Tag: Beth Coulson

• 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.

• Election Results: With 99.1% of precincts reporting (97 remain, apparently mostly in Cook County), both sides of the governor’s race remain too close to call. Democratic incumbent Pat Quinn has declared victory, sitting on a 7,000 vote lead (50.4%-49.6%) and with the remaining precincts in Cook County likely to go his way, although Dan Hynes hasn’t conceded yet. On the GOP side, we’re looking most likely at a recount, as state Sen. Bill Brady leads fellow state Sen. Kirk Dillard currently by a 751-vote margin (20.3%-20.2%), as they both squeaked past the two presumed frontrunners, former state party chair Andy McKenna and former AG Jim Ryan. The fact that the remaining votes are from Cook County, however, may be poised to help the moderate suburbs-based Dillard, though, rather than the conservative downstate Brady, so this race seems likely to get even closer (Nate Silver actually projects a one-vote victory for Brady based on broader Cook County trends). Recount procedures make it sound like a protracted process – an initial vote tally won’t happen until March 5, and then the process “could take months to complete” – giving Quinn a big headstart on whoever the GOP victor turns out to be.

As expected, Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk are the Senate nominees, although both won their races with somewhat underwhelming percentages (39% for Giannoulias, and 57% for Kirk, who could have been in more trouble had the teabagging right coalesced behind one person in particular). Conservatives did triumph over establishment candidates in several GOP House primaries, though, as Bob Dold! beat state Rep. Beth Coulson in the 10th, and state Sen. Randy Hultgren beat Ethan Hastert in the 14th.

In Florida, as expected, state Sen. Ted Deutch easily won the special election primary to succeed Rep. Robert Wexler, beating former Broward Co. Commissioner Ben Graber 86-15. It looks like he’ll face Republican Ed Lynch (the 2008 nominee), who defeated Joe Budd by only 46 votes (but with only 8,000 total GOP votes, that’s outside the margin for an automatic recount). And here’s a surprise out of Kentucky: Democrats picked up a state House seat in the dark-red HD 24, which was recently vacated when Republican Jimmy Higdon got promoted to the state Senate in another special election. Terry Mills won, 54-46, based on an overwhelming edge (89-11) on his home turf of Marion County, reminding us that, at the end of the day, all politics is local.

Finally, last night was caucus and straw poll night in Minnesota. Only 80% of precincts have reported yet – I guess they go to bed early in Minnesota – but the straw poll in the Democratic governor’s race points to only a lot of chaos at this point. Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak led with 21.8%, followed closely by state House speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher at 20.2%. However, “uncommitted” is a solid 3rd at 15%, there are five other candidates who managed to break 5% (John Marty, Tom Rukavina, Paul Thissen, Matt Entenza, and Tom Bakk), and ex-Sen. Mark Dayton doesn’t even seem to be bothering with the whole process, planning on going straight to the primary, so there’s not much clarity on how the field will shake out. The GOP field seems much more clear-cut, where former state House minority leader Marty Seifert beat state Rep. Tom Emmer 50-39, with the rest of the field in the low single digits.

• AZ-Sen: With the imminent entry of ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth into the Republican primary against John McCain, we’re already looking at dueling internal polls. McCain offers up a poll from POS, giving him a 59-30 lead over Hayworth. Hayworth has his own poll from McLaughlin, which, not surprisingly, shows him much closer, trailing 49-33.

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek, NASCAR dad? Meek plans to call attention to his campaign by shelling out to be the lead sponsor of Mike Wallace’s car in an upcoming race at Daytona.

• IN-Sen: With the surprising announcement by ex-Sen. Dan Coats last night that he’s interested in a comeback and would start seeking the signatures to qualify for the Indiana GOP nod, the oppo pretty much writes itself. For starters, Coats can’t even sign his own petition – he’s been a registered voter in Virginia for more than a decade, not Indiana. And what’s he been doing for much of that time? Lobbying… for King & Spalding, on behalf of nice people like the Carlyle Group and Bank of America. The Plum Line also points to Coats accusing Bill Clinton of “wagging the dog” when he started going after al-Qaeda in 1998, allegedly to distract the press from his peccadilloes… and we all know how that turned out.

• ND-Sen: Democrats have, well, somebody ready to go if ex-AG Heidi Heitkamp doesn’t get into the Senate race to replace retiring Byron Dorgan. State Sen. Tracy Potter, who represents Bismarck, will be announcing his candidacy on Friday. Other potential candidates seem to be holding back, waiting to see what Heitkamp does; she’s been strangely silent since initially expressing interest in the seat last month.

• NY-Sen-B: Quinnipiac’s first poll of the New York Senate race after the Harold Ford Jr. boomlet began finds, well, pretty much what everyone else has found: Kirsten Gillibrand beats him by a wide margin but doesn’t break 50%. Gillibrand beats 36-18, with Jonathan Tasini at 4. Quinnipiac also tests general election matchups against Republican port commissioner Bruce Blakeman (they don’t even bother testing ex-Gov. George Pataki, who doesn’t seem to be making any moves to get into the race). Gillibrand beats Blakeman 44-27, and Ford beats him 35-26. Gillibrand is slowly gaining some more name rec, up to a 42/28 approval. Blakeman may not have the GOP primary to himself, though, as a strange blast from the past is re-emerging to say he’s interested in the race: ex-Rep. Joseph DioGuardi. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, DioGuardi served in the House representing Westchester County from 1984 to 1988, when he was defeated by Nita Lowey.

• NY-Gov: The same Quinnipiac sample looks at the governor’s race, finding huge approval gaps between Andrew Cuomo (54/16) and David Paterson (34/49). Cuomo wins the Democratic primary 55-23. Cuomo beats Rick Lazio 57-25, while Lazio manages to get past Paterson 40-39. There’s also one other bit of good news for Cuomo (who’s seemed gunshy about taking on Paterson, perhaps out of bad memories of his race against Carl McCall). The poll asked if his candidacy would be “racially divisive,” and respondents answered “no” by an 80-14 margin, including 73-22 among African-Americans. Marist (pdf) also just released the gubernatorial half of its recent Senate poll, finding generally similar numbers. Cuomo wins the primary 70-23. Cuomo beats Lazio 64-27, while Lazio edges Paterson 46-43.

• TN-Gov: Add one more candidate running for higher office who’s publicly copped to being birther-curious: Lt. Gov. (and GOP gubernatorial candidate) Ron Ramsey. Not having made much of an impression in terms of polling (where Rep. Zach Wamp has an edge) or fundraising (where Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam is cleaning up), this seems like the most attention Ramsey has gotten so far.

• TX-Gov: Here’s more evidence that the Texas GOP gubernatorial primary may be headed for a runoff: the new Rasmussen poll of the primary doesn’t have anyone coming even close to 50%. Incumbent Rick Perry leads at 44, with Kay Bailey Hutchison lagging at 29, and Paulist insurgent Debra Medina all the way up to 14 on the strength of some buzz coming out of her debate performances. KBH may be counting on a runoff as her only way left to salvage this race, but somehow it seems like, in a runoff, Medina votes are a lot likely to gravitate toward the secession-invoking Perry rather than consummate DC insider Hutchison. In the general, all three defeat Democratic ex-Houston mayor Bill White, although, as one would expect, KBH puts up the biggest margin: 49-36. Perry wins 48-39, while Medina wins by only 41-38.

• AR-02: One of the non-Tim Griffin candidates in the Republican field, David Meeks, dropped out of the race today, probably realizing he was in over his head with the kind of attention open seat races get. One other candidate, restaurant owner Scott Wallace remains, and he may well carry the teabagger flag against Beltway creature Griffin. Realizing the best way to win this is by painting Griffin as insider, the DCCC is turning their attention to Griffin’s past as GOP behind-the-scenes fixer, calling attention to his efforts at voter suppression. Over in the diaries, ARDem takes a look at the developing Dem field, which currently contains state House speaker Robbie Wills, liberal state Sen. Joyce Elliott, and retiring Vic Snyder’s chief of staff, David Boling. It won’t contain, however, Little Rock mayor Mike Stodola, or Public Service Commissioner Paul Suskie, who had seemed to be laying the groundwork for a run.

• CA-12, CA-AG: False alarm: Rep. Jackie Speier is staying put in the 12th District, where’s she been in place for only a couple years. Rumors that she was about to move over to the state AG’s race had many of the state legislators on the Peninsula angling to replace her.

• GA-04: In the wake of an internal from Rep. Hank Johnson showing him crushing his three opponents in the Dem primary in this solidly-blue district in Atlanta’s suburbs, one of those opponents got out of the way: DeKalb Co. Commissioner Lee May. May is an ally of former DeKalb Co. CEO Vernon Jones, so it’s possible that he’s getting out of the way primarily so that Jones can get a bigger share of the non-Johnson vote.

• MA-10: With the general sense that this is the most vulnerable district in Massachusetts (as seen with its votes in the Senate special election last month), Republicans are taking more of an interest in challenging Rep. William Delahunt in this usually-ignored seat. Former state treasurer Joe Malone is probably the biggest name to express interest, but at least one other credible contender, state Rep. Jeffrey Perry, is already announcing his candidacy. State Sen. Robert Hedlund is also expressing some interest.

• NJ-07: One big hole in the Dems’ recruitment schedule has been the 7th, narrowly won by freshman GOP Rep. Leonard Lance in 2008. They’ve managed to fill the gap with Ed Potosnak, who’s elevated slightly above Some Dude status by the full Rolodex he brings with him after working for a number of years as a Hill staffer for Rep. Mike Honda.

• PA-11: Lackawanna Co. Commissioner Corey O’Brien has a compelling argument for why he should win the primary in the 11th: he says Rep. Paul Kanjorski has “zero” chance of defeating Republican Lou Barletta in their third face-off, citing Kanjorski’s low approval ratings. O’Brien has been fundraising well ($180K last quarter, not far from Kanjo’s $237K) and recently hit the airwaves with a small cable buy for his first TV spot.

• CA-LG: Is San Francisco mayor (and gubernatorial race dropout) Gavin Newsom actually thinking about a run for the dead-end job that is California’s #2? Officially he’s not interested, but he hasn’t said no, and a new public poll from Tulchin gives him a big lead in a hypothetical LG primary, with Newsom at 33 against the two declared candidates: Los Angeles city councilor Janice Hahn at 17 and state Sen. Dean Florez at 15. Meanwhile, the state Senate this week takes up the issue of filling the current vacancy in the LG’s chair (vacated by now-Rep. John Garamendi); there’s actually talk of blocking Ahnold appointee state Sen. Abel Maldonado, despite that getting the moderate Republican Maldonado out of his seat would open up his Dem-leaning district for a takeover and help push the Dem edge in the Senate toward the magic 2/3s mark.

• CT-AG: The story of Susan Bysiewicz just gets stranger and stranger; she decided that rather than run for governor, she’d prefer to run for AG, but now the job’s current occupant, Richard Blumenthal, says that possibly she can’t. An AG opinion interprets state law requiring ten years of legal practice as unclear and urges a declaratory ruling on Bysiewicz’s case from a court. Bysiewicz, for her part, said she won’t seek the declaratory ruling and is simply plowing ahead with her AG campaign, although it’s possible one of the other candidates in the race might force the issue in the courts.

• Polltopia: The skepticism toward those SurveyUSA polls commissioned by Firedoglake continues to grow, this time from political science professor and frequent Pollster.com contributor Alan Abramowitz. His gravest concerns are with the leading questions in the issues portions of the poll on health care reform, but he also points to serious problems with the samples’ compositions that we were quick to flag. He observes that the samples deeply underrepresent younger votes, and that the youth subsets are so small that there’s no good way to “weight up” younger voters to a more proportionate level.

• AR-Sen: The news that the guy who held Blanche Lincoln to within about 10 points last time (in 2004) is getting back in the race this year seems like it should be a bigger news story than it is, but there’s an already filled-to-capacity GOP field and the establishment seems to have already picked favorites. At any rate, former state Sen. Jim Holt, closely linked with the state’s religious right, officially launched his bid today.

• AZ-Sen: It’s look more and more like ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth is serious about pursuing a Republican primary challenge to John McCain and not just looking to fundraise his way out of some lingering legal debts. He’s been contacting consultants and pollsters about strategy, and he’s also made some high-profile appearances recently, including headlining a fundraiser for controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. In response to the possible challenge, John McCain is launching two different radio ads full of right-wing language pretty transparently aimed at the teabagging crowd, saying Barack Obama is “leading an extreme left-wing crusade” and calling himself “Arizona’s last line of defense.”

• CT-Sen: Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, but it’s looking likelier that starting in 2013, Richard Blumenthal will be Connecticut’s senior senator. PPP finds that Joe Lieberman’s numbers, not good before his HCR sabotage, have gotten even worse. His approval is a mind-blowing 14/81 among Democrats (probably ending any plans by him to seek the Democratic nomination in 2012). He fares least worst among Republicans, who give him a 39/48 approval; it’s good for a 25/67 approval over all, along with a 19/68 approval of his actions on health care (which pissed off Democrats while still leaving Republicans unhappy when he voted for final passage). While the Hill’s piece on Rep. Chris Murphy seems to be based mostly on a vague sentence by Murphy, it does point to a suddenly congealing CW that Murphy (with Blumenthal already engaged) will be the person to tackle Lieberman in 2012.

• FL-Sen, FL-Gov: You know you’re in trouble when you’re spending valuable time fighting rumors spread on Facebook by thoroughly discredited ex-Rep. Mark Foley. Charlie Crist today said there’s no truth to the rumors that he’s about to drop his faltering Senate primary bid and try for re-election as Governor instead.

• IL-Sen: Patrick Hughes, who’s been seeding his right-wing insurgent bid with some of his own money, is seeking to break out of the single digits in the GOP primary polls against Rep. Mark Kirk by upping his name recognition. He’s out with a TV spot today.

• MA-Sen: Martha Coakley is shifting her sleepy general election campaign into overdrive today with the special election several weeks away, launching her first general election TV ad. She’s also receiving the endorsements today of most of the key figures in the Kennedy clan, including Ted’s widow Vicky and ex-Rep. Joe (along with honorary Kennedy and temporary Senator Paul Kirk).

• ND-Sen: As we parse the comments from various potential Democratic candidates in the newly-open Senate race in North Dakota, it sounds like former AG Heidi Heitkamp is “very interested” and “very much looking into” the race, while talk show host Ed Schultz is “at this point… not even considering.”

• NY-Sen-B: Here’s an interesting possibility surfacing, as the GOP seeks anyone who’s willing to take on Kirsten Gillibrand in the Senate race: ex-Rep. Susan Molinari, who was considered a rising star back when she represented NY-13. She’s started floating her name out there (or more accurately, her dad, Staten Island GOP leader Guy Molinari), but one key point from the article is that Molinari — currently employed at the firm of Bracewell & Giuliani (yes, that Giuliani) — “left Congress in 1997 and currently lives in Virginia.” Meanwhile, as the potential Harold Ford Jr. candidacy is still the “wtf?” heard ’round the blogosphere, The Albany Project takes a deeper look at the mysterious forces pushing the idea front and center.

• IL-Gov: Desperately needing to make up some ground on incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn in the last month before the Democratic primary, Comptroller Dan Hynes is going hard negative against Quinn from the apparent right in a new TV spot, painting him as a soft-on-crime tax-raiser. Meanwhile, Quinn got the endorsement from the Chicago Sun-Times.

• MA-Gov: State Treasurer Tim Cahill’s independent candidacy for Governor hasn’t really seemed to have its desired effect for Cahill, as it mostly has allowed Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick to move ahead in the polls as Cahill splits the anti-Patrick votes. Cahill looks to be trying to lure some more GOP voters into his camp to become the definitive anti-Patrick candidate, though, with his running mate pick, GOP former state Rep. Paul Loscocco. It doesn’t sound like Cahill or Loscocco are very enthuasiastic about taking each other to the prom, though; Cahill already got turned down by four previous people he’d asked to be his running mate (including current Senate candidate Scott Brown), and Loscocco had previously been lobbying to be GOP candidate Charlie Baker’s running mate but missed the cut on that one.

• MD-Gov: Incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley seems to have a fairly clear path to re-election, but for the time being he has higher-profile opposition in his own primary than from the Republicans. He’s facing a challenge from the right from George Owings, who officially launched today. Owings was a conservative Democratic state Delegate for many years and then picked by GOP Governor Bob Ehrlich as the state’s veteran affairs secretary (who was then sacked by O’Malley once he took office); Owings is attacking O’Malley’s tax raising and opposition to the death penalty.

• NE-Gov: Democrats are back to square one in the Nebraska gubernatorial race against GOP incumbent Dave Heineman, after Douglas Co. Commissioner (and former Omaha mayor) Mike Boyle — who’d sounded likely to run last month — decided against a bid. Democratic state Sen. Steve Lathrop has also ruled the race out.

• CO-03: Martin Beeson, the Republican DA for an agglomeration of small mountain counties, has pulled out of his bid for the GOP nod in the 3rd to challenge Rep. John Salazar. Beeson’s hopes dimmed when state Rep. (and 2006 loser) Scott Tipton got into the GOP field a few months ago.

• IL-10: Moderate Republican state Rep. Beth Coulson got a big (if unsurprising) endorsement, from fellow GOP moderate ex-Rep. John Porter. Porter held the seat for 20 years, until he made way for his former chief of staff (current Rep. Mark Kirk) in 2000.

• MN-01: Apparently John Wade, the president of Rochester’s Chamber of Commerce, had been interested in a run in the 1st against Democratic sophomore Rep. Tim Walz. He just decided against it, although a lone business conservative seems like he might have a shot at winning the crowded GOP primary, split between a number of loudmouthed social conservatives (most notably ex-state Rep. Allen Quist).

• MS-01: Good fundraising has propelled Republican state Sen. Alan Nunnelee up a tier in the NRCC’s framework for challengers. Nunnelee, who’ll likely face off against Rep. Travis Childers and his mighty ‘stache, is now a “Contender.”

• TN-06: Democrats are having trouble recruiting to fill the slot left behind by Rep. Bart Gordon’s retirement. State Rep. Henry Fincher just said no; he follows fellow state Rep. Mike McDonald in declining. It can’t be that appetizing, given the district’s reddening hue, several strong GOPers waiting in the wings, and the likelihood of GOP gerrymandering making the district even less hospitable in 2012.

• UT-03, UT-Sen: I’d be surprised if anyone were on pins and needles about this, but if you missed yesterday’s announcement, yes, Rep. Jason Chaffetz will be returning for another term in the House rather than getting into the primary against impermissibily sane GOP Sen. Bob Bennett.

• EMILY’s List: Stephanie Shriock, chief of staff to Sen. Jon Tester, will take over as head of EMILY’s List from Ellen Malcolm. It marks the first change in leadership at the top for the prolific PAC.

• RNC: After a revolt by what remains of its moderate wing, the RNC has backed down on its purity test (which would require 8 of 10 agreements on right-wing positions, and probably would have cut loose Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Rob Simmons, and Charlie Crist loose from RNC funding). Now they’re simply requiring that nobody endorse any Democratic candidates in 2010. Meanwhile, Michael Steele continues to overshadow the rest of the RNC’s operations with his gift of saying odd things, with today’s installment a riposte to intraparty critics intent on withholding RNC donations because of Steele’s leadership: “get a life” or “fire me.”

• Gay marriage: It’s been flying under the radar with everything else going on this week, but New Jersey’s state Senate is currently debating gay marriage, with a vote possibly later today. Only 13 Senators have definitely committed to it so far though, short of the 21 needed for passage. (Dems are already short 1 vote with the absence of Dana Redd, who resigned after becoming mayor of Camden.)

• Census: Here’s an interesting conundrum for the Census Bureau — how to deal with the issue of the nation’s legions of sunbirds: retirees who live in the south for winter and the north for summer. It’s especially an issue for Minnesota as it seeks to stave off elimination of one of its Congressional districts, and it’s making special efforts to make sure long-term travelers list themselves according to their Minnesota addresses.

• AR-Sen: Shortest Senate campaign ever. Former Arkansas Farm Bureau president Stanley Reed, about one week into his campaign, dropped out today, citing health reasons. Reed, with his resume and connections, was considered a very credible candidate when stacked up against the rest of the ragtag band of misfits running for the GOP. On the Dem side comes the intriguing news that the SEIU is paying down Lt. Gov. Bill Halter‘s campaign debt. Daily Kos’s Jed seems optimistic that the SEIU is facilitating a primary run against Blanche Lincoln (they said he “has a very bright political future,” although not specifically referencing the Senate race), although, considering there were rumors that the SEIU’s anti-Gilbert Baker ad was interpreted as a sign to Lincoln that they had her back (in exchange for her cooperation on an HCR cloture vote), it’s also possible this could be a carrot from the SEIU to Halter to stay out of the primary. This one’s worth keeping an eye on.

• AZ-Sen: This might be a clue that there’s some growing substance to the rumors that ex-Rep. J.D. Hayworth is gearing up for a primary run against John McCain. He’s in Washington DC this week, meeting with potential supporters including conservative advocacy group Citizens United.

• CT-Sen: I’m not sure how much sway former Democratic state party chair Ed Marcus has over Chris Dodd or anybody else, but he’s gone on the record advocating that Dodd hang it up and make way for Richard Blumenthal. Dodd’s people responded that Marcus has some sort of old grudge against Dodd.

• KY-Sen: Um, whoops. Rand Paul’s campaign manager Chris Hightower had to resign his post yesterday after local blog Barefoot and Progressive found racist comments on Hightower’s MySpace page (and also video of performances by Hightower’s death metal band… gotta love those crazy libertarians). (Wait… MySpace? Srsly?) Primary rival Trey Grayson’s campaign wasted no time jumping on this, adding some fuel to their argument that Paul isn’t coming from mainstream Republican turf.

• IL-Gov: Rasmussen added some gubernatorial numbers to their Illinois sample, finding fairly comfortable leads for both incumbent Pat Quinn and Dem comptroller Dan Hynes against their Republican opposition. It wouldn’t be a Rasmussen poll without something inexplicable in it, though, and this time it’s the decision not to poll former AG Jim Ryan, who’s probably the Republican field’s frontrunner. Still, Quinn beats state party chair Andy McKenna 41-33, state Sen. Bill Brady 45-30, and state Sen. Kirk Dillard 41-30, while Hynes beats McKenna 43-30, Brady 46-27, and Dillard 42-29. Interesting to see Hynes overperforming Quinn in the general, even as Hynes looks unlikely to make it out of the primary; that may have to do with some Blago-related stench coming off of Quinn (Blago’s ex-LG, although they had absolutely nothing to do with each other), or just the reversal of positions, where the former reformer Quinn is now the insider and the well-connected Hynes is now the outsider. In the Dem primary, long-time SoS Jesse White threw his endorsement to Quinn. The Dem field also shrank to only Quinn and Hynes as the two minor candidates were vanquished; attorney Ed Scanlon was knocked off the ballot, while activist Dock Walls withdrew.

• NY-Gov: It had looked like Erie County Exec Chris Collins had gaffed his way out of contention for a possible run for the GOP gubernatorial nomination (after a bizarre tirade against Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver). But with Rudy Giuliani pretty clearly out of the field and ex-Rep. Rick Lazio exciting absolutely nobody, it looks like Collins may still take a whack at it. He just hired a campaign consulting firm run by a former Giuliani aide.

• IL-10: One of the four GOPers in the field in the 10th, Bill Cadigan, has dropped out; without state Rep. Beth Coulson’s name rec or the money of Dick Green or Bob Dold, he really didn’t have a foot in the door. Speaking of Bob Dold, Bob Dold is now on the air with a TV spot touting Bob Dold’s conservative economic views. Bob Dold!

• MN-06: If there’s someone out there who seems like she’d be one of those crazy bosses, it’s Rep. Michele Bachmann. She’s had a terrible time holding onto chiefs of staff, and now she’s facing a rupture with her entire fundraising group, described as a “defection” (although it’s not clear where they’re defecting to).

• NH-02: This isn’t going to endear ex-Rep. Charlie Bass to the teabag set, as he seeks to reclaim his seat. Bass just got a $2,500 check from NRCC chair Pete Sessions’ PAC. The anti-establishment right already has to be inclined to support right-wing radio talker Jennifer Horn over the moderate Bass.

• OH-15: Ex-state Sen. (and 2008 loser) Steve Stivers won’t get the GOP primary to himself; he’s facing a challenge from the right from John Adams, who’s labeling himself as the “conservative alternative.” Stivers also faces third-party right-winger David Ryon in the general, similar to what hamstrung him last time and let Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy squeak into office.

• OH-17: Ex-Rep. (and ex-con) Jim Traficant is in the news again, sounding revved up to, well, yell and gesticulate a lot, as always. He’s also still talking about another run for Congress, although he’s not sure where. He said he’d circulate nominating petitions in three different districts. His former seat in the 17th is likeliest, although so too is the neighboring 6th.

• PA-10: The race in the 10th has been slow to take shape, compared with most other red-leaning districts held by Democrats. But with state Rep. Mike Peifer recently having announced he’s interested in a race against Rep. Chris Carney, now someone else potentially higher up the food chain is checking it out too: former US Attorney Tom Marino, who already (wisely) passed on the race in 2008.

• PA-15: Here’s one more district with teabagger troubles for the NRCC and the Republican establishment. Rep. Charlie Dent is facing his toughest challenge yet from Democratic mayor of Bethlehem John Callahan, and now comes word of a challenge in the GOP primary from 9/12 movement member Matthew Benol. There’s also a third-party teabagger awaiting Dent in the general, Jake Towne.

• TN-06: State Sen. Jim Tracy seemed to have an early edge on securing the GOP nod in the now-open 6th, vacated recently by Democratic Rep. Bart Gordon. That was bolstered by his recent announcement that he’d already raised $100K in funds just this week, and that he’d gotten the endorsement of fellow state Sen. (and potential primary rival) Bill Ketron. However, he’s got some competition from another fellow state Senator now: Diane Black announced that she’s joining the race too. (Black is from suburban Gallatin, while Tracy is from more rural Shelbyville.)

• TN-08: Republican candidate Stephen Fincher had been successfully playing the “I’m just a humble farmer/gospel singer who’s never even been to Washington” role for a while, it seems, but suddenly the teabaggers are turning their wrath on even him, too. They’re taking an issue with his fundraising, as almost all of his money is coming from nearby farm families who’ve maxed-out on donations (which is a good sign, as his big haul so far was just him picking the low-hanging fruit; now the real test comes). What’s alarming to the anti-pork crowd is that how deep in the pocket of Big Ag he seems to be; his supporters have received a cumulative $80,000,000 in farm subsidies, and Fincher himself has gotten $6,000,000 in farm subsidies over the years, including $800,000 in 2007 alone.

• WA-03: The Democratic field seems to be solidifying, with Olympia-area state Rep. Brendan Williams, a frequently-mentioned possible candidate, deciding against a run. With state Sen. Craig Pridemore and state Rep. Deb Wallace both in, the two main candidates are both from Vancouver instead. Also worth noting: peace activist Cheryl Crist is in the race for the Dems too. Crist primaried Brian Baird in 2008, doing well at the activist-dominated nominating convention but making little impact in the actual primary.

• GA-St. House: It’s official; David Ralston is the new Republican speaker of Georgia’s House, following the suicide attempt and resignation of former speaker Glenn Richardson. If you’re looking for broader implications, it takes Ralston’s name out of contention in the open seat in GA-09, where he’d been rumored to be interested in a run.

• Demographics: Josh Goodman does some neat number-tweaking, overlaying Census projections onto the 2008 presidential election to try and predict the 2052 election. Assuming that racial groups keep voting for the same parties at the same proportions, he projects 58-40 Democratic edge. Of course, that’s easier said than done, as, for starters, Hispanics could return to their 2004-level GOP performance; also, as he points out, “Heck, in 40 years the Tea Party and the Green Party might be the major players in contesting the all-important cyborg vote.”

• CT-Sen: Joe Biden is stopping by Connecticut yet again to fill up Chris Dodd’s coffers with a fundraising event tomorrow. This comes against a backdrop of increasing questions from the press of whether or not Dodd will be retiring (or getting pushed out the door by the party)… suggesting the beginning of the same self-fulfilling downward spiral that dragged down Jim Bunning, who’d similarly worn down his welcome on the other side of the aisle.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio is making a strange ploy here, when the substance of his previous campaign has all been more-conservative-than-thou. He now says he would have accepted stimulus funds, had he been governor. Maybe he’s already thinking ahead to how he’ll have to moderate things, once he’s in the general?

• IL-Sen: With the Illinois primary fast-approaching, believe it or not, Alexi Giannoulias is hitting his cash stash to already go on the air with a second TV spot, again focusing on his jobs-saving efforts. On the GOP side, it looks like Rep. Mark Kirk‘s frequent flip-flopping is starting to catch the attention of the legacy media; the Sun-Times and AP are taking notice of his new McCain-ish attempts to harp on earmarks despite his own earmark-friendly past.

• NV-Sen: Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, recently cleared on corruption charges, had previously said that he wouldn’t seek to challenge Harry Reid in the Senate race. Now sources are saying Krolicki is, in fact, “interested.” It’s unclear whether Krolicki sustained an unfixable amount of damage as a result of the charges, though, or what sort of space he could seek to carve out in the already overcrowded GOP primary field.

• SD-Sen: You might recall a while back we noted that Matt McGovern, a clean energy activist, was considering a run to follow in his grandfather George’s footsteps in the Senate. Today he declined a run, leaving the Democrats without any candidate to go up against John Thune next year.

• TX-Sen: South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, increasingly the go-to guy for right-wing kingmaking, issued his fourth endorsement in a Senate primary, although this is the primary that may or may not ever happen. He gave his imprimatur to Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams, who’s been a darling of the rightosphere but who’s polled in the single-digits in the few polls of the special election field.

• MN-Gov: Here’s a fundraising boost to state House speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who has lots of behind-the-scenes support in her DFL gubernatorial bid but a big name rec deficit against names like former Sen. Mark Dayton and Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak. She secured an EMILY’s List endorsement, giving her a nationwide base to tap into.

• SC-Gov: Mark Sanford may have dodged his final bullet, allowing him to serve out his last year in ignominious peace. A 7-member state House Judiciary subcommittee voted 6-1 against impeachment and instead unanimously for censure. The matter still goes before the full Judiciary committee, but they seem unlikely to reverse course.

• Governors: PPP has one of their frequent good observations: of the nation’s governors who have the worst approval ratings, most of them are ineligible or not planning to run for re-election in 2010 (Baldacci, Doyle, Perdue, Rendell, Schwarzenegger). The three who are running for re-election next year are all likely casualties in their own primaries (Brewer, Gibbons, and Paterson).

• FL-12: Outgoing Rep. Adam Putnam, who’s leaving his job to run for Florida’s Ag Commissioner, has given his endorsement to former state Rep. Dennis Ross to replace him. It’s something of a formality, with no other major GOPers in the race, but should help keep anyone else from last-minute gate-crasing.

• IL-10: Lots of endorsements in the 10th. On the GOP side, state Rep. Beth Coulson got the endorsement of moderate ex-Gov. Jim Edgar, the state’s only recent ex-Gov who’s still on the right side of the law. For the Dems, Dan Seals got the endorsement of the powerful New Trier Township Democrats, while state Rep. Julie Hamos was endorsed by Citizen Action.

• IL-14: Recent dropout Mark Vargas finally confirmed that he’ll be pulling his name off the ballot, leaving only the two biggest names. This comes as a relief to the camp of state Sen. Randy Hultgren, who were worried that name of Vargas (who endorsed Ethan Hastert) would stay on the ballot to split the anti-Hastert vote.

• LA-03: Wondering why no one prominent is leaping at the chance to fill the open seat left behind by Charlie Melancon? They know what we redistricting nerds at SSP already know… that seat is likely to vaporize in 2012, leaving any victory a short-lived booby prize. No elected officials of either party have thrown their hat in yet; attorney Ravi Sangisetty and oil field manager Kristian Magar are the only Dem and GOPer, respectively, who’ve gotten in.

• MN-07: Long-time Rep. Collin Peterson says he won’t decide until February on whether to run for re-election (although he has filed his paperwork to run). That may have a few hearts skipping a beat at the DCCC, where a Peterson retirement would leave another GOP-leaning rural seat to defend — but Peterson says a late decision on sticking around is always standard operating procedure for him.

• NY-19: An initially generic Roll Call profile of Nan Hayworth, the moderate, wealthy ophthalmologist who’s the last GOPer left to go up against Rep. John Hall after more conservative and polarizing Assemblyman Greg Ball dropped out, has some interesting dirt buried deep in the article. They say that county-level party officials aren’t necessarily behind her, that there are three other (unnamed) persons interested in running, and there’s still a movement afoot in the district to get Ball back in the race.

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi, the underdog gaining steam in the Dem primary in the 6th, got an endorsement from a key moderate in the Pennsylvania delegation: the 10th district’s Chris Carney. Doug Pike got his own Congressional endorsement too, although from a little further afield: from Massachusetts’s Niki Tsongas. There are also rumors of a third potential Dem entrant to complicate matters: Lower Merion Township Commissioner Brian Gordon (not to be confused with his commission-mate Scott Zelov, who’s now considering a run on the GOP side).

• TN-08: State Rep. Jimmy Naifeh confirmed that he won’t run in a Democratic primary against state Sen. Roy Herron to take over retiring Rep. John Tanner’s seat. Naifeh, the House speaker for 18 years, is a legendary figure in Tennessee politics and would have posed a big challenge to Herron. Meanwhile, in a sign of their optimism, the NRCC bumped their farmer/gospel singer candidate, Stephen Fincher, up a slot in their three-tiered “Young Guns” program, from “On the Radar” up to “Contender.”

• VA-02, VA-05: The two top contenders in the GOP primary in the 2nd have already had one big proxy fight, backing different candidates in the Dec. 5 primary for an open, dark-red state Senate seat in Virginia Beach. Auto dealer Scott Rigell apparently won the skirmish, backing Jeff McWaters, who defeated Virginia Beach city councilor Rosemary Wilson, who was backed by businessman Ben Loyola. Loyola is running to the right of Rigell (who contributed to Barack Obama last year). Meanwhile, in the 2nd and the 5th, the GOP is faced with the same decision that often bedevils them: pick a nominee by primary election, party canvass, or party convention? With state Sen. Rob Hurt a strong general election contender in the 5th but generating suspicions among the base (for voting for Mark Warner’s tax hike), and with activist-dominated conventions often yielding unelectable candidates (see Gilmore, Jim), the decision can affect the GOP’s general election chances in each one.

• WA-01: Spunky Microserf rides to the rescue, against an entrenched, well-liked suburban Representative… on behalf of the GOP? That’s what’s up in the 1st, where never-before-elected Microsoft veteran James Watkins will go up against Democratic Rep. Jay Inslee, who’s had little trouble holding down the Dem-leaning district.

• NY-Comptroller: The New York Post (so keep the salt shaker handy) is reporting that ex-Gov. Eliot Spitzer is still interested in a return to politics, and is looking seriously at the Comptroller’s race. It seemed up in the air as to whether he’d run in the Democratic primary against appointed incumbent Tom DiNapoli (also under reported primary threat from William Thompson) or as an independent.

• GA-St. Sen.: A famous family name is looking to get back into Georgia politics. Jimmy Carter’s grandson, 34-year-old attorney Jason Carter, is looking to run in the upcoming special election in the 42nd Senate district, a reliably Democratic area in western DeKalb County where current Senator David Adelman is resigning to become Ambassador to Singapore. Interestingly, Carter may run into trouble with the district’s large Jewish population, where his grandfather’s name has lost some of its luster because of his pronouncements on the Israel/Palestine saga.

• Mayors: In what seems like an astonishingly fast recount, state Sen. Kasim Reed was confirmed as victor in the Atlanta mayoral race. He defeated city councilor Mary Norwood by 714 votes, losing a grand total of one vote from the original count. Norwood has now conceded.

• House: Here’s a concept from the 70s we don’t hear much about anymore: the “misery index.” But Republican pollster POS dusted off the idea, looking at 13 “change” midterm elections where the average Election Day misery index (unemployment plus inflation) was 10.1, and in which the average loss among the White House party was 26 seats. They point out that today’s misery index is 10.02 (although, assuming unemployment declines over the next year, so too will the misery index).

• Redistricting: Moves are afoot in two different states to make the redistricting process fairer. In Illinois, a statewide petition drive is underway to take redistricting out of hands of the legislature and give it to an independent commission. And in Florida, as we’ve discussed before, two initiatives are on their way to the ballot that would require districts to be compact and not take partisanship into account. The GOP-held legislature is challenging them, however, in the state Supreme Court; part of their argument is that this runs afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision on “crossover” districts in Bartlett v. Strickland.

• Election results: There was a grab-bag of southern state runoffs and special elections last night; the main event was the Atlanta mayor’s race. It looks like Democratic African-American ex-state Sen. Kasim Reed defeated self-proclaimed-independent white city councilor Mary Norwood, but the margin is only around 620 votes (out of 83,000 cast). Reed has declared victory, but Norwood is talking recount.

There were also four legislative runoffs in Georgia; the only one that wasn’t an intra-party affair was in HD-141 (a previously Dem-held seat) where independent Rusty Kidd easily beat Democrat Russell Black. Kidd is staying mum on which party he’ll caucus with, although he’s the son of a prominent long-time Democratic legislator (Culver Kidd) and a stem-cell-research supporter. In HD-58 in Atlanta, community organizer Simone Bell becomes the first LGBT African-American elected to Georgia’s legislature. And in Tennessee, Republican state Rep. Brian Kelsey was elected easily in the vacant SD-31 in heavily Republican Memphis suburbs; he takes over for GOPer Paul Stanley, who resigned in disgrace after a sex scandal.

• IL-Sen: Former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman is up with the first TV ad in the fast-approaching Senate primary. Hoffman lacks name rec, but uses the ad to highlight his corruption-fighting past (and take some implicit hits at Alexi Giannoulias’s banking background).

• NY-Sen-B: You may remember Michael Balboni, who was pried out of his Dem-leaning Long Island state Senate seat by Eliot Spitzer to become the state’s Homeland Security chief and paving the way for Democratic takeover of the state Senate. Now he’s reportedly considering a run against Kirsten Gillibrand for Senate, as the New York GOP starts casting its net wider for somebody.

• UT-Sen: A Deseret News poll has bad news for Bob Bennett, in the form of perilous re-elects: only 27% support his re-election, and 58% want someone new. Nevertheless, he has a big edge over the field of nobodies circling around him: he polls at 31%, with Democrat Sam Granato at 14, followed by a gaggle of right-wingers: Cherilyn Eagar at 5, Tim Bridgewater and Fred Lampropoulos at 4, Mike Lee at 3, and James Williams at 1. With the Republican nomination potentially to be decided at the state convention — dominated by hard-right activists — though, these numbers don’t help to project much of anything for next year.

• IA-Gov: Chet Culver’s campaign manager Andrew Roos is out, as Culver stares at double-digit deficits against ex-Gov. Terry Branstad. Culver mangled his Shakesperean shrug-off, saying it’s “much to do about nothing.”

• TX-Gov: Press releases are already going out saying that Houston mayor Bill White is announcing something big on Friday, and now leaks are confirming what most people have suspected, that he’s going to go ahead and jump into the Democratic field in the governor’s race.

• FL-10: Sorta-moderate GOP Rep. Bill Young has another challenger — this time from the right. Eric Forcade says he got interested in politics from participating in tea parties and the 9/12 movement. (In case you’re having trouble remembering where all these random teabagger primary challenges are popping up, Think Progress has a handy scorecard of all of them.)

• IL-10: Little-known rich guy Dick Green dipped into his self-provided funds and laid out $100K for a big TV ad buy, introducing himself to Republican voters in the 10th. While Democrat Julie Hamos already has hit the airwaves, Green beats out fellow GOPers Beth Coulson and Bob Dold.

• KY-03: Rep. John Yarmuth may not exactly be intimidated by the first Republican to show up to go against him in Kentucky’s lone Dem-leaning district. Jeffrey Reetz has never run for office before, but he does own 25 Pizza Hut franchises.

• MD-04: Rep. Donna Edwards, who got into office via primary challenge, is facing a big challenge of her own. Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Glenn Ivey has formed an exploratory committee to go up against Edwards for the Democratic nod. Ivey worked as a senior congressional staffer in the 1980s and 1990s; although he expresses enthusiasm for moving the “progressive agenda forward,” he’s probably running at least a bit to the right of Edwards, one of the leftmost House members.

• MN-01: This marks the third entry to the field against Democratic Rep. Tim Walz in about one week’s time. Today, it’s Republican Jim Hagedorn, a former congressional staffer and a one-time blogger under the name “Mr. Conservative.” He joins ex-state Rep. Allen Quist and state Rep. Randy Demmer, although the party seems to still be watching what more moderate state Sen. Julie Rosen does.

• PA-11: Hazleton mayor and 2008 loser Lou Barletta is doing his best to stay in the news, announcing that he’ll make another announcement on Dec. 9 as to whether or not he’ll seek a third faceoff against Democratic Rep. Paul Kanjorski.

• TN-08, TN-Gov: In case you missed our late update last night, Democratic state Sen. Roy Herron got out of the governor’s race where he was something of a longshot, and into the now-open TN-08 field, where he’s probably the favorite to get the Democratic nod. (Although open seats are theoretically harder to defend, Herron’s long district presence and lack of ties to Washington could conceivably help him to perform better next year than long-time Beltway creature Tanner might have.) Party officials (and outgoing Rep. John Tanner too, although he declined to endorse anyone yet) are moving quickly to keep a contested primary from happening, although state Rep. Philip Pinion has also been publicly letting his interest be known. Also, in discussing his sudden retirement decision, Tanner claims he wasn’t scared off by the fundraising success of out-of-nowhere GOP challenger Stephen Fincher; he’d already been eyeing retirement and the challenge “got his competitive juices flowing” but finally decided to call it a career.

• UT-02: Morgan Philpot, a former Republican state Representative, is considering a race against Rep. Jim Matheson next year. Philpot is currently the state party’s vice-chair, so he would bring some insider backing to the race.

• NY-Comptroller (pdf): With all the sudden talk of recruiting NYC comptroller William Thompson onto the Cuomo “ticket” to wage a primary fight against current state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, it’s worth going back and noting that the most recent Siena poll from a few weeks ago actually polled this permutation. They found a 31-31 tie in the Clash of the Comptrollers. They also found that both would beat Republican John Faso in the general.

• TX-Comptroller: In fact, talking about comptrollers is so much fun I’m going to keep doing it. Ex-Rep. Nick Lampson, who couldn’t hold down dark-red TX-22 last year, says that’s he’s looking into next year’s comptroller’s race, which would bring top-tier Democratic talent to another statewide race in Texas.

• NY-St. Sen.: After a lot of optimistic predictions earlier in the day, the actual vote on gay marriage in the New York Senate today kind of fizzled. Eight Democrats voted against and no Republicans crossed the aisle, leaving it to go down 24-38. Ironically, Marist came out with a poll today showing public support in favor of gay marriage, 51-42.

• CA-St. Ass.: However, in the one-step-forward, one-step-back fight for LGBT equality, California looks like it’s poised to have its first-ever gay Assembly Speaker. Los Angeles Assemblyman John Perez apparently has the votes locked up to take over as Speaker from Karen Bass, who’s termed out.

• Nassau Co. Exec: Two-term incumbent Tom Suozzi, who was down by 377 votes to Republican challenger Ed Mangano after a recount, decided to concede rather than pursue legal options. Suozzi, who’d be considered a likely AG candidate next year, says he’ll be back in politics but he can’t “imagine it would be anytime soon.”

• Mayors: It looks like a premature end of the line for Baltimore mayor Sheila Dixon, who was just convicted of misdemeanor embezzlement for helping herself to $1,500 worth of gift cards that had been donated to give to poor families. Dixon is supposed to be suspended from office, but post-trial motions and a possible appeal may push that until later. City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake is in line to succeed her.

• DGA: There’s new leadership at the Democratic Governor’s Association, as fast-rising Delaware governor Jack Markell (who’s been in office only for a year) takes over from Montana’s Brian Schweitzer. One of the DGA’s first orders of business as they prep for 2010: committing $1 million to the GOP Accountability Project, whose first ad target is Florida Republican candidate Bill McCollum.

• CA-Sen: Rasmussen piggybacked another California Senate poll on their gubernatorial poll from yesterday. Despite finding some gains for Meg Whitman yesterday, they don’t see any improvement for Carly Fiorina or Chuck DeVore. Barbara Boxer leads Fiorina 46-37 (it was 49-39 in September) and DeVore 46-36 (previously 46-37).

• DE-Sen: Mike Castle’s fundraising was weak earlier this year (in fact, that was why most people figured he wasn’t going to run for Senate), but now Republican Senators are moving to quickly fill up his coffers. Four Senators gave large contributions, the largest being $10,000 from Thad Cochran. Castle had $853K in his last report.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: The shortest possible explanation in New York is that nobody still has the faintest clue what Rudy Giuliani is up to. Food for thought, though, comes from the new Marist poll (pdf). They find Giuliani beating Democratic incumbent Kirsten Gillibrand 54-40. They also found Giuliani with the upper hand in a potential (if extremely unlikely) primary against ex-Gov. George Pataki; Giuliani demolishes him, 71-24. (For some reason, Marist didn’t poll Gillibrand/Pataki, but Rasmussen just did, finding Gillibrand beating Pataki 45-42. Rasmussen didn’t poll Gillibrand/Giuliani, though.)

Marist (pdf) also has gubernatorial numbers, which don’t offer any surprises beyond the sheerly absurd dimensions of David Paterson’s unpopularity. Paterson has a 20/76 approval, and a 30/63 verdict on whether people want him to run for re-election. Paterson loses the primary to Andrew Cuomo, 72-21, although he ties Rick Lazio in the general, 44-44. Cuomo makes short work of Lazio, 69-24. They also have Giuliani numbers (which are looking obsolete now): Rudy annihilates Lazio in the primary, 84-13, and beats Paterson 60-35, but loses to Cuomo, 53-43.

• CA-Gov: Republican Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell announces that he’s passed the $1 million cumulative mark in fundraising for the gubernatorial race, which indicates he’s at least getting some traction as people notice he’s polling well. In most states, that would be pretty impressive. In California, where you have to reach more than 30 million sets of eyeballs and where $1 million is Meg Whitman’s budget just for ivory backscratchers, though, it’s kind of a drop in the bucket.

• OR-Gov: As quickly as he appeared, he went away; former Hewlett-Packard VP Steve Shields pulled the plug on his brief Democratic gubernatorial campaign, not having had much luck on the fundraising front. Meanwhile, SoS Bill Bradbury got a big boost in his uphill climb against ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber. Bradbury’s environmentalist bona fides earned him an endorsement from Al Gore. (Also a likely factor: a long-running behind-the-scenes feud between Kitz and Gore.)

• TX-Gov: Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison are both out with TV ads as they enter the stretch run toward their March gubernatorial primary. Perry attacks Washington (and by extension, KBH, who works there), while KBH is more intent on explaining that she’s keeping her Senate job to fight against Democratic health care proposals.

• CO-07: Going from being a music promoter to a Representative is a strange career leap, but that’s what Jimmy Lakey is fixing to do. The Colorado Republican has opened an exploratory committee to go up against Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter, although he’ll need to get past Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier (who dropped down from the Senate race) first.

• FL-02: Al Lawson, the African-American state Senator who’s challenging Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd in a Democratic primary, is out with an internal poll via The Research Group that actually gives Lawson the lead: 35-31. Boyd was a vote against health care reform and the stimulus, which may provide him some cover in the general in this now R+9 district, but probably hurts him in the primary, where African-Americans make up a sizable portion of the Democratic electorate.

• IA-03: The appearance yesterday of well-known wrasslin’ coach Jim Gibbons was no deterrent to state Sen. Brad Zaun, setting up an epic smackdown in the GOP primary. Zaun, formerly the mayor of Des Moines suburb Urbandale, had made clear his interest in the race before Gibbons surfaced; he’ll formally launch his campaign in early December.

• IL-10: State Rep. Beth Coulson, probably the only Republican in the field in the 10th with the name rec and moderate profile needed to overcome the 10th’s Democratic lean, is meeting with RNC head Michael Steele today to discuss her campaign — the same Steele who has warned moderates that, in the wake of NY-23, he’s gunning for them. She’s loudly touting the meeting in the press, although it’s unclear whether she’s trying to make clear she’s a GOP team player, or that she’s trying to play up her moderate reputation by standing up to Steele.

• MD-01: If there’s one freshman Democrat who’s looking endangered coming into 2010, it’s Frank Kratovil, who barely won in a dark-red district thanks in large measure to a lousy opponent (Andy Harris) and an Obama downdraft. The Harris camp is now out with an internal poll via the Tarrance Group that quantifies that, giving that same lousy opponent a 52-39 edge over Kratovil, despite Kratovil’s 43/30 favorables.

• MN-01: Former state Rep. Allen Quist followed through on his plans to challenge Rep. Tim Walz in the rural 1st District. Quist has been out of the limelight for a while, but was a darling of the religious right in the 1990s; his wife is Michele Bachmann’s district director.

• NY-23: Appropriately enough, given that Fort Drum is the largest employer in his district, Bill Owens was given a seat on the Armed Services Committee, taking former Rep. Ellen Tauscher’s spot. Owens himself is a former Air Force captain, and his predecessor, Army Secretary John McHugh, had been the top-ranking Republican on the committee. (D)

Also in the 23rd, it’s all over but the shouting of the wronged wingnuts. The Watertown Times reports that Owens leads Hoffman by 3,105 with 3,072 absente ballots left to count. Also worth noting is the increasingly hostile tone of the Watertown Times (maybe the district’s largest newspaper) to Hoffman and his post-electoral antics, which bodes ill for getting a fair shake out of them if he runs again.

• NRCC: There’s a very important addendum to yesterday’s story about the NRCC’s big TV spot ad buy to go against Vic Snyder, John Spratt, and Earl Pomeroy. The total of the ad buy was $6,300, including only 35 gross rating points in the Charlotte market (2,000 GRPs are considered “saturation-level”), and the ads are running only on Fox News. In other words, the cash-strapped NRCC isn’t paying for anybody to actually see the ads — they’re just a foot in the door to get media coverage of the ads.

• Redistricting: The DLCC’s blog has an interesting look at the redistricting conundrums in Louisiana, where the loss of a House seat and a Katrina-remodeled population loom large. Dems ostensibly control the legislature but also face a Republican gubernatorial veto (although Dems control the tiebreaking Supreme Court, too).

• CA-Sen (pdf): According to the Public Policy Institute of California, Barbara Boxer is holding fairly good approval ratings, as she approaches a possibly competitive (and definitely expensive) re-election: 53/32, really no different from her stodgier colleague Dianne Feinstein, 54/32. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who isn’t running again, fares much worse: 30/61.

• CO-Sen: As we’re staring down the barrel of a competitive Democratic primary in the Senate race, three of the state’s five House Dems have gotten behind incumbent appointee Michael Bennet (John Salazar, Jared Polis, and Betsy Markey), along with fellow Sen. Mark Udall. However, Diana DeGette and Ed Perlmutter are staying neutral. Other Bennet backers include current state House speaker Terrance Carroll.

• IL-Sen, IL-Gov: The Cook County Dems made their endorsements in the 2010 primaries, which are less than half a year away. No major surprises: they endorsed state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias for Senate and incumbent Pat Quinn for Governor. That rankled Quinn’s rival, Comptroller Dan Hynes, who hit Quinn for seeking machine backing when, back in his reformer days, Quinn had been an advocate for open primaries. Meanwhile, in the Senate primary, upstart Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman is taking the clean politics approach, saying that he’ll accept no PAC money for his campaign.

• MA-Sen: The fields are starting to solidify in Massachusetts: Rep. John Tierney, from MA-06 in Boston’s northern suburbs, decided against a run. He has less money than his fellow House members and polled in the single digits in the lone poll of the primary. Rep. Richard Neal is the only House member left who initially seemed like a potential candidate (mostly because of his bankroll), but his silence in the last week has been telling. On the GOP side of the aisle, state Senator Scott Brown got in the race over the weekend; with Mitt Romney, Andy Card, Kerry Healey, and Christy Mihos out, Brown is about as good as it’s going to get for the Republicans.

• NH-Sen: Here’s one more Republican from the Republican wing of the party pondering a run in the New Hampshire Senate primary: businessman and RNC member Sean Mahoney. Mahoney says he’s gotten a push from the conservative grassroots to run, as many of them seem uneasy with the Beltway coronation of Kelly Ayotte, whose inability to take a position… any position… is taking on epic proportions. (If Mahoney’s name seems vaguely familiar, he lost the 2002 NH-01 GOP primary to Jeb Bradley.)

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Here’s the rumor du jour, and it’s a doozy: Rudy Giuliani is being pushed by state GOP leaders to run for Senate against Kirsten Gillibrand instead of for Governor; apparently the state GOP is convinced that Andrew Cuomo, not David Paterson, will be the Dems’ nominee next year. Nobody has polled Gillibrand/Giuliani before, but that seems like it would be a close race, if the Gillibrand/Pataki numbers are any indication (of course, there’s a big stylistic difference between the vanilla George Pataki and the dictatorial Rudy, just that they’re both known quantities at this point). Perhaps (between this rumor and Rudy’s failed coup against Ed Cox) sensing that the Rudy won’t be getting into the Governor’s race — or maybe just because of his own special brand of tone-deafness — ex-Rep. Rick Lazio made his formal announcement today that he’s running for Governor.

• AZ-Gov: In the “blast from the past” file, former Governor Fife Symington is now considering a comeback by running in the GOP primary against appointed Governor Jan Brewer. That’s the same Symington who was forced out of office in 1997 after conviction for bank fraud, although his conviction was overturned on appeal and he was subsequently pardoned by Bill Clinton. Strangely, we could see a re-run of the 1990 gubernatorial election, if Symington and Dem AG Terry Goddard face off against each other again.

• NJ-Gov (pdf): One more poll (from Monmouth) showing Chris Christie with a persistent, but shrinking, edge over Jon Corzine in the New Jersey gubernatorial race. Among likely voters, Christie has a 47-39 edge (with 5 for Chris Daggett), much better than August’s 50-36 Christie lead but comparable to July’s 45-37 lead. Hold onto your hats, though: among registered voters, Corzine actually leads, 41-40 (with 6 for Daggett). In the fine print, Corzine is continuing to solidify his standing among Democrats, up to 77% among Dems (up from 73% in August and 67% in July). The challenge here, apparently, will be getting those Dems in the ‘unlikely voter’ column to show up.

• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber doesn’t seem like he’ll have the Dem primary to himself: former SoS Bill Bradbury looks like he’s on track to run. Bradbury has hired a campaign manager, and announces that Kitzhaber’s predecessor as Governor, Barbara Roberts, will be on hand for his announcement next week. One other possible challenger in the Dem primary, one that no one had thought of before, is Clackamas County Commission Chair Lynn Peterson. Peterson is 40 and still building her reputation; cynics’ knee-jerk reaction might be to think she’s angling for the Lt. Governor slot, but Oregon doesn’t even have a Lt. Governor. Finally, everyone’s still waiting to see what Rep. Peter DeFazio does; he was supposed to have made a decision by Labor Day but says he’ll keep on anaylzing his choices.

• AR-02: Politico has an unusual rumor: former US Attorney and former Karl Rove right-hand-man Tim Griffin is considering a run against Democratic Rep. Vic Snyder in the Little Rock-based 2nd (which, in wake of 2008, is, at R+5, the most Dem-friendly district in Arkansas). Considering that Griffin had earlier pondered and declined a run in AR-Sen, the step down doesn’t make much sense at all, as he’d most likely have a better shot against the vulnerable Blanche Lincoln, who hasn’t polled well lately. The entrenched Snyder may create the appearance of being vulnerable because of his bank account, but that’s mostly because he refuses to fundraise during off years.

• IL-10: State Rep. Beth Coulson, running for the GOP primary nod for the open seat in the 10th against several self-funders, got endorsements from two members of the GOP House delegation: fellow suburban moderate Judy Biggert… and, in an apparent nod to the reality of what works in the 10th, from the state delegation’s wingnuttiest member, John Shimkus, last seen ducking out early from Obama’s health care address to beat the lines at the urinal.

• WI-03: State Sen. Dan Kapanke gives the GOP a rather strong candidate against Rep. Ron Kind (or more ominously, an open seat, in case Kind decides to run for Governor). However, Dems succeeded in taking Kapanke down a peg and dinging him for $38,100 ($100 in statutory damages plus $38K in legal fees) for violating state open records laws.

• NYC: One more poll of the Democratic primaries for the city offices, before tomorrow’s election. The mayor’s race is actually the least interesting, with Comptroller William Thompson beating city councilor Tony Avella 46-17. Ex-PA Mark Green has pole position in the Public Advocate’s race, but the question is whether he can beat the 40% threshold in order to avoid a runoff. Currently, he’s at 36%, with city councilor Bill DeBlasio at 20%. The Comptroller’s race is almost certainly headed for a runoff, but city councilor John Liu seems to be breaking out from the pack, at 34%; he leads Melinda Katz at 23% and David Yassky at 19%. In case you’re wondering what’s up with the Manhattan DA race, there is one recent poll of the race, an internal from the Cyrus Vance Jr. camp. It gives Vance a 30-24 edge over Leslie Crocker Synder, with Richard Aborn at 15.

• Census: The Census Bureau is severing its relationship with ACORN, which was working with the Census to promote Census participation. Loosely translated, Director Robert Groves said that the organization was enough of a distraction that it was becoming a net liability instead of asset in terms of getting people to participate in the Census.

• CO-Sen: The NRSC got its sort-of-top-tier challenger to Michael Bennet in the Colorado Senate race: former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton filed to form an exploratory committee and launched her campaign website, suggesting that the exploratory period will be a brief one. Norton’s never been elected on her own (just while joined to popular Gov. Bill Owens), but, unlike the rest of the GOP field, she’s at least known statewide.

• CT-Sen, AR-Sen: Chris Dodd finally made his decision about which Senate committee to chair, and he opted to return to Banking, instead of continuing at HELP where he shepherded through health care reform legislation in Ted Kennedy’s absence. He still has a lot on his plate; he’ll be focusing on bolstering financial services regulations and creating a new banking consumer protection agency (all stuff that would seem less likely to happen if Tim Johnson took over Banking). The WaPo says that all signs point to Tom Harkin of Iowa, #2 on HELP, ditching his coveted Agriculture chair to take over HELP. This means the Agriculture chair is likely to fall to Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas (bypassing a few other more senior Senators with better chairs), who, while not from a big farm state, is facing a difficult re-election and will benefit from the profile and money that come from a chair.

• LA-Sen: The Charlie Melancon campaign released an internal poll taken by Anzalone Liszt that’s getting a little stale (taken in mid-May, long before Melancon announced), but that shows Melancon in striking distance. The head-to-head has David Vitter beating Melancon 47-37 (and Melancon winning the bogus “after hearing positive info” vote 49-41). The good news is that Vitter’s re-elect number is down to 39%, with 45% preferring someone new. Melancon has 35/13 favorables.

• TX-Sen: Republican Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst sent a letter to supporters that he’s running for re-election in 2010. While he may be the initial odds-on favorite to replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Senate, I wouldn’t take this to mean he’s not running in the Senate special election — since he doesn’t need to give up his seat to run and he’d probably like to keep being Lt. Gov. if he loses the election, and there’s also still a possibility that KBH doesn’t resign after all, if she senses the gubernatorial primary heading south on her. (H/t DTM,B!)

• AK-Gov: No surprise here, but Democratic former state House minority leader and 2008 House candidate Ethan Berkowitz filed his candidacy papers today. He’ll likely face off against Sean Parnell, who inherited the office after Sarah Palin’s re$ignation, but first he’ll need to survive a primary against state Sen. Hollis French and Bob Poe. (Parnell will also need to survive a primary against state Rep. John Harris.)

• MA-Gov: Tim Cahill picked a strange day to make his announcement, on a day when everyone is fixated on the Massachusetts Senate race instead, but today he made official what has long been suspected: he’s running for Governor. The Dem-turned-Independent state Treasurer has a $3 million warchest, giving him a big edge over incumbent Dem Deval Patrick, who has $464K (of course, if Christy Mihos wins the GOP primary, he can put all his expenses on his own tab). Polls that have included Cahill have shown him running neck-and-neck with Patrick, although Cahill is running against tradition — there has apparently never been an Independent elected to statewide office in Massachusetts.

• MN-Gov: I’ve completely lost track of how many people are now running for Minnesota Governor — let’s just say it’s a number somewhere between 10 and 800 — but one more guy got in the race on Labor Day: state Rep. Tom Rukavina, for the DFL. Rukavina is from the town of Virginia in the rural but very pro-union Iron Range.

• OR-Gov: While the Dem side of the Oregon Governor’s race is narrowing, the GOP side keeps growing: former state Senator John Lim from Portland’s eastern suburbs said he’d get in. Lim is best-known for losing the 1998 Senate race to Ron Wyden (with a whopping 34% of the vote).

• SC-Gov: While it’s unclear whether “calls for resignation” on Mark Sanford’s part will ever turn into a tangible move for impeachment or just some pre-emptive ass-covering by state Republicans so it looked like they tried, those calls are getting louder. The state’s House Speaker, Bobby Harrell, made the call yesterday, and now there’s talk of a letter with the signatures of at least 60 House GOPers (out of 72, and almost half the entire House) calling on Sanford to step down.

• VT-Gov: As we reported yesterday, Vermont Auditor Tom Salmon did in fact follow through on his decision to switch to from the Democrats to the Republican Party. However, Salmon sounds likely to run again for Auditor, saying there’s a “10% chance” he’ll run for Governor instead. Salmon said that he’d support Republican Lt. Gov. Brian Dubie if Dubie were to run for Governor, and wouldn’t challenge him in a primary. There’s been no word from Dubie, though, on what he plans to do.

• FL-08: Rep. Alan Grayson… well, let me try to be kind here and say that he courageously ignores all that conventional wisdom about who and who not to piss off. He’s picking a fight with his hometown paper, the Orlando Sentinel, referring to them in a fundraising e-mail as “a trashy tabloid that dresses up bias and gossip as news.”

• FL-24: Former Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz may have decided against a run in his current home district, the 24th, but he’s holding a fundraiser on behalf of Winter Park city councilor Karen Diebel, one of the three GOPers seeking the nod to go against Rep. Suzanne Kosmas in this R+4 district.

• IL-10: Bob Dold is running for the GOP nomination in the 10th District, joining state Rep. Beth Coulson and rich guys Dick Green and Bill Cadigan. Bob Dold is a lawyer who also owns a pest control business. In keeping with district’s lean, Bob Dold says that Bob Dold is fiscally conservative and socially moderate.

• NE-02: Jim Esch, who’s coming off two back-to-back losses to GOP Rep. Lee Terry, switched his party affiliation to “independent” last week, but said yesterday that he has no plans to seek elected office at any level in the future. Esch defended his decision to the Omaha World-Herald: “I feel a little hypocritical when I go to Democratic parties and say, ‘I’m a Democrat’ when I don’t believe in the party.” (J)

Meanwhile, across town, state Sen. Tom White (who’s apparently still a Democrat) officially launched his campaign against Terry today.

• PA-03: Suddenly there’s a backlog of challengers to Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, the Dem freshman in this R+3 district. Republican Meadville businessman Paul Huber, who ran a heating equipment company and served on a local medical center board, filed campaign paperwork. AG’s office investigator Elaine Surma is already in the race for the GOP, and former Erie County Solicitor John Onorato sounds likely to run.

• PA-06: Here’s a likely minor, but certainly interesting, challenge to Doug Pike (who seems to have the establishment support locked down) in the Democratic primary in the open seat race in the 6th. Manan Trivedi is a Reading native born to Indian immigrants; he is an Iraq vet and a primary care physician. He formally announced his campaign yesterday.

• Redistricting: Indiana Secretary of State Todd Rokita has gone off the deep end in anticipation of the next round of redistricting in Indiana: he wants to make it a felony to consider politics in the redistricting process. Um… considering that Rokita is a Republican and that Republicans are likely to control the redistricting process post-2010, I don’t quite get it. (And neither do Republican legislators, who are telling him to shut up.)

• Votes: The Hill compiles a list of 23 Democrats who have indicated opposition to “the health care plan moving through the House.” (Nancy Pelosi can afford to lose up to 38 votes.) It’s unclear what “opposition” means, and the rationale isn’t always the same (Eric Massa, for instance, opposes it, but only because he’s stuck in single-payer mode), but it’s an interesting list, generally of the vulnerable and/or the hardcore Blue Doggish (although New Jersey’s John Adler strangely stands out like a sore thumb).

• FL-Sen: Is ex-Rep. Mike Bilirakis, under official consideration from Gov. Charlie Crist to serve as an interim placeholder in the Senate, taking the appointment process seriously? The St. Petersberg times digs up Bilirakis’ submitted questionnaire (.pdf) and says that the hand-scribbled document looks “like he filled it out while driving”. He also left some key questions, like “Have you ever been party to a lawsuit?”, blank.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias may claim to be Barack Obama’s BFF, but look who just signed up Obama ’08 guru David Axelrod’s consulting firm to work for his campaign: newly-announced candidate David Hoffman, who yesterday resigned as Chicago’s Inspector General.

• LA-Sen: Now that Charlie Melancon has made his Senate bid official, state Sen. Eric LaFleur, who was previously courted as a potential Democratic candidate for the race, says that he’ll be supporting Melancon for the race.

• GA-Gov: Strategic Vision has dipped its barometer back into the Georgia gubernatorial primaries, and finds little meaningful change since last month’s poll. For the Republicans, Oxendine leads with 39%, followed by 13% for Nathan Deal and 12% for Karen Handel. In the Democratic primary, ex-Gov. Roy Barnes leads the pack with 45%, followed by AG Thurbert Baker with 29%. Poythress and Porter are still mired in the low-single digits.

• NJ-Gov: Chris Christie’s once-vaunted rep as a Corruption Fighter™ has taken a pounding this month. Yesterday came another roundhouse kick to the jaw: Back in 2005, Christie was pulled over for speeding and (it turns out) driving an uninsured and unregistered sail barge automobile. Despite the officer writing “NO DEAL” on the ticket, Christie was allowed to drive home and later got some of the charges dropped – it seems he may have scuzzily tried to pull rank as US Attorney. And guess who was with him at the time? None other than former aide Michele Brown, who resigned two days ago. (D)

• NM-Gov: Bill Richardson is breathing a sigh of relief with the news that the investigation into allegations of pay-to-play politics under his watch at the governor’s office is now officially over with no indictments. Meanwhile, actor Val Kilmer’s flirtation with the open seat gubernatorial race is now officially over.

• VA-Gov: Creigh Deeds is out with a new radio ad in which one of the narrators anoints him as “that underdog guy”, while the Republican Governors Association’s Common Sense Virginia PAC is launching TV and radio ads hitting Deeds on wasteful spending. Of course, as Steve Singiser points out, the RGA only a month ago attacked Deeds and the DGA when they formed a similar PAC, calling it a “shadow organization”.

• CA-02: GOP Rep. Wally Herger, at a recent town hall meeting, praised an attendee who called himself a “proud right-wing terrorist”. “There is a great American,” Herger said of the man, named Bert Stead. Now Herger is doubling-down, refusing to apologize for praising the man and taking the opportunity to trash liberals for calling their political opponents “political terrorists”. The only problem, though, is that HuffPo has the video of Stead identifying himself as a proud terrorist!

• CA-45: Riverside County Supervisor Roy Wilson resigned over the weekend due to health reasons, and last night passed away. After Wilson’s resignation but before his passing, Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet, running as a Dem against GOP Rep. Mary Bono Back, recommitted his focus to the congressional bid, saying that a run for the supervisor seat is “not at all” being considered.

• IL-08: The NRCC is hoping to wrangle Maria Rodriguez, the Village President of Long Grove (pop. 6,735), into a run against now-established Dem Rep. Melissa Bean. Rodriguez says that “it’s an interesting proposition” that she’s taking under consideration, but Bean is still riding high off a 60-40 win over briefly-touted GOP businessman Steve Greenberg in 2008.

• IL-10: The NRCC may be happy to have moderate state Rep. Beth Coulson in the race to replace Mark Kirk, but she’ll have company in the GOP primary. Businessman Dick Green, the CEO of Briefing.com, made his candidacy official today, and took the opportunity to lash out at “career politicians”.

• KS-02: Frosh Rep. Lynn Jenkins, to fellow travelers at a town hall event: “Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope.” Jenkins’ spokesbot shoved foot in mouth even further with this “apology”: “There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope. What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They’re bright lights within the party.” Good luck with that. (D)

• MT-AL: Here’s something that somehow slipped our notice. Research 2000, dipping its toes into Montana for Daily Kos, tested GOP Rep. Denny Rehberg’s approvals and re-elects. Rehberg’s sitting on a 46-45 approval rating — lower than either of the state’s Democratic Senators — and has a 39% re-elect rating (27% say they will definitely vote to replace him, and another 34% say they will consider voting for another candidate). Those aren’t particularly formidable numbers.