Tag: George Voinovich

Quinnipiac (11/5-9, likely voters, 9/8-10 in parentheses):

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 40 (46)

John Kasich (R): 40 (36)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

There’s been a lot of up and down in the Ohio governor’s race, as pollsters don’t seem to have this race in sharp focus yet; today’s Quinnipiac poll seems to be a down day, with incumbent Dem Ted Strickland falling into a tie with ex-Rep. John Kasich after having posted a 10-point lead last time. The overall Pollster.com regression line gives Strickland a 48-45 edge.

The numbers seem driven by lukewarm feelings toward Strickland, whose approval rating is 45/43. By contrast, few people seem to remember Kasich, with a favorable of 23/7; he seems to benefit by virtue of not being an incumbent governor in today’s climate. The state’s two Senators are still putting up tolerable approval numbers: George Voinovich is at 47/36 while Sherrod Brown is at 46/31.

RaceTracker Wiki: OH-Gov

Quinnipiac (9/8-10, likely voters, 6/26-7/1 in parentheses):

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 46 (43)

John Kasich (R): 36 (38)

(MoE: ±3%)

There’s some definite improvement in the Ohio Governor’s race, where a number of summertime polls showed incumbent Dem Ted Strickland leading John Kasich within the margin error. Strickland’s putting a little more distance between himself and the ex-Rep., now holding a 10-point edge.

Strickland’s hardly out of the woods, polling below 50%. And although his overall job approval is positive at 48/42, he’s in deep negative territory on his handling of the state budget and the economy (not that anyone could do much with that, given the demolished manufacturing sector at his state’s core). Ohioans are a little happier with their Senators: George Voinovich is at 52/33 and Sherrod Brown is at 48/33.

RaceTracker Wiki: OH-Gov

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist got an endorsement today from one of the guys who was considered to be one of the likeliest GOP nominees up until the point when, well, Crist got into the race: Rep. Vern Buchanan. (If you’re keeping score among Florida’s Reps., the Diaz-Balarts and Cornelius McGillicudy IV have endorsed Crist, while Jeff Miller has endorsed Rubio.)

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk has drawn another seemingly-minor challenger in the GOP primary. John Arrington, an African-American former city councilor from Chicago’s southern suburb of Harvey, will run. He also sought the party’s nomination for the same seat in 2004 after GOP primary winner Jack Ryan dropped out, although the state party gave the nomination to the much more fun Alan Keyes.

• NC-Sen, NC-07: As most people expected, Rep. Mike McIntyre announced that he will run for re-election instead of for the Senate seat held by Richard Burr. Which is just as well, as McIntyre is pretty conservative and also needed to hold down his reddish district. SoS Elaine Marshall is probably the biggest name left who’s sounding interested in the Senate race.

• OH-Sen: George Voinovich had one of his occasional moments of independence the other day, telling the Columbus Dispatch that too many conservative southerners (specifically citing Jim DeMint and Tom Coburn) are dragging down the party’s brand nationwide. “They get on TV and go ‘errrr, errrrr,'” he said. “People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'” (I’m not quite sure what “errrr, errrr” means — maybe it’s supposed to be some sort of Frankenstein’s Monster noise — but otherwise it’s spot on.)

• CT-Gov: State senator Gary LeBeau, from East Hartford, seems to be the first Democrat to actually announce his candidacy for Governor. He’s been a Senator since 1996. Potential candidates he may face in the primary include Stamford mayor Daniel Malloy, SoS Susan Bysiewicz (both of whom have outpaced incumbent Governor Jodi Rell at fundraising so far), former state House speaker James Amman, and former Senate candidate Ned Lamont.

• MI-Gov: Although Lt. Gov. John Cherry seems on track to the Dem nomination, he got another primary opponent, former state Rep. John Freeman. Freeman’s hook is strong ties with organized labor, but Cherry is also friendly with labor. State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith is also in the race, and former MSU football coach George Perles is all but in.

• MN-Gov: Will he or won’t he? After the news broke last night that Norm Coleman wasn’t planning to run for Governor, that has been updated today to reflect that he won’t really decide until some point in spring 2010… which seems intended to give his personal brand some time to, uh, recover his interminable contesting of the Senate election, but still sounds very odd, as the party’s endorsing convention is in late April, giving him almost no time to ramp up.

• SD-Gov: If there’s one job that’s even more thankless than being state Senate minority leader in South Dakota, it’s being the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidate in South Dakota. Kudos to Scott Heideprem for doing both. Likely GOP contenders include Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard and state Senate majority leader Dave Knudsen.

• TX-Gov: Kay Bailey Hutchison is already shaking up her campaign staff, confronted with polls that show her faltering in the gubernatorial primary as incumbent Rick Perry consolidates the hard-core base with his ranting against the feds. Campaign manager Rick Wiley is out, replaced by Terry Sullivan.

• CA-26: Rep. David Dreier has reimbursed himself an unusually high $200,000 out of his congressional campaign funds this decade, without the proper level of itemization required by the FEC, and watchdog groups are starting to wonder why. He says these are mostly mundane food expenses and that he’ll provide additional documentation if the FEC makes him. Hopefully he’s not making the same mistake a lot of small-time crooks make: when you launder money, you don’t put it in the Dreier afterwards.

• FL-16: With state Sen. Dave Aronberg running for AG, our next best bet is probably St. Lucie Co. Commissioner Chris Craft, and he’s “leaning” toward jumping into the race against freshman GOPer Tom Rooney in the next few weeks.

• LA-02: The first Democrat to announce a run against improbable GOP Rep. Joseph Cao is state Rep. Juan LaFonta. LaFonta had been rumored to be thinking about avoiding the Dem primary and running as an Independent, but won’t. State Rep. Cedric Richmond, who lost last year’s primary, and State Sen. Cheryl Grey Evans also sound likely to get in.

• MN-06: State Sen. Tarryl Clark made her run official, filing the paperwork for her candidacy ysterday. She’ll face off against 06 candidate Elwyn Tinklenberg and former IP member Maureen Reed in the primary.

• MS-01: This has been expected since state Sen. Merle Flowers said he wouldn’t run, but state Sen. Alan Nunnelee made it official yesterday, filing to run against Rep. Travis Childers. Nunnelee’s opening salvo against Blue Dog Childers was that he votes with Nancy Pelosi “100 percent.” Which is true, if by 100%, you actually mean 61%.

• TX-32: Here’s a profile of Grier Raggio, the locally-prominent attorney who’s running for the Democrats in the 32nd. The district still is Republican-leaning, but demographics are poised to move it quickly in our direction.

• FL-St. House: Term limits look like they’ll cut a sizable swath through the GOP delegation in Florida’s state House, with Republicans facing 25 open seats in 2010 — many of which are narrowly GOP-leaning and in Dem-trending central Florida — compared with only three for Democrats. Dems are starting out in a very deep hole in the state House, so an outright takeover isn’t likely, but it may bring them closer to balance.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Ohio finds both potential Democratic candidates with solid leads in the race to replace retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH).

Lee Fisher (D) leads Rob Portman (R), 41% to 32%, and Jennifer Brunner (D) has a similar 40% to 32% advantage over Portman.

http://www.publicpolicypolling…

In looking at the internals, both the Dems have an even net approve/disapprove (32/32 and 32/31 respectively), whereas Portman is underwater at 22/34.

Ohio looks like a solid top 3 pick-up for now…

This should really be a win (whoever gets the nomination) along with New Hampshire and Missouri.

“In Columbus there may be a great deal of jockeying about the Senate race, but around the state voters have not yet begun to pay attention to the contest,” said Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown. “It is clear at this point that there remains a Democratic advantage in the Ohio electorate that evidenced itself in 2006 and 2008.”

Dem Primary

Fisher 18

Brunner 14

Ryan 12

Yates 6

GOP Primary

Portman 31

Taylor 14

General

Fisher 41

Portman 33

Fisher 41

Taylor 31

Brunner 39

Portman 34

Brunner 38

Taylor 31

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x128…

It’s been the world’s worst-kept secret for the last three days or so, but this morning George Voinovich made it official: he’s hanging it up in 2010, leaving behind an open seat in a swing state where the recent momentum has been with the Democrats.

In a statement from his office, Voinovich emphasized that he wanted to spend his final two years in the Senate focusing on legislating instead of campaigning.

“These next two years in office, for me, will be the most important years that I have served in my entire political career,” Voinovich said in a statement. “I must devote my full time, energy and focus to the job I was elected to do, the job in front of me, which seeking a third term – with the money-raising and campaigning that it would require – would not allow me to do.”

All eyes turn to the ensuing musical chairs now; Roll Call, like most outlets, posits ex-Rep. and ex-OMB Director Rob Portman as the likeliest GOP candidate (although with no mention of John Kasich as a backup; instead it offers retread Mike DeWine and nutjob Ken Blackwell as other options). As always, we’ll keep you posted as hats get thrown into the ring.

UPDATE: Well, that was fast. Politico‘s Scorecard is already reporting that Rob Portman is getting in the race and will announce his candidacy shortly. Let’s see if that has the effect of clearing the field.

UPDATE, part deux: On the Democratic side, Politico is now reporting that Rep. Tim Ryan is making loud public noises about “certainly consider”ing the Senate race, while Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher’s surrogates are saying that he is “leaning against running.” I wonder if we could have both fields cleared within the next few days?

So says Politico

Ohio Republican George Voinovich is expected to announce Monday that he won’t seek re-election to the Senate in 2010.

Cue the music

This is retirement number four for Big Bad John and Co. just five days into the 11th Congress. In addition to that everyone knows that Kay Bailey Hutchison will make a run for governor and may resign to focus on that. Democrats have legitimate chances to pick up all of them.

Republicans likely to take a shot at the seat include Rob Portman and John Kasich. Democrats have a large field of potential candidates including Rep. Tim Ryan and Rep. Betty Sutton but the CW in Ohio says that Lt. Governor Lee Fisher will run and clear the field with Gov. Ted Strickland’s backing.  

The Republicans so far are dropping like flies. Big Bad John Deathwatch Part 1?

Also at this point in the 2008 cycle no Republican had announced their retirement. Wayne Allard announced his retirement on January 15th, 2007. The next retirement wasn’t until August 31. In 2006 only Bill Frist retired for the Republicans.  If I remember correctly Democrats won quite a few seats in those elections, imagine what 2010 will look like.