Tag: NY-Sen-B

• 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.

• 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.

CT-Sen: It looks like Dick Blumenthal, who hasn’t run a competitive race in 20 years, has a lot of rust to shed on the campaign trail. An NYT article paints an unflattering portrait of Blumenthal’s political skills, describing his long-winded and legalistic answers to simple questions, and a flop in a debate against an unknown primary opponent. (Please tell me why Blumenthal’s campaign team consented to a debate against Merrick Alpert in the first place?) None of this is making me feel very good.

KY-Sen: Heh – from the king of fuck-yous comes a final hurrah: Retiring Sen. Jim Bunning is endorsing weirdo Rand Paul in the Republican primary to succeed him, snubbing establishment pick Trey Grayson. Considering that Bunning was shoved aside very much against his will to make way for Grayson, this last knife-twist makes sense.

NY-Sen-B: Here’s one clear reason why Kirsten Gillibrand has scared off legions of opponents, including George Pataki: She raked in another $1.6 million in the first quarter, bringing her total raised since she became a senator to $8.8 million. No word on her cash-on-hand yet, though.

OH-Sen: Dem Lee Fisher’s Q1 haul doesn’t look too pretty – just $550K, and with only $1.8 million on hand, and his warchest will undoubtedly shrink heading into his primary with SoS Jennifer Brunner (Fisher just went up with an introductory TV ad). For her part, Brunner hasn’t released her numbers yet. (GOPer Rob Portman has $7.6 million on hand.)

FL-Gov: Yowza. Republican rich guy Rick Scott, who appeared on the gubernatorial scene out of nowhere just days ago, says he’ll spend $1.5 million of his own money on a statewide TV and radio ad buy this week. Is he trying to Meg Whitman his way into contention?

PA-12: The NRCC has spent another $50K on media on behalf of Tim Burns. The D-Trip hasn’t laid out any cash here yet.

TN-08: We noted in a previous digest that Rob Kirkland has been filing independent expenditures on behalf of his brother, Ron Kirkland, who is in the midst of a competitive GOP primary to replace retiring Rep. John Tanner. The two claim they are no longer communicating (if they did, they’d be violating the no-coordination rules required for IEs), but a local attorney (who is supporting another campaign, but won’t tell which) says he doesn’t buy it and has filed a complaint with the FEC.

WATN?: This is very good news: President Obama has nominated former Rep. Don Cazayoux to be U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana. Here’s hoping he is swiftly confirmed. Cazayoux is only 46, so this post would put him in great position to stage a return to electoral politics some day, if he so chooses.

• Election results: Yesterday’s big event was the special election in FL-19, the first real electoral test after the passage of HCR. The allegedly massive opposition to healthcare reform on the part of the district’s many seniors never really materialized. Democratic state Sen. Ted Deutch beat Republican Ed Lynch 62-35, with very little falloff from Obama’s 65-34 performance in 2008. (Contrast that with John Garamendi’s so-so 53-43 performance in November’s CA-10 special election, a similarly 65-33 district in 2008.)

I should also pause to offer a little credit to Texas’s Republicans, who voted for the less crazy candidates in the Board of Education and Supreme Court runoffs, and in a bigger surprise to me, for the Hispanic-surnamed candidates in the TX-17 and TX-23 runoffs (which, based on incumbent Victor Carrillo’s trouncing in the Railroad Commissioner primary, seemed unlikely to happen). The NRCC has to be pleased to see the wealthier and less wingnutty Bill Flores and Quico Canseco emerge. Rep. Chet Edwards, however, is one guy who knows how to stand and fight, and he wasted no time hitting Flores hard and defining him as a carpetbagger in big oil’s pocket.

One other leftover issue from last night: two races in California, as expected, are headed to runoffs. In Republican-held SD-12, Republican Assemblyman Bill Emmerson will face off against Democrat Justin Blake (the GOPers combined got more than 60% of the vote, so this is a likely hold), while in safely-Democratic AD-43, Democratic lawyer Mike Gatto will face off with Republican Sunder Ramani to replace now-LA city councilor Paul Krekorian. Gatto seemed to shoot the gap in this heavily Armenian-American district after the two Armenian candidates, Chahe Keuroghelian and Nayiri Nahabedian, nuked each other.

• AR-Sen: Bill Halter’s primary campaign gained more momentum, as he picked up an endorsement from the Alliance for Retired Americans, pleased with his time as a Social Security Administration official. One group that really isn’t getting on board with Halter, though, is the Berry family; first outgoing Rep. Marion Berry dissed Halter, and now his son, Mitch, is head of a group, Arkansans for Common Sense, that’s running ads attacking Halter on the Social Security front. (Are there any Arkansans who are actually against common sense?)

• CO-Sen: Looks like GOP establishment candidate Jane Norton sees the handwriting on the wall and is taking a page from Democrat Michael Bennet’s book: not able to rely on getting on the ballot via activist-dominated convention (where teabagger-fueled Ken Buck seems likely to triumph), she’s making plans to qualify by finding 1,500 signatures in each of the state’s seven congressional districts. Speaking of Bennet, he’s still the fundraising kingpin in this race; he just announced he raised $1.4 million last quarter, well ahead of Norton’s $816K.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist may have sounded Shermanesque last week in his determination not to switch to an Independent bid for Governor, but apparently now there’s increasing moves within his inner circle to move in that direction. Unnamed advisors are floating the idea to the WSJ today.

• IN-Sen: Dan Coats seems to be having more trouble making the transition from the free-wheelin’ world of high-stakes lobbying back to the humdrum electoral politics world, where you actually have to follow the rules and stuff. He’s 10 days overdue on filing his finance disclosure reports with the FEC. One note that the Beltway press seemed to miss though: his main GOP primary opponent, ex-Rep. John Hostettler hasn’t made his filing yet either. (Of course, fundraising was never Hostettler’s strong suit. Or even his weak suit.)

• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP issued its latest installment in polls of the Senate general election in its home state. Maybe the biggest surprise is that incumbent Republican Richard Burr’s approvals are just continuing to fall; he’s currently at 32/41 (while likeliest opponent Elaine Marshall is in positive territory at 19/11). Also encouraging, I suppose, is that the actual human Democrats are starting to draw even with Generic D (while previous polls have had Generic D far outpacing them), showing they’re getting better-defined. Burr leads Generic D 43-38, while he leads Marshall 43-37, and leads both Cal Cunningham and Kenneth Lewis 43-35.

• NY-Sen-B: With ex-Gov. George Pataki’s phantom interest in this race finally having been dispelled, Swing State Project is removing this race from its “Races to Watch” list.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): One more poll in the rapidly-becoming-overpolled Pennsylvania Senate race, this time from Republican pollster Susequehanna. They use an LV model, and find Pat Toomey with a 48-38 lead over Arlen Specter. Of more immediate consequence, they find Specter leading Joe Sestak 42-28 in the Dem primary. They also polled both primaries in the gubernatorial race, finding Dan Onorato seeming to break away from the ill-defined pack among the Dems. Onorato is at 32, followed by Joe Hoeffel at 13, Jack Wagner at 6, and Anthony Williams at 4. Tom Corbett beats down Sam Rohrer on the GOP side, 50-7. After marshaling his resources, Specter is finally starting to open fire; he’s up with his first TV ad of the cycle starting today.

• WI-Sen: The only thing that’s sure is that Tommy Thompson likes to see his name in the press. There’s been a lot of conflicting reporting about Tommy Thompson today, with many outlets running with the story that he’s decided against running for Senate (that all traces back to one leak to a local TV station, although it sounds like Politico got some confirmation from an anonymous GOP source). Other outlets are emphasizing that Thompson’s spokesperson says that Thompson hasn’t made a final decision, though. Either way, Thompson will be announcing his plans at a Tea Party rally tomorrow in Madison, so our pain will be ended tomorrow one way or the other.

• MA-Gov: Here’s more evidence for my expectation that Dem-turned-indie Tim Cahill will be running to the right (or at least to the incoherent-angry-working-class-Catholic-guy-position) of the Republican in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race this year. He’s appearing at today’s Tea Party rally on Boston Common today, the same one with Sarah Palin that Scott Brown ditched (although MA-10 candidate Joe Malone and GOP gubernatorial underdog Christy Mihos will be there). Likely GOP gubernatorial nominee Charlie Baker (from the party’s old-school moderate WASP tradition) decided against attending, probably out of fears that he might get jostled by some ruffian and spill some of his gin and tonic on his white Bermuda shorts.

• MN-Gov: Two blasts from the past in the Minnesota gubernatorial race. Walter Mondale weighed in in favor of Democratic state House speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, while a guy I’ve never heard of named Al Quie, who claims to have been governor from 1979 to 1983, endorsed Republican Marty Seifert.

• NE-Gov: Via press release, the campaign for Democratic candidate Mark Lakers let us know that he took in $314K, impressive considering his late entry to the campaign.

• AL-07: State Rep. Earl Hilliard Jr. got an endorsement from the United Steelworkers, a union that seems to still have a lot of clout in Birmingham, once a major steel town.

• AZ-03: Now here’s some news I didn’t expect: the fundraising champ in the 3rd isn’t one of the many state legislators running here, but rather attorney (and vice-presidential progeny) Ben Quayle. He pulled in $550K in the first quarter, thanks no doubt to family connections. There are a couple other self-funders in the race too, but the elected officials seem to be lagging: case in point, well-known ex-state Sen. Pamela Gorman, who raised only $37K and ends with $23K CoH.

• FL-24: Rep. Suzanne Kosmas announced a haul of $260K for the first quarter. That’s less than the $340K reported by her likely GOP opponent, steakhouse mogul Craig Miller (although a slab of his money was apparently carved out of his own personal funds); Kosmas has a big CoH advantage, though, sitting on more than $1 million.

• GA-07: Retiring Republican Rep. John Linder didn’t look far to endorse a replacement for him: he gave his nod to his former chief of staff, Rob Woodall.

• HI-01: Sen. Dan Inouye just transferred $100K of his money to the DCCC, despite appearances that they’re actively backing Ed Case, rather than Colleen Hanabusa, who has the support of Inouye (and pretty much everyone else in the local Democratic establishment). Inouye has apparently been working behind the scenes, including reaching out to Nancy Pelosi, to get the DCCC to dial back their Case support, so maybe the cash infusion will give him a little more leverage. (Inouye is sitting on $3.2 million and faces little if any opposition this year.)

• IN-03: Nice fundraising numbers from Democrat Tom Hayhurst, who ran a surprisingly close race against Rep. Mark Souder in 2006 and is back for another try. Hayhurst has racked up $234K CoH, more than Souder ($99K in the first quarter).

• IN-05: Politico has a look at Rep. Dan Burton’s difficult primary in the 5th, in Indianapolis’s dark-red suburbs. While Burton may actually be safer this year compared with 2008 (since he has four opponents instead of just one), the article traces the roots of the local GOP’s discontent with him, and also shows the magnitude of his collapse in support: only 2 of the 11 local party organizations are supporting Burton this time.

• MO-08: Another Dem in a dark-red seat who keeps impressing everybody with his tenacity is Tommy Sowers. The veteran and college instructor, who’s challenging Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, raised $295K in the first quarter and is now sitting on $675K CoH.

• NM-02: Ex-Rep. Steve Pearce can write himself his own checks if he needs to, but he may not need to at this rate. Pearce raised $277K in the first quarter, and now sits on $708K. Democratic Rep. Harry Teague hasn’t reported yet, but in the duel of wealthy oil guys, he can self-fund too if need be.

• NY-14: With Democratic primary challenger Reshma Saujani having some success on the financial front, Rep. Carolyn Maloney got some top-tier help from Barack Obama, who endorsed her and sent out a fundraising appeal on her behalf.

• PA-11: If this doesn’t wake up Rep. Paul Kanjorski from his nap, I don’t know what will. Three-time Republican opponent Lou Barletta raised $300K in the first quarter. An important caveat: there was no mention of cash on hand, which is telling because Barletta was still saddled with a lot of debt from his 2008 campaign when he decided to run again. (UPDATE: Barletta’s CoH is now $205K.)

• PA-17: Republican state Sen. David Argall raised a tolerable but not-too-impressive $125K in the first quarter. He’ll need more than that to battle Rep. Tim Holden, who, if nothing else, has great survival skills (he had the worst district of any freshman who survived 1994, and then survived a 2002 gerrymander designed to rub him out). In fact, he’ll need more than that just for his primary; heretofore unknown GOP opponent ex-Marine Frank Ryan raised $70K in the first quarter.

• Redistricting: Maryland beat out New York to be the first state in the nation to enact legislation that will, in terms of redistricting, treat prisoners as residents of their last known address, rather than where they’re incarcerated (and thus move the center of gravity back toward the cities from the countryside). Also, on the redistricting front, if there’s one group of people who are the target audience for a whole movie about redistricting (Gerrymandering), it’s the crowd at SSP. The film’s director has a diary up, touting its release in two weeks at the Tribeca Film Festival.

The wait is over:

Former New York Republican Gov. George E. Pataki has decided not to mount an election challenge against Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand this fall.

Instead, he said in an interview Tuesday that he would create a new national organization aimed at building support to repeal the recently enacted health-care overhaul.

What a douchebag — but that’s beside the point. Pataki has consistently posted strong performances in hypothetical head-to-heads against Gillibrand (including a Q-Poll released just today showing him leading by five points), so Democrats lucked out with this one – though Pataki never appeared very interested in running in the first place. Gillibrand appears to be one of the only potentially vulnerable Democratic senators who’ll escape a serious challenge from the GOP this year.

• 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.

• AZ-Sen: Looks like the Maverick has finally been broken (as he’s decided that it’s preferable to spend six years chewing his cud while fenced in the GOP pasture, instead of getting sent prematurely to the glue factory). In the face of a potentially serious primary from the right from J.D. Hayworth, John McCain says not only is he no longer a maverick, but he “never considered himself a maverick.” (Except for in all those campaign ads from two years ago?) In response, Hayworth said McCain is trying to “encourage amnesia.”

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There’s a new LA Times/USC poll of the two major races in California, with a mixed bag of results for Democrats. Like most pollsters, they find that Republican Meg Whitman has pulled into a small lead over Jerry Brown in the governor’s race, thanks to her nonstop deluge of self-funded advertising; she leads Brown 44-41, while she leads Steve Poizner in the GOP primary 60-20. On the Senate side, Barbara Boxer leads a Generic Republican by a surprisingly wide 48-34. Polling Generic R seems pretty weird, though, considering that there are only two likely opponents for her: Tom Campbell leads Carly Fiorina in the GOP primary 29-25, with Chuck DeVore lagging at 9. One other bit of good news for Dems: by a 46-29 margin, voters prefer to back a candidate who backed health care reform.

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet is playing it safe, making plans for a petition drive to make sure his name is on the ballot in November. He needs at least 30% at the Democratic state convention to qualify, but his Plan B seems to be an acknowledgment that he may be facing a rough time at the convention too. Remember that he lost at the caucus level to former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff (whose main source of strength seems to be insiders and activists, rather than the broader population).

• IN-Sen: CQ takes a look at the NRSC’s private teeth-gnashing over the possibility that kooky ex-Rep. John Hostettler might beat ex-Sen. Dan Coats in the primary, something that can’t be ruled out in an anti-establishment year like this one. They’d then have to decide whether they want to financially prop up Hostettler, a legendarily poor fundraiser who’s relied on shoestring campaigns and religious right ground troops. Still, a reasonably competent Hostettler ought to be able to make short work of Coats in the GOP primary, given the amount of material he has to work with: for instance, it turns out that Coats, when lobbying for King & Spaulding, lobbied Congress in favor of cap and trade, the same legislation he claims he now opposes.

• NV-Sen: If there’s one reason not to quite count out Harry Reid yet, it’s his ability to bring in the campaign cash. He brought in more than $1.5 million for the quarter, giving him more than $10 million in receipts so far this cycle. Sue Lowden, ostensibly the GOP’s top contender, says she raised about $500K and will match that dollar-for-dollar from her own personal stash. Danny Tarkanian raised $445K last quarter.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): These numbers are a little stale, but we found there were some more useful numbers buried in that Marist poll from last week where the topline was just the usual rigamarole about the Kirsten Gillibrand vs. George Pataki matchup that’s very unlikely to happen (especially not if Al D’Amato has anything to say about it). They also tested some head-to-heads with the lesser GOPers who are actually in the race: Gillibrand beats Bruce Blakeman 54-25, Joe DioGuardi 54-27, and David Malpass 54-25. They also looked at the GOP primary, finding DioGuardi winning it with 18, followed by Blakeman at 10, Malpass at 9, and non-candidate Dan Senor at 4. A permutation including Pataki finds Pataki at 62, with DioGuardi at 7, Blakeman at 4, and Malpass and Senor at 2. In other news, Gillibrand picked up an endorsement today from one of her biggest skeptics, Assemblyman and Kings Co. Dem chair Vito Lopez. Lopez had been considering backing Harold Ford Jr., way back in those heady days of February.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi is still saying he’s “completely undecided” about running for Senate, but will do it if he thinks he has a “50% chance” of winning. Here’s one more bit that might help move his decision along, though: financially, he’d be starting from scratch against Patty Murray, who raked in another $1 million last quarter, bringing her total war chest to $5.9 million.

• AL-Gov: I gather from the comments that SSP is full of mustache aficionados, and this news might prove heartbreaking to them: Ron Sparks shaved off his legendary ‘stache. He says this was a spur-of-the-moment decision at the barber shop (and hopefully not the result of thorough focus grouping?). I just hope Travis Childers doesn’t decide to follow suit.

• NY-Gov: Wealthy businessman Carl Paladino has decided to go ahead with his teabaggish-sounding campaign for Governor, kicking off his bid today in Buffalo. He’ll be running in the GOP primary, although he’d previously made noises about a possible independent run. Unfortunately, his rollout might be overshadowed by other news today… that he had a daughter with his mistress 10 years ago, and kept the child secret from his wife until last year.

• OH-Gov: In response to pressure to release his financials, John Kasich released his 2008 tax returns. Kasich earned $615K from now-kaput Lehman Brothers in 2008, including $183K base and a $432K bonus (but no “golden parachute” as Lehman Brothers collapsed). Oh, by the way, he also earned $265K as a Fox News commentator, $166K in speaking fees, $62K as an associate for Schottenstein Property Group, $45K as an Ohio State Univ. lecturer, $77K for being on the board of directors of two companies, and $122K in interest and dividends. Just your average teabagging Joe Lunchpail.

• HI-01: Charles Djou is trying to get some mileage out of the fact that neither Ed Case nor Colleen Hanabusa lives in HI-01. This kind of thing usually doesn’t matter much even in most other states, and seems to matter even less in Hawaii, though, where the island of Oahu gets split between the two districts and no one seems to care that Mazie Hirono lives in the 1st instead of HI-02.

• CO-04: Rep. Betsy Markey is near the top of most people’s vulnerable Dems lists, especially after her pro-HCR vote, but her cash haul may go along way toward allaying fears. She pulled in $505K, with $355K of that coming between Mar. 21 (the HCR vote) and Mar. 31. Her vote (plus being in Sarah Palin’s sorta-metaphorical crosshairs) seems to have helped, not hurt. Likely GOP opponent Cory Gardner raised only $75K last quarter after the HCR vote.

• ND-AL: One GOPer who is doing well on the fundraising front is state Rep. Rick Berg, who pulled in $483K in the first quarter. $330K of that came in the last 10 days of the quarter, although that seems to have more to do with his winning the state party’s endorsement rather than the HCR vote. Most of the rest of that took the form of $100K from his own pocket. Between this and the downdraft from John Hoeven at the top of the ballot, looks like Rep. Earl Pomeroy’s in for a real race this year.

• PA-06: Doug Pike picked up another labor endorsement, and it’s a big one: the AFL-CIO. They also backed Paul Kanjorski in the 11th, who’s being challenged by Corey O’Brien in the primary.

• RI-01: Here’s one more huge House Democratic fundraising haul, although this isn’t a race that the DCCC has been sweating too hard. Providence mayor David Cicilline pulled in a huge $725K (although some of that was checks re-written away from his mayoral fund to his newly-established House fund). His main Democratic rival, former state party chair William Lynch, raised $230K (including $100K of his own money).

• TX-17: Bill Flores pulled in an endorsement that will help in his GOP primary runoff against Rob Curnock, from perhaps the most unlikable man in the entirety of American politics, ex-Sen. Phil Gramm. In fact, that district may be conservative enough that it might still be a positive in the general.

• LA-LG: Republican SoS Jay Dardenne’s plan for an easy upgrade to the position of Lt. Governor (left vacant by Mitch Landrieu’s move to mayor of New Orleans) ran into a bit of a snag. He’s facing GOP primary opposition now from the state GOP chair, Roger Villere.

• CA-Init: Proposition 15 looks to be the only interesting initiative on the June primary ballot in California, and it lays some important groundwork for countering the flood of corporate money into elections. The Fair Elections Act, as it’s called, is a pilot program for public financing of state races; if passed, it’ll publicly fund the 2014 and 2018 Secretary of State races, which, if successful, could lead to a broader system.

• Fundraising: There are a number of other fundraising roundups today, courtesy of National Journal’s Reid Wilson and also the crew at TPM. Other highlights include Tom Campbell, Pat Toomey, Bob Dold!, Colleen Hanabusa, Bruce O’Donoghue, and various OR-Gov contestants.

• Teabaggers: Ed Kilgore continues his hot streak of dismantling the myth of the teabaggers, pointing to today’s Gallup/USA Today poll as more evidence that they’re nothing more than louder, angrier Republicans (who’d like access to a time machine). Only 7% say they’re Democrats, and while many say they’re independents, all evidence suggests they’re not from the center but those indies who think the GOP is too establishment, too liberal, or just too unsalvageable.

• RNC: You might remember several weeks ago the RNC lost a case in the D.C. District Court, squelching their desires for unlimited “soft money” contributions, which they felt they should be able to do in the wake of Citizens United. The RNC has decided to go ahead and appeal the case to the Supreme Court, although it doesn’t seem likely it’ll be decided in time for this year’s general election. (If you’re wondering why the case is bypassing the DC Circuit, McCain-Feingold allows challenges to it to leapfrog directly from the trial level to SCOTUS.)

• Census: Here’s an interesting tidbit: despite her early anti-Census fearmongering, Michele Bachmann’s district is actually well outpacing much of the nation on Census form return rates. Counties in her district have had an especially high return rate, ranging from 68-71% (compared with the current national average of 50%). Perhaps Republicans have decided it’s better in the long-term to, y’know, get conservative parts of the country to get accurately represented, rather than to try to appeal to the black-helicopters fringes, if Karl Rove cutting an ad urging Census participation is any indication.

• O2B: Finally, over at the Great Orange Satan, there’s an open call for nominations for the Orange to Blue program. Stop by and suggest some names of candidates who should get the netroots’ financial help this year.

AR-Sen: Bill Halter has a new ad up going after Sen. Blanche Lincoln for her vote in favor of TARP – aka the bailout. As is all too often the case with these kinds of reports, there’s no indication of how big the ad buy is.

CA-Sen, CA-Gov: Man, the news cycle moves fast these days. The RNC bondage-themed nightclub scandal (which I’m sure you’ve read all about) already had some same-day blowback. GOP senate candidate Chuck DeVore says he’s “severed all ties” with Erik Brown, a consultant who seems to be responsible for the expenses racked up at Voyeur West Hollywood. The Daily Caller (which broke the story originally) also says that Brown did work for Republican gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner. Meanwhile, Politico’s Dave Catanese tweets that freshman Sen. Claire McCaskill is sending out a fundraising email for Barbara Boxer.

CT-Sen: In the somewhat strange Connecticut Republican senate primary, Paulist economist Peter Schiff has put out his first TV ad… and it doesn’t mention that he’s a Republican. Schiff is spending half a mil to run the ad statewide for two weeks. Schiff also promised to run in the August primary even if he doesn’t get the party nomination at the May convention.

KS-Sen: Things have gotten a little worse for Todd Tiahrt in his race against Jerry Moran in the GOP primary to succeed outgoing Sen. Sam Brownback: SUSA now shows Moran up 42-32. Two months ago, Moran led by seven points – and by just three two months before that. The Kansas primary is not until August 3rd, so Tiahrt still has time, but he doesn’t seem to be gaining much traction.

KY-Sen: Now things are getting good:

Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s secretary of state, used his latest ad to again hammer his rival, Bowling Green eye surgeon Rand Paul, on national security issues.

“Paul even wonders whether 9/11 was our fault,” a female announcer says in the spot that began airing Thursday. The commercial then shows Paul speaking at a Blue Grass Policy Institute forum in March 2009, saying: “Maybe some of the bad things that happen are a reaction to our presence in some of these countries.”

I just hope that Grayson doesn’t nuke Paul before our nominee (hopefully Jack Conway) gets a chance to pummel him in the general.

NC-Sen: A good get for former state Sen. Cal Cunningham: Gen. Wesley Clark endorsed his fellow Army veteran for the Democratic senate nod. Interestingly, Clark specifically noted Cunningham’s support for ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

NY-Sen-B: Marist finds ex-Gov. George Pataki with the narrowest of leads over Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, 47-45, essentially unchanged from last month’s 48-45 margin. This is all well and good for Republicans, but Pataki hasn’t given the slightest indication that he’s interested in running.

GA-Gov: Looks like Nathan Deal didn’t quit quite fast enough. The Office of Congressional Ethics found (according to the NYT) that Deal “appeared to have improperly used his office to pressure Georgia officials to continue a vehicle inspection program that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for his family’s auto salvage business.”  I wonder how much of an impact this will have in the governor’s race, though, since Deal had mostly been floundering in the polls. Maybe it’ll just be the final nail in his political coffin – a suiting end for a party-switching ex-Democrat.

IA-Gov: GOP ex-Gov. and comeback hopeful Terry Branstad is up with his first TV ad of the campaign. No word on the size of the buy, though.

MD-Gov: The Baltimore Sun profiles would-be GOP gubernatorial candidate (and ex-gov) Bob Ehrlich and finds that his current job is “‘rainmaker’ for the Baltimore branch of North Carolina-based law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice. Ehrlich describes his job as being ‘the face of the firm,’ with his duties including ‘speeches, coffees, dinners, lunches, meetings.'” Sounds like Ehrlich’s been working on honing his Dan Coats/Tommy Thompson pedigree.

FL-08: Rep. Alan Grayson, one of the wealthiest members of Congress and a man who has largely self-funded his past campaigns, raised almost half a million dollars in a recent “moneybomb.”

NY-13: It looks like the GOP has some primary woes of its own in the 13th CD. Though the Republican establishment is coalescing around former FBI agent Mike Grimm, lawyer Michael Allegretti is vowing to fight on. He’s recently gone up with an ad on cable (so presumably a small buy) demanding repeal of the healthcare reform bill.

NY-23: Hah! Could the unlikable Doug Hoffman foment yet another right-wing split? Hoffman is laying claim to the Conservative Party line in this fall’s election, and he’s making the argument that whoever runs for the Republicans will need both lines in order to win. (Pretty plausible!) This is pissing off local GOP leaders, though, who are taking this as a threat to nominate Hoffman – or else face yet another divided ballot. This is some Fancy Feast-level cat fud we’re talking about.

NY-29: A more complete list of candidates interviewed by upstate Dems as potential nominees for the special election to fill ex-Rep. Eric Massa’s seat:

Mary Wilmot, an aide to Gov. David Paterson, Assemblyman David Koon of Perinton, past candidate for state Senate and businessman David Nachbar of Pittsford, Southern Tier native Matthew Zeller, and Michael McCormick of Allegany County

Wonder if we might be missing a name, though, since yesterday word was that the Dems would be interviewing six people.

OH-16, OH-18: CQ: “Businessman Jim Renacci, who is taking on freshman Rep. John Boccieri in the 16th district, and state Sen. Bob Gibbs, who is running against two-term Rep. Zack Space in the adjacent 18th district, established a joint fundraising committee, ‘Gibbs-Renacci for Congress’ and will split the proceeds evenly.”

PA-06: Manan Trivedi is chipping away at Doug Pike’s big lead among organized labor. He picked up a couple of local union endorsements, from the Transport Workers and the Iron Workers.

TN-08: Republican potentates are showering even more love on Steve Fincher, this time in the form of a campaign tour with GA Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (of “Obama is uppity” fame). Fincher has a lot of money, but like almost every GOP candidate with establishment backing, he faces a primary from ever-truer conservatives.

Census: There’s some speculation that anti-government attitudes (and paranoid black-helicopterism) might be the cause of low Census response rates in Texas. Though the biggest challenge for the Census is typically presented by undercounted groups like blacks and Latinos, some of the lowest response rates are in fact coming from very Republican counties. It’ll be very interesting to compare response rates and voting history when all is said and done.

Redistricting: Nathan Gonzales has a detailed look at the powers that are gathering on both sides for the upcoming post-census redistricting battle.

• CA-Sen (pdf): The apparently nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California has put out another statewide poll, and the numbers look very similar to those in the Field Poll last week. Barbara Boxer is in a dead heat with Tom Campbell, down 44-43, and not faring much better against Carly Fiorina, where Boxer leads 44-43. (She led Campbell by 4 and Fiorina by 8 two months ago.) Boxer’s doing better against Chuck DeVore, with a 46-40 edge. The big change from the Field Poll is that PPIC finds Fiorina actually in the lead in the GOP primary, the first pollster to see that in a while; she’s up 24-23-8, an improvement from January’s 27-16-8 Campbell edge. Are reluctant social conservatives getting off the fence and behind Fiorina, sensing DeVore isn’t gaining traction? Or did the Demon Sheep ad actually sway some ovinophobic voters?

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway’s on the air with a TV spot in the wake of the health care vote, trying to get some mileage out of Democratic primary opponent Dan Mongiardo’s stated opposition to the bill that passed.

• NY-Sen-B: Wall Street exec David Malpass, fresh off his smashing success as chief economist of Bear Stearns, looks like he’s doubling down on trying to be the GOP nominee to go against Kirsten Gillibrand. He’s promising $1 million of his own money to kick-start his campaign, where he first needs to get out of a primary against Bruce Blakeman and Joe DioGuardi.

• UT-Sen: It’s all still anecdotal, but the preliminary reports for how caucus night went for Bob Bennett sound pretty bad. Observers report strong anti-Bennett sentiment in general, although what might save him is that there was no coalescing behind any of his particular challengers. Turnout was maybe twice that of caucuses two years ago, suggesting a highly-motivated anti-Bennett base.

• CA-Gov (pdf): PPIC also has California gubernatorial numbers, again similar to the last Field poll. Meg Whitman’s outspending of Jerry Brown by a 200:1 margin or so is definitely paying temporary dividends, as she’s leading the gubernatorial race 44-39 (up from a 41-36 Brown lead two months ago). Brown leads Steve Poizner 46-31, basically unchanged from two months ago, suggesting this change is pretty Whitman-specific and not an across-the-boards phenomenon; Whitman leads Poizner 61-11.

• GA-Gov: Republican Governor Sonny Perdue is engaging in a remarkable end-run around Democratic AG Thurbert Baker, appointing a “special attorney general” to join in the suit against the health care reform brought by Republican AGs after Baker refused to do so and called it “political gamesmanship.” If nothing else, the fireworks between Perdue and Baker ought to raise Baker’s profile (who’s currently lagging in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but might be poised to make an impact if he switched to the mostly-vacant Senate race).

• MA-Gov: Here’s some trouble for independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill: the SEC has charged that John Kendrick, an executive with Southwest Securities, won $14 billion in bond deals after co-sponsoring a fundraiser for Cahill. That’s a violation of federal rules against contributions to officials who oversee bond sales. The SEC says that the Cahill campaign (which is returning the contributions) didn’t break any laws by accepting the money, though.

• OH-Gov, TX-Sen: Two more GOPers who still seem to be charging full speed ahead on “repeal” are Ohio’s John Kasich and, more interestingly, John Cornyn, who’d been cited in Ezra Klein‘s piece yesterday, on the GOP’s rapidly dialed-down rhetoric, as supporting only piecemeal tinkering but now seems to be reversing course again.

• WY-Gov: Whoops, that was a short-lived candidacy-to-be. Wyoming Democrats looking for a gubernatorial candidate are back to square one after attorney (and gubernatorial progeny) Paul Hickey reversed course and said “no” to a run.

• CO-07: Tom Tancredo weighed in with an endorsement in the Republican primary field in the 7th and, guess what… he endorsed the white guy. He gave the nod to former John McCain campaign official Lang Sias, despite Tancredo’s general antipathy toward all things McCain.

• HI-01: State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa is finally making some moves in the special election to replace resigned Rep. Neil Abercrombie. She’s out with her first TV ads, for the all-mail-in election with a May 22 deadline.

• NY-13: More blowback for Rep. Mike McMahon for his “no” vote on HCR, which could cost him the Working Families ballot line and/or get him a primary opponent. NYC council speaker Christine Quinn has backed out of a previously planned fundraiser for McMahon, citing his vote.

• SC-05: The NRCC seems to be feeling confident about state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, their challenger to Rep. John Spratt in the reddish 5th. They’ve promoted him to the 2nd level (“Contender”) in their 3-tiered fundraising pyramid scheme for challengers.

• Illinois: We Ask America seems to be taking great pains to confirm that, yes, they really are a legitimate pollster. I don’t know if they’re helping their case by releasing results with two significant digits, but they have a lot of Illinois House race data; we’ll leave it to you to decide how much salt you want to apply. Perhaps weirdest, they have teabagging businessman Joe Walsh leading Melissa Bean in IL-08 by 38.33%-37.61%. They also have leads for GOPers in the 11th (Adam Kinzinger leads Debbie Halvorson 42-30, way worse than Kinzinger’s own recent internal) and the 14th (Randy Hultgren leads Bill Foster 38-36), while Dems lead in the 10th (Dan Seals beats Bob Dold 40-37) and the not-on-the-radar 17th (Phil Hare leads pizza parlor owner Bobby Schilling 39-32).

• CA-Init: It’s been confirmed that the initiative to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana in California has qualified for the ballot in November. A 2009 Field Poll shows such an initiative could actually pass, with 56% of Californians supporting such an initiative. Of course, it’s unclear how such a change in state law would mesh with federal law, but if nothing else, it may help motivate a lot of bong-toting slackers to get off their couches to vote in November who otherwise might not vote (and cast votes for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer while they’re at it).

• DCCC: Freshman Rep. Jared Polis has been a strong fundraiser (and has his own fortune, too), and he’s looking to spread the wealth. His joint fundraising committee, the Jared Polis Majority Fund, has already distributed $400K this spring to the DCCC, to vulnerable incumbents (Frank Kratovil, Betsy Markey, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Harry Teague, Dina Titus), and to four up-and-comers (Ami Bera, Steve Pougnet, John Carney, and David Cicilline).

• DNC: I guess the DNC is feeling its oats these days, or just figuring that the best defense is a good offense: they’ve doubled the number of GOPers on the receiving end of pro-HCR attack ads for their “no” votes. They’ve added Pat Tiberi, Lee Terry, Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, and Charlie Dent.

• Census: Remember the Census? It’s back! In Pog form!

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio seemed to beat Charlie Crist to the punch on calling for repeal of the health care reform bill passed over the weekend, but now the allegedly-moderate Crist is getting in on the act too, saying he opposes the entire bill and supports the lawsuit by Republican AGs (including Florida’s Bill McCollum) against the package.

• KY-Sen: I really can’t decide who I’d rather have in my corner. Rand Paul has the backing of lots of crackpots with computers and open wallets, as he had another online moneybomb yesterday to the tune of $262K. Trey Grayson, on the other hand, has the backing of establishment favorite… Dick Cheney?

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B: Earlier in the day, there were rumors that the state GOP in New York was desperately trying to get someone from the GOP field against Kirsten Gillibrand (which doesn’t have any top-tier talent, but at least has a bunch of warm bodies) to switch over to the even more unenviable task of facing off against Chuck Schumer, where they’ve got nobody. Their favored candidate for that job seemed to be former Bush spokesperson Dan Senor. Maybe that rubbed Senor the wrong way, or maybe there’s more to the story, but either way, that changed by mid-day today, as Senor suddenly said he not only wasn’t running against Schumer but not running for anything, period, saying the timing wasn’t right for him. (Well, maybe they’ll have better luck getting David Malpass to switch over.)

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): More up-and-down numbers from Franklin & Marshall this month, as their latest look at the Senate race finds Pat Toomey beating Arlen Specter 33-29 among RVs. Last month, Specter (currently at a terrible 30/45 favorable) led by the same 33-29 margin. (Recall that for the last couple months, F&M was releasing separate numbers for RVs and LVs. They seem to have dropped that unwieldy formulation in favor of RVs only, for now.) They find Toomey beating Joe Sestak 27-19 in the general, Specter beating Sestak 32-12, and in the forgotten GOP primary, Toomey defeating pro-life activist Peg Luksik 30-4. They do only the primaries in the slow-to-take-shape Governor’s race, finding Dan Onorato leading among Dems at 11, followed by Jack Wagner at 7, Joe Hoeffel at 5, and Anthony Williams at 4. Tom Corbett leads state Rep. Sam Rohrer 28-4 on the GOP side.

• UT-Sen: Last night was caucus night in Utah, where precincts chose delegates to the state convention which may or may not be Bob Bennett’s Waterloo. It’s hard to gauge, at this point, how things turned out for Bennett last night; the convention, which will determine whether he can avoid (or even make it to) a primary will be real proof. With filings closed in Utah, Democrats left a lot of seats unchallenged in the dark-red legislature, leaving 15 of 75 House seats and 2 of 15 Senate seats without Ds.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi was spotted in DC yesterday to meet with Michael Steele about a possible Senate run. He isn’t expected to make a decision until close to the June 11 primary, though (which seems odd, since he’d be basically starting from scratch at that point to go against Patty Murray’s mammoth war chest).

• IL-10: Bob Dold doesn’t need this. Turns out that Dold, who cozied up to the teabaggers in his primary run and touted his opposition to abortion (in order to squeak past moderate state Rep. Beth Coulson), has turned on a dime and is now calling himself “pro-choice” and “a fiscal conservative and social moderate” in order to run against Dan Seals in the general in this D+6 district.

• MA-10: Republican flavor-of-the-month Scott Brown has weighed in on the GOP primary in the open seat in the 10th, not coincidentally the district where he fared the best in the special election. And he chose new over old, opting for state Rep. Jeff Perry instead of long-ago state Treasurer Joe Malone.

• MI-01: Connie Saltonstall’s primary challenge to Bart Stupak may have lost some of its raison d’etre over the weekend, but it’s still proceeding full speed ahead with some new supporters that may be able to make it rain money for her: Planned Parenthood and NARAL’s PACs. NOW had previously endorsed Saltonstall as well.

• NJ-12: Scott Sipperelle, the random businessman running against Rush Holt in the D+5 12th, apparently has money to burn as he’s already hitting the TV airwaves, with an ad blasting Holt for his health care vote. It’s a cable buy, though (in case you were having visions of him blanketing the NYC and Philly markets), so it could be a tiny expenditure aimed at getting free media for all we know.

• SD-AL: Even with Scott Hildebrand having folded his hand quickly on a threatened Stephanie Herseth Sandlin primary challenge, it sounds like another less-known Dem is getting in on it. Rapid City doctor Kevin Weiland is sounding out a run.

• VA-05: “We’ve given the word ‘mob’ a bad name.” The gas line at the Perriello household was mysteriously cut, after Rep. Tom Perriello’s gutsy HCR vote. Um, oooops… that was the Bo Perriello household, as several local teabaggers mistakenly posted the Congressman’s brother’s address on their websites and urged protesters to stop by for a friendly visit. The guy who posted the address (and refused to take it down after finding out it was the wrong Perriello) is now publicly “shocked” that one of his ilk would resort to violence. Oh, and the FBI is investigating. Tom Perriello, on the other hand, displayed only sangfroid, saying “If the worst thing that happens is that special-interest groups spend millions of dollars against me and my most ardent opponents organize against me, it’s hardly a ‘cry me a river’ moment – as long as people act civil and within the law.”

• WV-01: In the choice between conservadem and even-more-conservadem in the Democratic primary in the 1st, it’s becoming pretty clear which one is which: state GOP chair Douglas McKinney praised Alan Mollohan’s opponent state Sen. Mike Oliverio, saying he “has always been a conservative guy. He votes with the Republican on committees. We’ve joked for years he needs to come over to the party who thinks like he does.”

• HCR: Are some of the saner GOP members of Congress starting to come to their senses as the fog of war starts to dissipate? (Or are they just seeing the shift in the polls and engaging in some pre-emptive ass-covering?) The oft-blustery Rep. Pete King is urging his fellow GOPers to “get constructive” and “stop demonizing” health care reform and the Dems. And Chuck Grassley, almost single-handedly responsible for bogging the bill down and giving legs to the “Death Panel” lie in the August of Dems’ discontent, is now happily talking up his own positive contributions to the bill, regarding tax-exempt hospitals.

• DNC: The DNC is wheeling out a seven-figure budget for running ads in the wake of health care’s passage. It’s two-pronged, with attack ads against vulnerable Republicans who voted “no” (I guess the “voted no” part is redundant): Mark Kirk, Jim Gerlach, Dave Reichert, Mike Castle, and Joe Cao. And “thank you” ads are planned for vulnerable Dems, tentatively including John Boccieri, Dennis Cardoza, Brad Ellsworth, Paul Hodes, Tim Walz, Bob Etheridge, Tom Perriello, Leonard Boswell, Betsy Markey, and Gerry Connolly.

• SARAH’s List: Shortly after tweeting for her supporters not to retreat, but RELOAD, Sarah Palin’s website posted a map with gunsights targeting 20 Representatives for her supporters to shoot. Or to work to defeat for re-election, I suppose. It’s pretty much all the districts that went for McCain in 2008 and where there was a “yes” on HCR, without much regard for the race’s actual vulnerability or whether it’s an open seat: AR-02, AZ-01, AZ-05, AZ-08, CO-03, CO-04, FL-02, FL-24, IN-08, IN-09, ND-AL, OH-06, OH-16, PA-03, PA-10, SC-05, TN-06, VA-05, WV-01, and WV-03.

• Teabaggers: Quinnipiac released another poll showing the peril and promise of the teabagger movement for the GOP, as seen in the contrast between the basic generic ballot (44 R, 39 D) and one with a third-party element thrown in (36 D, 25 R, 15 T). Various commenters, like Ed Kilgore and TPM’s Zachary Roth are paying close attention to the poll, wondering, as they’ve done in the past, if there really even is a new-and-different “Tea Party” movement or if it’s just a new name for the most-extreme, riled-up part of the Republican Party that’s always been there (through the militia movements of the 90s and the Birchers of the 60s).

• NRCC: The NRCC claims to have pulled in $7 million last night at their annual fundraising dinner. That’s a lot of scratch, but bear in mind much of that’s in “pledges,” mostly from House members, some of whom haven’t had a good track record of helping the NRCC in the past.

• Census: Two neat Census-related maps worth checking out. One is a constantly-updated real-time map at the Census website which shows the response rates by state and municipality so far. (While the national return rate so far is 16%, the best municipality return rate so far is the civic minded folks of Westside, Iowa at 74%. And despite the popular image of it being full of paranoid militia types living in the hills who would rather use fiat money than fill out a Census form, Montana has the best return rate of any state, at 33%.) The other map is much sadder, courtesy of the Prison Policy Initiative: it shows state-by-state how much distortion of districts occurs through the counting of prisoners where they’re incarcerated rather than where they’re actually from.