn’t coming forward with any evidence of the existence of any such polls.

GA-12: Republican Ray McKinney, a nuclear power project manager who lost the GOP primary in 2008 for the right to take on John Barrow, says that he’s going to try again this year. McKinney joins Thunderbolt Fire Chief Carl Smith, retired businessman Mike Horner, activist Jeanne Seaver and restaurant owner George Brady in the GOP primary.

MI-13: Metro Detroit pastor Glenn Plummer, the founder of the African American Christian Television Network, has announced that he’ll challenge Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick in the Democratic primary, joining state Sen. Hansen Clarke for a three-way race. Don’t expect Plummer to be a progressive choice, though: he freely admits that he voted for Bush in 2004, spoke to a GOP convention that same year, and has also used his pulpit to argue in favor of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Yuck.

MO-03: Rusty Wallace — not the NASCAR champion, but a CAD technician and avid teabagger — will join the highly-touted Ed Martin in the Republican primary for the right to upset Dem Rep. Russ Carnahan.

MO-07: It looks like a couple of high profile candidates have slipped under the wire for the race to fill the seat of Senatorial aspirant Roy Blunt. Ex-state Rep. Steve Hunter will become the ninth GOP candidate in the mix, which some local observers suspect may be a ploy from one of the other candidates to syphon off votes from state Sen. Gary Noodler, who shares Hunter’s regional base. For the Democrats, Scott Eckersley, an attorney who served in ex-Gov. Matt Blunt’s administration, also filed to run for this R+17 seat. Eckersley settled a wrongful termination lawsuit with the state last year after alleging that he was dismissed for raising questions within the administration over the destruction of controversial state e-mails. Eckersley isn’t committed to a run, though, and said he filed in order to keep his options open.

NV-03: Ex-state Sen. Joe Heck (R) is leading Democratic frosh Rep. Dina Titus by 40-35, according to a new internal poll conducted by Wilson Research Strategies for Heck’s campaign.

NY-29: Local Democrats still haven’t settled on a nominee for the special election in this upstate New York district, but at least we now know the names of six of the potential candidates:

The interviewed candidates include Southern Tier native Matthew Zeller, former Allegany County District 4 Legislator Michael McCormick, David Nachbar, a former state Senate candidate and businessman from Pittsford, Rush-Henrietta Central School District teacher David Rose, and Assemblyman David Koon, D-Perinton. Mary Wilmot, an aide to Gov. David Paterson, was the lone women interviewed.

PA-10: I never thought I’d say this, but why can’t we have more Dems like Chris Carney? After harshly criticizing Sarah Palin for putting his House district in literal cross hairs, Carney defended his HCR vote to a local TV station:

“You can’t vote worried about your career, you have to vote the right way,” Carney said. “You have to vote your conscience and for me this was a vote of conscience.”

Remember when the GOP tried to recruit Carney to join their caucus?

SC-05: John Spratt is a true hero. Just a day after filing for re-election in the face of persistent retirement rumors fueled by NRCC schemers and beltway natterers, Spratt has announced that he’s been diagnosed with early stage Parkinson’s disease. Spratt insists that his symptoms are mild and that his condition won’t impede his ability to serve in Congress — or run a vigorous re-election race.

SD-AL: Physician Kevin Weiland has dropped his plans to challenge Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in the Democratic primary, citing his concern for party unity. Weiland issued a joint press release with Herseth Sandlin announcing the news, and based his decision partly on assurances from Herseth Sandlin that she would not vote to repeal healthcare reform. (Hat-tip: doug tuttle)

TN-06: Democrats have finally found a candidate to run for the seat held by retiring Democratic Rep. Bart Gordon. Marine Capt. Ben Leming, an Iraq War veteran, received permission from the secretary of the Navy to file his candidacy. However, Leming can’t actively campaign until his active duty ends on May 1st.

WA-01: This seat isn’t on anyone’s radar, but Republican businessman James Watkins recently released an internal poll, conducted by Moore Information, showing him trailing Democrat Jay Inslee by 41-27.

WI-03: Is this what state Sen. Dan Kapanke signed up for when he decided to run for Congress against Democrat Ron Kind? Kapanke jumped into the race with much fanfare in the anticipation that Kind would bail on the race to run for Governor. That didn’t happen, and now Kapanke is facing a primary from ex-banker Bruce Evers, who has some truly wild ideas on constraining government spending.