Tag: John Kitzhaber

• MA-Sen: We’re half a week away from the primary special election in Massachusetts, and AG Martha Coakley is still in the catbird’s seat, at least according to an internal poll from her own camp (conducted by Celinda Lake) that got leaked to Chris Cillizza. Coakley’s at 41, with Rep. Michael Capuano at 21 (consistent with other polls seeing a last-minute surge by the Congressman), Stephen Pagliuca at 10, and Alan Khazei at 7.

• TX-Sen, TX-Gov: This has been broadly telegraphed already, but Houston mayor Bill White made it official today at a press conference: he’s dropping out of the Senate special election that looks less likely to ever happen, and getting into the Governor’s race instead. A Democrat has not won statewide office in Texas since 1994, but White is well-funded and, assuming he faces Rick Perry in the general, his centrist competence may match up well against Perry’s quick-draw conservatism. Also, I’m not the first wag to notice this, but it’s snowing today in Texas, so cue up all the jokes about hell freezing over and Democrats getting elected. (UPDATE: Former Ag Commissioner candidate Hank Gilbert is dropping out of the Dem field in the governor’s race today and heading for another Ag Comnissioner race, which probably isn’t a surprise. However, this part is a surprise: he’s endorsing hair-care guru Farouk Shami instead of White.)

• MN-Gov: Rumors were starting to pop up (via Politico, natch) that Republican ex-Sen. Norm Coleman was trying to raise his profile in preparation for a gubernatorial run. Coleman himself, however, said that’s not the case; he’s focusing on some think-tank work in Washington for now and will look at the “political horizon” later.

• OR-Gov: Here’s a surprise on the fundraising front: Republican Chris Dudley, who’s never run for office before and whose main claim to fame is being the Portland Trail Blazers’ designated free-throw-misser in the late 90s, filed records he already has $340K banked for a still-unannounced gubernatorial run (more than John Kitzhaber’s $280K). Worth noting, though: more than half of that came from only three huge donations, including $100,000 from Dudley’s ex-agent. (An interesting tidbit: $5,000 came from ex-teammate Terry Porter.) Also, Dudley is quickly swinging establishment endorsements his way, including from moderate state Sen. Frank Morse, who was briefly rumored as a candidate himself, and former House majority leader Wayne Scott, who is trying to walk back his previous endorsement of Allen Alley. However, as the Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes points out: “None of them have a firm idea of where Dudley will come down on the issues.”

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato has been teasing a big endorsement this weekend, but he pulled aside the curtain a day ahead: it’s Rep. Patrick Murphy, which is especially helpful for Onorato as he seeks to gain ground in the Philly suburbs to expand beyond his own Pittsburgh base. On the GOP side, there have been growing calls from newspaper editorial boards for Tom Corbett to either resign as AG or get out of the gubernatorial race, citing the conflict of interest in Corbett having accepted donations from those he’s now charging with crimes in the Bonusgate saga. Yesterday, the Lancaster Intelligencer-Journal joined in.

• SC-Gov: Two items of sort-of-good, or at least somewhat-less-bad, news for Mark Sanford: first, most of the 37 ethics charges against Sanford were dismissed by a state legislative panel. Nine of the charges (involving use of state aircraft) still stand, though, and on Monday, the panel meets again on whether to refer impeachment charges to the full Judiciary committee. And second, a Rasmussen poll finds a narrow plurality saying “no” to the issue of whether he should resign (41-42), and a 36-49 response to the question of whether he should be impeached if he doesn’t resign. 54% say he is “about as ethical” as other politicians.

• TN-Gov: The Democratic gubernatorial field in Tennessee is rapidly shrinking this week: not only did state Sen. Roy Herron jump out to pursue TN-08 instead, but businessman Ward Cammack pulled the plug yesterday after no progress on the fundraising front. That leaves beer baron and gubernatorial progeny Mike McWherter, state Sen. minority leader Jim Kyle, and former state House majority leader Kim McMillan in the hunt.

• CO-07: There’s another Republican entrant in the 7th, where Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier recently dropped down from the Senate race to take on sophomore Democratic Rep. Ed Perlmutter. Lang Sias, an Iraq vet who worked on veterans’ outreach for the McCain campaign, is getting in the race; he’s also getting some big-name help, including former RNC press secretary Alex Conant.

• IA-03: State Sen. Brad Zaun officially kicked off his campaign yesterday; he’ll face wrestling coach Jim Gibbons for the GOP nod to take on the perpetually shaky Leonard Boswell in the Des Moines-based 3rd.

• IL-14: The GOP field is getting re-arranged in the 14th, and there’s some strategic thinking behind it. Businessman Jim Purcell dropped out, probably because nobody knew who he was, but specifically argued that he didn’t want to split the anti-Ethan Hastert vote, saying that the Hastert name would be poison in the general election. Presumably, his absence will benefit Hastert’s main challenger, state Sen. Randy Hultgren.

• TN-08: TPM has a nice expose of the NRCC’s efforts to not-so-subtly gay-bait state Sen. Roy Herron, who just took over the helm for the Dems in the race in the 8th. They’re trying to get mileage out of Herron’s personal blog, asking why he’s allegedly so focused on his “body image” and then asking (on the issue that Herron has never been a businessman) “So why can’t Roy Herron just be straight with West and Middle Tennesseans and admit it?”

• Polling: I know Rasmussen gets a lot of grief in the comments (and on the front page sometimes, too), so it’s worth taking a look at a recent piece of Mark Blumenthal wondering “Why is Rasmussen So Different?” His answers center on their likely voter model (which should come as no surprise to SSP readers) and also the way they ask their approve/disapprove questions. The article also has a very helpful chart showing the “house effects” of all the major pollsters, showing Rasmussen one of the rightmost, right next to Zogby and Harris. (Interestingly, the graph also shows PPP skewing right-of-center… and Fox News skewing a bit left.)

• Maps: I also know that SSPers like maps, so here are some maps courtesy of the Seattle Times of last month’s King County Executive and Seattle mayor’s races. The KCE results are kind of a no-brainer — the more rural you are, the more likely you were to vote for losing quasi-Republican Susan Hutchison. The Seattle mayor results are very interesting, though, showing the more likely you are to have a scenic view from your house, the more likely you were to vote for Joe Mallahan, showing some class-based fissures between the coalitions of establishment progressive Mallahan and anti-establishment victor Mike McGinn.

• AZ-Sen: There are conflicting messages in Arizona in the wake of that surprising Rasmussen poll showing J.D. Hayworth almost even with John McCain in a Republican primary. Arizona’s other senator, Jon Kyl, says Hayworth isn’t likely to run, saying that he’s better-off hosting his radio show. Hayworth himself, on the other hand, just sent an e-mail to his supporters, saying he is in fact considering a race against McCain but first needs help paying down his campaign debt from his 2006 race. A prelude to a real race, or just some conveniently-timed grifting from some easy marks?

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina is trying to play up her pro-woman cred, even if it means coming off very ideologically confused: she said she would have voted to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, even though that gives Chuck DeVore a lifetime’s worth of ammunition to use against her in the primary. But yesterday she said she “shares Sarah Palin‘s values.” Um, all of them?

• IL-Sen: The NYT had a story yesterday giving voice to David Axelrod’s concerns about Alexi Giannoulias’s electability and his regrets about not recruiting Lisa Madigan, which got a lot of play elsewhere. They strangely left out one piece of information, though: Axelrod’s former consulting firm is working for the David Hoffman campaign.

• MA-Sen: More endorsements came out in the Massachusetts special election primary. AG Martha Coakley got the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, while Rep. Michael Capuano got the endorsements of the Massachusetts League of Environmental Voters and Black Women for Obama for Change.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): Yet another poll shows Kirsten Gillibrand in so-so shape, as Marist dribbled out the last few results from the poll where the other results were released last week. Even as she gets better-known she still has a middling approval rating (3% excellent, 22% good, 39% fair, 12% poor, 24% unsure). Gillibrand loses 47-45 to ex-Gov. George Pataki, although that race looks very unlikely now (this same sample had Gillibrand down 54-40 to Rudy Giuliani, which still theoretically could happen). One item of good news for Gillibrand, though: she finally nailed down the endorsement of former colleague Jerry Nadler.

• IA-Gov: Here’s one more guy who has the potential to get teabagged to death in his GOP primary: ex-Gov. Terry Branstad. Branstad endorsed and raised money for Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson in the 2000 Senate race. Branstad rival Bob vander Plaats says that, as a result, using the same logic that pervades all movies about time travel, Branstad is directly to blame for the current health care bill. And while he’s at it, Branstad is also responsible for the deaths of millions, because he didn’t find a way to kill Hitler.

• MA-Gov: Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker already announced his running mate for 2010, and is fits with his financially conservative, socially liberal, insidery approach: he chose state Senate minority leader Richard Tisei. Tisei, one of five Republicans in the Senate, recently came out as gay.

• NV-Gov: There’s a new poll of the general election in the Nevada governor’s race, taken by PMI (a firm that previously did a poll of the GOP primary for a conservative website, but this one seems to be taken for the seemingly nonpartisan Nevada News Bureau). They only try out one permutation, assuming that Democratic Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman follows through on his threat to run as an indie. Republican former AG Brian Sandoval wins with 35, followed by Goodman at 28 and Democrat Rory Reid at 21.

• OR-Gov: Anti-tax initiative activist Bill Sizemore is kind of like herpes; he goes away, but is never permanently gone. With the GOP field now in shambles, Sizemore surprised everyone by announcing that he’ll run in the gubernatorial primary in 2010. He’s been out of jail for almost a year, so OK… but he may be headed back there if he follows through, as he’s under an injunction preventing him from raising political money. He plans on challenging that in court, though, at least to the extent to be able to raise individual campaign funds and not more initiative funds. If he somehow prevails in the GOP primary, this could lead to a replay of the 1998 governor’s race (where John Kitzhaber demolished Sizemore, 64-30).

• LA-02: With early entries by a few heavyweights, maybe we’ll be spared a large and chaotic Democratic primary for the right to beat accidental Rep. Joe Cao in 2010. State Rep. Juan LaFonta, long interested in the race, made official that he’s running; he joins fellow state Rep. Cedric Richmond in the hunt.

• NV-02: Do it! Do it! Reno attorney Ken McKenna has apparently been listening to the subliminal voices in his head, and was motivated to pull the trigger on a run against Rep. Dean Heller. (He’ll still face a Democratic primary against elderly ex-state Sen. Jack Schofield.) McKenna represents both personal injury plaintiffs and those accused of Breaking the Law, but he’s best known for his ill-fated suit against Judas Priest over a fan’s suicide. If he thinks he’s likely to win this race, he has another thing coming.

• PA-03: Ooops, this isn’t going to endear him much to the party base. Paul Huber, a local businessman who got into the GOP primary field to go against Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, was registered as a Democrat from 1975 until just recently. He switched to the GOP earlier this year. In his defense, he claims he was a “Reagan Democrat” and finally got driven out of the party because of, well, all the usual right-wing grievances.

• PA-06: Various developments in the 6th: on the Dem side, state Sen. Daylin Leach pulled his Doug Pike endorsement and switched to neutral, now that it looks like there’s an actual race between Pike and Manan Trivedi. On the GOP side, state Rep. Curt Schroder is facing a difficult primary against wealthy pharma exec Steven Welch, but got a boost via endorsements from seven nearby conservative legislators — including Berks County’s Sam Rohrer, who’s looking at a longshot gubernatorial bid.

• PA-11: Anti-immigration wacko wants to run for higher office, but needs supporters to pay down his campaign debt first? Sorry to keep repeating myself, but that’s happening in PA-11 too. Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta has been talking up another run at Rep. Paul Kanjorski, and has set a pre-Christmas deadline for a final decision. But in the meantime, he’s focused on raising donations to pay for his last run while considering his next one.

• VA-10: Republican Rep. Frank Wolf has proven extremely tough to pry out of his swing district, and it’s not looking like 2010 will be the year either. Attorney Patrick Lewis, who seemed to be the best bet here, has shuttered his campaign, leaving only two even less-known Dems (Richard Anthony and Dennis Findley) in the field.

• CA-LG: As many had expected, Arnold Schwarzenegger picked state Sen. Abel Maldonado to take over as Lt. Governor (now that John Garamendi is in the House). Maldonado is a sometimes-moderate who was one of Ahnold’s biggest allies in the Senate, who broke with other Republicans on budget issues (and probably earned too much of their wrath to survive a 2010 re-election). The Dem-held state legislature is mulling over whether to approve the appointment, which they certainly have the numbers to reject. Calitics is all over it, though, because Maldonado not only has little likelihood of remaining in office come 2011 (Dems he might face would be either state Sen. Dean Florez or LA city councilor Janice Hahn), but also because it would open up SD-15. The 15th is Democratic-leaning turf on the central coast; combined with another opening in SD-12, that’s a route to get over the magic 2/3s hurdle in the state Senate and actually pass a decent budget.

• NJ-St. Sen.: Guess who’s kicking himself for not taking over for Jon Corzine during the gubernatorial race’s low-water mark this summer. Now Richard Codey isn’t just not Governor, but now he isn’t even state Senate President anymore. Codey may be beloved by the state’s electorate, but not by his colleagues: he got bounced out of his position to make way for new leader Stephen Sweeney.

• Mayors (pdf): It looks like the anti-incumbent sentiment extends all the way down to local races too (OK, that’s not news; Greg Nickels and Tom Suozzi will certainly confirm that for us). A new Clarus poll of next year’s Washington, DC mayor’s race finds a 43/49 approval for mayor Adrian Fenty. Fenty leads the field, but at only 34%, followed by three city councilors: Vincent Gray at 24, Kwame Brown at 13, and Michael Brown at 6.

• RNC: If you went to college in the 1990s, you may remember the purity test that got passed around freshman dorms, which went a little like this:

I have:

1) solicited anonymous sex in the airport men’s room

2) claimed to be hiking the Appalachian Trail while actually visiting my mistress in Argentina

3) given a patronage job to the cuckolded husband of my mistress

4) texted an underage page about the size of his member

5) attempted to strangle my mistress

Wait, that’s not it. Anyway, the RNC is passing around a new purity test for future Republican candidates, which they have to score 80% on if they want official party money and support. (There’s been some public pondering whether worldly fellows like Mike Castle or Mark Kirk would even make the cut on this test.) And now the Washington Times (wait, they’re still in business?) is reporting that this test may even apply to NRSC and NRCC money as well.

• Photo of the Day: Some days I just don’t know whether to weep for my country, or stand back and laugh my ass off at it.

• IL-Sen: South Carolina’s Jim DeMint is rapidly turning into the hard right’s kingmaker. DeMint has been considering offering his endorsement to Patrick Hughes, a real estate developer who’s become the teabagger of choice in the Illinois Senate primary, and Hughes has been buttering DeMint up. And this might help along DeMint’s decision: a straw poll on DeMint’s website asked who he should endorse in Illinois, and 74% said Hughes (with 15% saying “Other” and a whopping 8% saying Rep. Mark Kirk.)

• MA-Sen: Another poll of the Democratic field in the Massachusetts special election — this one for the Boston Globe, by UNH — gives a big edge to AG Martha Coakley, who’s at 43%. Rep. Michael Capuano has to be pleased with his trendline, as he’s up to 22% (the first time he’s broken 20), but with the primary only two weeks away, it seems doubtful as to whether he has the time left to gain much more ground. Stephen Paglicua is at 15 and Alan Khazei is at 6. Capuano may also be helped by a late endorsement, from Diane Patrick, the state’s First Lady. Deval Patrick himself claims that he’s staying remaining neutral.

• CO-Gov: Disappointing news out of Colorado, not just from the standpoint of what would give Dems the best chance but also in terms of pure fireworks — right-wing ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo reversed course and decided to endorse establishment ex-Rep. Scott McInnis in the GOP gubernatorial primary instead of teabagging him to death. Coupled with the decision of state Sen. Josh Penry (McInnis’s former rival in the primary until he got pushed out) to endorse McInnis as well, it looks like McInnis will head into the general against incumbent Dem Bill Ritter without sustaining much (if any) damage.

• MI-Gov: A poll for the Detroit Free Press by Denno-Noor of the gubernatorial primaries shows, for now, disengaged voters. “Undecided” has a big lead in both primary fields. Among the Dems, Lt. Gov. John Cherry leads at 20, followed by state House speaker Andy Dillon at 6, former MSU football coach George Perles at 6, state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith at 2, and former state Rep. John Freeman at 2. Among the GOP, Rep. Peter Hoekstra leads at 21, with AG Mike Cox at 15, Oakland Co. Sherif Mike Bouchard at 13, businessman Rick Snyder at 5, and state Sen. Tom George at 3. They also do a generic ballot test on the state legislature, where Dems lead 25-24; given the sheer number of open seats in the GOP-held state Senate next year, that suggests Dems may still be able to gain some ground there.

• OR-Gov: The fork can pretty much be stuck in the Oregon governor’s race now, as the one Republican who could make the race interesting finally confirmed last Thursday that he won’t run: as most expected, Rep. Greg Walden said he’s running for re-election in OR-02 in 2010. With the GOP down to the dregs — Allen Alley (the losing Treasurer candidate in 2008), long-forgotten ex-state Sen. John Lim, and possibly former ex-NBA player Chris Dudley — all the action looks like it’ll be the John Kitzhaber/Bill Bradbury primary. (Which could get even more interesting if Rep. Peter DeFazio shows up — Chris Cillizza seems to think that DeFazio’s loud anti-Tim Geithner stance may be posturing to try and grab the economic populist corner of the gubernatorial field.)

• SC-Gov: It’s sounding like the SC legislature’s on-again-off-again flirtation with impeaching Mark Sanford is back on; a bipartisan panel of legislators will take up the issue tomorrow. South Carolina’s ethics commission is investigating a whopping 37 charges against the jet-setting Sanford, regarding travel and campaign funding violations.

• AL-07: Here’s a boost for state Rep. Earl Hilliard Jr., who’s one of a large field of Democratic candidates in the open seat race in the 7th trying to stand out from the crowd. He got an endorsement from the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. (His father, of course, used to be a CBC member.)

• AZ-08: Republican state Senator Jonathan Paton says that he’s been heavily recruited to run against Rep. Gabby Giffords in the 8th, and is considering it. Little-known veteran Jesse Kelly is all the Republicans have on their dance card so far.

• FL-12: First off, all the usual caveats about internal polls apply. Still, this is a pretty impressive showing, considering the district’s Republican lean and the overall nationwide trends. Democratic Polk County Supervisor of Elections Lori Edwards is leading Republican ex-state Rep. Dennis Ross, 46-42, in a GQR poll taken for her campaign in this open seat race vacated by Adam Putnam. This may show the benefits of name rec; the Lakeland-based 12th’s boundaries closely overlap those of Polk County, so most of its voters are already familiar with Edwards.

• FL-24: Here’s an “oops” on my part from last week: former Winter Springs mayor Paul Partyka is indeed running against Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, but he’s doing it in the Democratic primary, not on the GOP side! I suppose I was confused by his generally Republican-sounding language, which leaves me wondering where he’s going to find any votes, considering that Kosmas is already on the Dems’ right flank (she was an anti-HCR vote last week, for instance). CQ’s story also turns over some stones in the GOP field, perhaps finding some institutional momentum shift away from Winter Park city councilor Karen Diebel, whose fundraising has seemed to stall, to state Rep. Sandy Adams, who’s been picking up key endorsements from other electeds (like state House speaker Larry Cretul).

• IA-04: Iowa Democrats have located somebody to go up against Rep. Tom Latham, whose swing district presents a tempting target but has always managed to escape. School administrator Bill Maske has filed candidacy paperwork.

• NJ-03: Here’s another GOP celebrity candidate who apparently thinks that voting is for the little people. Former Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman Jon Runyan (who, as his job would suggest, is in fact quite a big person) missed four of nine general elections between 2000 and 2008, and only registered as a Republican this month.

• NY-23: Doug Hoffman is doing his best to turn into the GOP’s version of Christine Jennings, trying to decide whether or not to challenge the election results from the 23rd. Any challenge would presumably target the voting machine failures in St. Lawrence County.

• SC-04: More Jim DeMint news: he won’t be endorsing or helping Rep. Bob Inglis, who holds the unusual distinction of having held SC-04 both before and after DeMint. Inglis, who probably is the person most likely to be teabagged to death next year, is facing at least two tough primary opponents and has been making increasingly moderate noises.

• Ads: The SEIU is coming to the defense of eight House members, spending $1 million on TV spots thanking them for backing health care reform: Baron Hill, Dina Titus, Paul Hodes, Earl Pomeroy, Tom Perriello, Mike Michaud, Brad Ellsworth, and Joe Donnelly.

• Census: Here’s an interesting idea; the Census is a “strange beneficiary” of the recession, and may even help briefly improve job numbers. In 2000, hiring for the Census was a big problem when the economy was healthy; this year, they’re having no recruitment problems for the one million temporary jobs they’ll need to fill this spring.

• 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).

• AR-Sen: PPP’s Tom Jensen has some interesting crosstabs from their AR-02 poll, which shed some light on Blanche Lincoln’s unique set of problems. Lincoln generates only lukewarm enthusiasm from her base: Barack Obama gets a 78% approval among Dems in the district, Rep. Vic Snyder is at 75%, and Mark Pryor is at 61%, but Lincoln is at only 43%, with 30% of Dems thinking she’s too conservative (although that may be coming to a head right now with her obstructionist role in the health care debate, which may not be much of an issue one year from now). Moving to the left, though, will cause her to lose votes with independents, though, among whom 49% think she’s too liberal.

• CT-Sen, CT-05: Local GOP party poohbahs are sounding eager to push state Sen. Sam Caligiuri out of the Senate race, where he’s rather, uh, underutilized, and into the 5th, for a race against Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy; Caligiuri says he’ll consider it. Problem is, Justin Bernier is already running there, and has had some fundraising success and gotten NRCC “Young Gun” status; as you might expect, Bernier is crying foul.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist has been trying to hide from his previous stimulus support, but Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson has the goods on him, dragging out an old interview from spring in which Crist says “absolutely” he would have voted for the stimulus had he been in the Senate at the time. Here’s one bit of good news for Crist, though; Marco Rubio‘s once-perfect A rating from the National Rifle Association is about to drop, thanks to Rubio’s compromise (from back when he was House speaker) on the take-your-gun-to-work law that recently became law.

• IL-Sen: Former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman has an internal poll of his own now, and while it doesn’t give numbers for the Dem primary matchup between Hoffman and frontrunner Alexi Giannoulias, it does point to some vulnerabilities for Giannoulias. The poll claims that without message-testing, GOP Rep. Mark Kirk leads Giannoulias 40-37 and leads Hoffman 40-30, but once positives and negatives are read, Kirk beats Giannoulias 47-30 and Hoffman beats Kirk 42-36. The negatives involve the Giannoulias family bank, which apparently has been connected to Tony Rezko. Meanwhile, Kirk took an embarrassing hit from the conservative Chicago Tribune editorial board, whose response to Kirk’s flip-flopping and fearmongering on trying terrorists in New York boiled down to “Give us a break.” Wondering why Kirk is so transparently turning into a right-winger? Kirk’s looking increasingly nervous about erstwhile opponent Patrick Hughes, who is currently seeking out a Jim DeMint endorsement.

• KY-Sen, NH-Sen: The NRSC is claiming it’s not getting involved in primary fights with fundraising, but you can’t make party leadership’s intentions any clearer than when Mitch McConnell hosts a fundraiser in New York on Dec. 7 for Trey Grayson and Kelly Ayotte. With both candidates facing mounting anti-establishment challenges, it seems like the bad publicity back home generated by these appearances — more grist for the movement conservative mill — might outweigh the financial benefit.

• NJ-Sen: Now that recently unemployed TV pundit Lou Dobbs has some time on his hands, he told Bill O’Reilly he’s considering a run for the Senate in New Jersey. There isn’t a seat available until 2012 (when Dobbs will be 67) — he’d be going up against Bob Menendez that year. Dobbs vs. Menendez? Hmmm, you can’t get any more weighed down with symbolism than that.

• SC-Sen: The county GOP in Berkeley County (in the Charleston suburbs) was prepared to have its own censure vote against Lindsey Graham, but they called off the vote after Graham’s chief of staff promised to meet with them first.

• CA-Gov (pdf): Lots of people have taken notice that the Republican field in the governor’s race isn’t a diverse bunch: three sorta-moderates from Silicon Valley. San Jose State University took a poll of those who would seemingly know the candidates the best: Republican likely voters in “Silicon Valley” (Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties, plus small parts of Alameda and Santa Cruz Counties). Perhaps thanks to Tom Campbell’s tenure in the House representing much of this area, he has a wide lead, at 39%, compared with 11 for Meg Whitman and 7 for Steve Poizner.

• MI-Gov, MI-08: In case there was any doubt that Rep. Mike Rogers (the Michigan one) was going to run for re-election to his House seat and not for governor, we found a statement from way back in February to that effect. (H/t to Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, a blog devoted to all things MI-08.)

• MN-Gov: Rasmussen looks at the still-coalescing primary fields in the Minnesota governor’s races, and seems to be finding very name-recognition-driven results right now. On the Democratic side, most of the votes are going to former Senator Mark Dayton and Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak; both poll at 30, trailed by state House speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher at 8 and former state legislator Matt Entenza at 6. On the Republican side, ex-Sen. Norm Coleman dominates, with 50%; however, he’s not in the race, at least not yet, and is probably the only name that people know. Among the rest of the rabble, former House minority leader Marty Seifert is doing the best, at 11, with 5 for Laura Brod and 1 for Tom Emmer.

• OR-Gov: Most people have already mentally ruled out Rep. Peter DeFazio from the governor’s race, but he just said that he’s still somewhat interested, and that he won’t be making up his mind on it until… next March? He doesn’t seem too concerned about the delay, as Oregon law would let him transfer over his federal dollars and he alludes to private polling showing him in a dead heat with John Kitzhaber. While I still doubt he’ll follow through, that raises the question of who might fill a vacancy in OR-04; it’s looking less and less like it would be Springfield’s Republican mayor Sid Leiken, who was just fined $2,250 by the state for the phantom poll that may or may not have been conducted by Leiken’s mom.

• TX-Gov: Little-known fact: Kay Bailey Hutchison, despite the seeming overall malaise in her campaign, has a big edge in endorsements from Texas House Republicans. She has the endorsements of 10 of 20 (including Kay Granger, Kenny Marchant, and Michael Burgess), perhaps indicative of Rick Perry’s increasingly strident anti-Washington rhetoric. (Not that that will help much when the actual electorate is in an increasingly anti-establishment mood.) A couple other Dems are looking at the race: hair care magnate Farouk Shami (who’s willing to bring his own money to the race) is officially launching his campaign on Thursday, while El Paso-based outgoing state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh is publicly weighing a run.

• FL-19: West Palm Beach mayor Lois Frankel, who would have been maybe the highest-profile possible primary challenger to state Sen. Ted Deutch in the upcoming special election in the 19th, has decided not to run. Deutch has been endorsed by outgoing Robert Wexler and has an increasingly clear path to the nomination. Meanwhile, the only GOPer looking interested in running in the dark-blue district is Ed Lynch, who lost to Wexler last year.

• IL-06: Here’s a little more information about Benjamin Lowe, who’s the only Dem running in the 6th against Peter Roskam. While he’s something of a political unknown, it turns out he’s well-connected in the religious left community as well as the green jobs movement. He’s a graduate of evangelical Wheaton College (which is in the district) and has been active in the last few years in organizing students at other evangelical colleges on issues of environmental stewardship.

• NY-13: I don’t know if anything can top last year’s NY-13 race for political trainwrecks, but the Staten Island GOP may have gotten switched onto that same track again. Michael Allegretti, a 31-year old who caught attention for raising $200K for the race already, is a lawyer who also owns a share of the family business, Bayside Fuel and Oil — which employed Gambino family capo Joe “Joe Butch” Corrao for several decades. Over $40K of Allegretti’s contributions came from family members working for Bayside. To add to the made-for-TV drama: Allegretti’s potential Republican primary opponent, Michael Grimm, was on the FBI squad charged with investigating said crime family.

• NY-19: Republican Greg Ball — who puts the “Ass” in Assemblyman — is out with an internal poll putting him within single digits of Rep. John Hall. Hall leads the Hall/Ball matchup, 48-43 — although for some reason the poll was taken only in the portion of the district that’s east of the Hudson River. Hall still has strong favorables, at 57/25, while Ball is at 40/28.

• NY-23: Recounting in NY-23 is still on track to see Rep. Bill Owens remain in the House; Doug Hoffman is down 2,951 votes with 6,123 left, so about the best he can hope for is to lose by about 2,000. The Hoffman saga just got weirder when yesterday Hoffman, goaded along by his patron Glenn Beck, unconceded on national TV — yet today, his spokesperson un-un-conceded, not that any of that is legally binding, of course.

• NRCC: If the Republicans are going to make a serious dent in the Democratic edge in the House next year, they’re going to have to refill the NRCC’s coffers, which are still lagging the DCCC. Party leadership smacked down members in a closed-door session, trying to get them to pony up their $15K dues. The Hill also has an interesting profile of CA-22’s Kevin McCarthy, an up-and-comer who’s the NRCC recruitment chair now and likely to head the NRCC at some point in the near future. Turns out that McCarthy is quite the student of Rahm Emanuel.

• Mayors: SurveyUSA polls the runoff in the Atlanta mayor’s race, and they have quite the reversal of fortune for Mary Norwood, who led all polls before November and finished first in the election. State Sen. Kasim Reed, who finished 2nd, now leads Norwood, 49-46. Reed leads 69-25 among African-American voters, indicating that he picked up almost all of 3rd-place finisher Lisa Borders’ support.

• Special elections: Two legislative specials are on tap tonight. The big one is California’s AD-72, a Republican-leaning seat in the OC left vacant by the resignation of Mike Duvall (who resigned in disgrace after bragging about his affair with a lobbyist). It seems to be mostly a contest between two GOPers, Orange County Supervisor Chris Norby and activist Linda Ackerman (who’s been making much of Norby’s four divorces). Since this is California, assuming one of the Republicans doesn’t finish over 50%, it’ll move on to another round where the top Republican faces off against Dem John MacMurray. Also, in Mississippi, there’s a contest in Biloxi-based HD-117, to replace Republican state Rep. Michael Janus; candidates aren’t identified by party on the special election ballot, but the contestants are Patrick Collins (who ran against Janus several times) and Scott DeLano.

• Redistricting: You might want to check out the website called “Redistricting the Nation,” presented by GIS software company Avencia but full of fun widgets. Most interestingly, you can evaluate the compactness of any congressional district by four different criteria, and see the worst offenders in each category.

• CO-Sen, CO-07: An interesting move in Colorado, where Aurora city councilor Ryan Frazier dropped his Senate bid (which was plausible when other Republicans weren’t interested in the race, but relegated to longshot status when his fundraising stalled and ex-Lt. Gov. Jane Norton got into the field). Instead, he’ll be getting into the CO-07 race against sophomore Dem Rep. Ed Perlmutter. In some ways, that’ll be a harder general election — at D+4, the 7th is more Democratic than the state as a whole, and Perlmutter got 63% in his 2008 re-election — but this way he’ll at least make it into the general election, which will help raise the 32-year-old Frazier’s profile for future efforts.

• CT-Sen: How sadly transparent a play to the party’s base is this? Ex-Rep. Rob Simmons, who in the two years prior to his 2006 defeat was the 5th most liberal Republican in the House, is now a teabagger. He says he’s attached an actual bag of tea to his pocket copy of the Constitution.

• FL-Sen: In an effort to have no more George LeMieuxs, there’s a bipartisan effort afoot in the Florida state legislature to change the law so that Senate vacancies in Florida will be filled by fast special election rather than by appointment. State Sen. Paula Dockery, who may be running for Governor soon, is the Republican co-sponsor.

• IL-Sen: David Hoffman, the former Inspector General of Chicago (and frequent monkeywrench in that city’s machine), has released an internal poll showing that state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, while starting with a sizable lead, doesn’t have a mortal lock on the Democratic Senate nomination. Hoffman’s poll finds Giannoulias at 26%, with former Chicago Urban League head Cheryle Jackson at 12 and Hoffman at 7, leaving 55% undecided. On the GOP side of the aisle, Mark Kirk continues to shuffle to the right as he faces some competition in his own primary: he continues to defend his flip-flop on the cap-and-trade vote that he voted for in the House and would vote against in the Senate, but also says that he’d keep in place the military’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, saying “Keeping that all out of the workplace makes common sense.”

• MA-Sen: In case there was any doubt AG Martha Coakley was running under the mantle of the establishment’s candidate, she unleashed a torrent of endorsements yesterday, including about half of the state legislature (78 representatives and 16 senators, including both chambers’ leaders), as well as many mayors and labor unions.

• MO-Sen: Joe Biden continues to ramp up his fundraising efforts on behalf of 2010 candidates; he’ll be appearing at a Robin Carnahan fundraiser in St. Louis tomorrow. And on Friday, he’ll appear in Nevada with Harry Reid to tout the stimulus.

• NV-Sen, Gov: On the off chance that John Ensign decides to spare us all the embarrassment and resign before 2010, Gov. Jim Gibbons says that he wouldn’t appoint former AG Brian Sandoval to the job (despite that getting Sandoval out of the way would make his own chances of surviving the gubernatorial primary somewhat better). Gibbons also says he wouldn’t appoint himself (since that would just mean likely defeat in the primary in the ensuing 2010 special election).

• OH-Sen: Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher picked up an endorsement from Rep. John Boccieri of the Canton-area 16th District today. Boccieri joins Tim Ryan, Zack Space, and Charlie Wilson in endorsing Fisher in the Dem primary; the remaining six Dems in the state’s delegation haven’t picked sides yet.

• OR-Gov: Not one but three possible new entrants in the Oregon gubernatorial race, although I can’t see any of them getting anywhere. On the Dem side, former Hewlett-Packard executive Steve Shields says he’ll announce on Thursday that he’s getting into the Democratic primary field. He wasn’t at the Carly Fiorina levels of management (which, uh, may actually be a good thing) and doesn’t bring a personal fortune to the race, but he has hired some pricey staffers already. On the GOP side, very large, very slow, very white former Portland Trail Blazers center Chris Dudley is interested in the race (after having declined the NRCC to run in OR-05). No one is sure where exactly he fits in ideologically in the GOP; at any rate, here’s hoping he’s a better campaigner than he was a free throw shooter. And out on the left, Jerry Wilson, the founder of Soloflex, is going to run under the Oregon Progressive Party banner. If the general were likely to be closer, a third-party lefty with his own money would seem threatening, but so far, with John Kitzhaber in, the race isn’t shaping up to be close.

• VA-Gov: Al Gore will be appearing on Creigh Deeds’ behalf on Friday, although it’ll be at a private fundraiser and not a public appearance.

• FL-08: With the surprising decision of former state Sen. Daniel Webster to beg off from facing Rep. Alan Grayson, all of a sudden the floodgates have opened — and not in the way you’d expect. Prospective candidates are now actively running away from the race, starting with state Rep. Steve Precourt, who was supposed to be Plan D but said he won’t run and will go for re-election to his state House seat instead. This was followed by wealthy businessman Jerry Pierce, who had previously gotten into the race and promised to spend $200,000 of his own money, but then mysteriously dropped out yesterday. Another rumored rich guy, Tim Seneff, already begged off last week — which means that 28-year-old real estate developer and South Florida transplant Armando Gutierrez Jr. may be the last GOPer standing — and even he sounds like he’s having problems launching his campaign. What kind of mysterious powers does Alan Grayson have here? (Well, other than many millions of his own money and a willingness to spend it…)

• FL-19: It’s been revealed that Rep. Robert Wexler’s new job will not be in the Obama administration, but rather as president of the Center for Middle East Peace and Economic Cooperation. The special election date won’t be set until Wexler’s resignation has been made official, though.

• IN-02: It’s official: state Rep. “Wacky” Jackie Walorski will be taking on Rep. Joe Donnelly in the 2nd, bringing the full might of the teabaggers’ movement down upon him.

• IN-08: Also in Indiana, the Republicans lined up a challenger to Rep. Brad Ellsworth, who’s gotten more than 60% of the vote in both his elections in this Republican-leaning seat. Larry Bucshon, a surgeon, is a political novice, but would seem to bring his own money to the race.

• NV-03: In Nevada’s 3rd, it looks like former state Sen. Joe Heck won’t have the Republican primary field to himself. Real estate investor Rob Lauer is getting in the race and says he’ll invest $100K of his own money in the campaign.

• NY-23: Politico has some encouraging dirt on the special election in the 23rd: Republican Dede Scozzafava is dangerously low on cash, and that’s largely because the RNC has declined to get involved in the race. Scozzafava has spent only $26K on TV ads and recently had to pull down an ad in the Syracuse market; by contrast, Dem Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman have spent $303K and $124K on TV, respectively. (Discussion underway in conspiracy‘s diary.) Adding further fuel to the GOP/Conservative split is that Mike Huckabee will be appearing in Syracuse to address the NY Conservative Party. Huckabee hasn’t actually endorsed Hoffman, but the timing can’t exactly be a coincidence.

• NY-29: This slipped through the cracks over the weekend; after a cryptic e-mail that led to some hyperventilating about whether Eric Massa wouldn’t run for re-election, he announced at a press conference on the 10th that, yes, in fact, he will be back. Massa faces a challenge in 2010 from Corning mayor Tom Reed.

• ME-Init: A poll from PanAtlantic SMS points to the anti-gay marriage Question 1 in Maine going down to defeat (meaning that gay marriage would survive). With gay advocacy groups learning from their California mistakes last year and going on the offensive with ads this time, the poll finds the proposition losing 52-43.

• Legislatures: Democrats lost two legislative seats in special elections last night, a state House seat in Tennessee and a state House seat in Oklahoma. It’s a bigger deal in Tennessee, where Dem Ty Cobb widely lost to GOPer Pat Marsh in his effort to succeed his brother (losing 4,931 to 3,663); the GOP now holds a 51-48 numeric edge in the House, although it sounds like the Dems will keep controlling the chamber for now. In Oklahoma, Republican Todd Russ won with 56% en route to picking up a seat left vacant by a Democratic resignation, moving the GOP’s edge in the state House to 61-39. Both were rural districts with Democratic registration edges but extremely Republican tilts as of late, where historic Democratic downballot advantages are drying up.

• NYC: After looking kind of vulnerable in the previous SurveyUSA poll, mayor Michael Bloomberg bounced back in yesterday’s poll. He leads Democratic city comptroller William Thompson, 55-38.

• King Co. Exec: Also from SurveyUSA, a troubling look at the King County Executive Race, where the stealth Republican candidate Susan Hutchison leads Democratic county councilor Dow Constantine, 47-42. This is the first time county executive has been a nonpartisan race, and you’ve gotta wonder how many people are unaware of Hutchison’s Republican past (for her to be polling this well in such a blue county, it would seem that she picked up a fair number of votes from suburban moderate Dems who voted for state Sen. Fred Jarrett or state Rep. Ross Hunter in the primary and who may be loath to see another Seattlite like Constantine get the job). This race, to be decided in November, may be something of a canary in the coal mine, as it puts to the test the seemingly new Republican strategy of running blonde 50-something women with little partisan track record, having them steer clear of social conservatism and mostly focus on anti-tax platitudes (as seen in NV-Sen and CO-Sen, and NH-Sen as well if you disregard the “blonde” part).

• CO-Sen: It’s primary protection week at the White House. Fresh off hosting a big fundraiser for Arlen Specter, Barack Obama officially endorsed Sen. Michael Bennet, who’s fending off an ideologically curious primary challenge from former CO House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. (J)

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio has picked up his second endorsement from Florida’s GOP House delegation. 5th District Rep. (and Main Street Partnership member, although certainly one of its less ‘moderate’ members) Ginny Brown-Waite endorsed Rubio yesterday, giving his Senate candidacy a potentially useful endorsement in the Tampa and Orlando exurbs. Back in June, dark red Panhandle Rep. Jeff Miller gave Rubio his official blessing. (J)

• MA-Sen: On a recent appearance on Fox Business, Harvard law professor and TARP watchdog Elizabeth Warren refused to flat-out say “no” when asked if she’d consider running for Ted Kenneday’s Senate seat. Warren is one of the most important progressive thinkers and activists in America today, but with little time, no prior electoral experience, and no campaign warchest, it’s hard to see how a potential candidacy could catch fire. (D)

Also, as expected, the Massachusetts legislature moved halfway toward modifying state law to allow temporary appointment of a stopgap Senator until the special election. The bill cleared the state House, 95-58; it is also expected to pass the state Senate, although procedural tactics will allow the Republicans to drag it out till next week.

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown is being coy about when (or if) he’ll announce his gubernatorial bid, appearing at a function with three other would-be governors but saying “The people of California are not anxious to hear from their candidates yet, and the deadline for filing papers isn’t until March – so tune in.” Hopefully he left off the part about turning on and dropping out.

• NY-Gov: David Paterson either isn’t getting the message or has an admirable single-mindedness, but either way, he’s gearing up for a re-election run, hiring a campaign manager, Richard Fife (who previously managed the failed-to-launch Carolyn Maloney senatorial campaign).

• OR-Gov: We have our first poll of the Oregon governor’s race since people started piling into it, courtesy of vaunted local pollster Tim Hibbitts’ firm on behalf of the Portland Tribune and Fox 12 News. Ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber has wide leads over his Republican opponents (although still below the 50% mark): 43-23 over state Sen. Jason Atkinson and 46-21 over Allen Alley. Ex-SoS Bill Bradbury, who made it offical yesterday, isn’t tested. In other news, ex-Sen. Gordon Smith hadn’t seemed likely to make the race, and now it’s even much less likely, as he took a cushy new job in DC as president of the powerful lobby National Association of Broadcasters. This would leave Rep. Greg Walden as the one Republican of interest who has yet to weigh in on the race.

• SC-Gov: Lt. Governor Andre Bauer has made the offer to stand down from running in the 2010 gubernatorial election if he has to succeed Mark Sanford in the event of a resignation (or impeachment). But he’s attaching an expiration date to that offer now (only through next month), saying he needs to get started on his campaign.

• NY-23: Here’s a weird thought: could the ACORN scandal wind up sinking the Republican in the special election in the 23rd? The Conservative Party is going after Dede Scozzafava for her previous relationship with the Working Families Party, whose line she’s run on in the past. The WFP often works together with ACORN, so now Doug Hoffman is accusing her of palling around with the “radical left” and demanding she disavow the WFP. (Also noteworthy though expected: state Sen. Darrel Aubertine endorsed Dem candidate Bill Owens yesterday.)

• PA-11: Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien has taken a step toward actually challenging crusty Rep. Paul Kanjorski in the Democratic primary by opening up a campaign account and filing a statement of candidacy with the FEC. O’Brien remains in exploratory mode, but says that he’ll have “more to say” on his campaign by the end of the year. (J)

• SD-AL: It’s starting to look like Republicans are going to make a real effort at giving Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin an actual race in 2010. The latest potential candidate whose name is being circulated in GOP circles is state Rep. Blake Curd of Sioux Falls. Secretary of State Chris Nelson says that he’s getting “very close” to making a decision, and state Rep. Shantel Krebs says that she’s still in “sit-and-wait mode” to see what Curd and Nelson decide. (J)

• Cap & Trade: A poll taken for the Environmental Defense Fund shows, contrary to conventional wisdom, support for cap-and-trade in some conservative Dem districts. While we haven’t seen the question wording yet, Greg Sargent says the numbers are positive in NC-11, IN-09 and VA-05, and promises full results soon. He also rightly points out:

When the cap and trade debate heats up again, we’ll hear lots more about how risky it is for “marginal” Dems to support it. It’s striking how often reporters (myself included) just accept the view that such votes are risky in districts like these, simply because someone, somewhere, claimed this is the case.

• Voting Rights: This is a welcome surprise. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a controversial Indiana law requiring voters to show identification last year, following a challenge to it in federal court. This year, though, there was a challenge to it in state court, and an appellate court in Indiana struck down the law for violating the state constitution’s Equal Privileges and Immunities Clause (primarily since it didn’t require mail-in voters to provide ID). The state plans to appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. Has the pendulum swung far enough that challenges to voter suppression are likelier to get a fair hearing in state courts now instead of the federal system?

• CO-Sen: Former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff officially kicked off his primary challenge to Michael Bennet yesterday, with appearances in Pueblo, Colorado Springs, and Denver. Romanoff, however, wasted no time in demonstrating that he won’t be running to Bennet’s left, saying that he’s opposed to the card-check portion of EFCA. If he isn’t going to run to Bennet’s left, that leads to the question of: what other kind of an angle can he work, other than just “it’s my turn?”

• IL-Sen: Here’s an interesting development in the Illinois Senate race: EMILY’s List has weighed in, endorsing (surprise) Cheryle Jackson. EMILY’s List isn’t always a magic bullet in these type situations (see Tinker, Nikki), but it does expose Jackson to a nationwide base of donors. Politico does observe something odd, though: EMILY’s List hasn’t endorsed a female Senate candidate who seems to have at least somewhat better odds of making it out of her primary… Jennifer Brunner.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): Some leftovers from yesterday’s Marist poll of NY-Gov: Kirsten Gillibrand is still having some growing pains, with an approval of 26% excellent or good, 38% fair, and 9% poor (with 27% not sure) and losing a head-to-head against ex-Gov. George Pataki, 48-44 (Pataki has been completely silent on the issue, but you’ve gotta wonder if the consistent numbers are getting him more interested). For yucks and giggles, they also matched Gillibrand up against Eliot Spitzer in a Dem primary, which she won 57-29. (Spitzer also loses a primary to David Paterson 60-31, and receives a general “no” on the issue of running again, 27/69.)

• IL-Gov: State GOP chair Andy McKenna, who briefly provoked a Mark Kirk temper tantrum when he said he’d run in the Illinois senate primary, has decided he still really wants to run for office, and instead has headed over to the Governor’s race, where there was no top-tier candidate or even clear frontrunner. This seemed to spook one of the candidates, suburban state Sen. Matt Murphy, who bailed out of the race and signed on as McKenna’s running mate. While McKenna has the fundraising connections and can self-fund as well, McKenna has never won a race (he finished 4th in the GOP Senate primary in 2004, meaning he lost not only to Jack Ryan but also Jim Oberweis), and he’ll still have to face DuPage County Board Chair Bob Schillerstrom (who has at least 900,000 constituents) as well as a gaggle of other state Senators. (H/t GOPVOTER.)

• MI-Gov: SoS Terri Lynn Land has signed onto Oakland Co. Sheriff Michael Bouchard’s ticket as his running mate. Land, you’ll recall, was widely expected to run for Governor but surprised everyone by endorsing Bouchard instead. (There was a brief rumor that she’d run in MI-03 after a Vern Ehlers retirement, but that doesn’t seem to be happening.)

• NH-Gov: Rasmussen throws in gubernatorial numbers as part of its sample from Sep. 14 that found Kelly Ayotte up on Paul Hodes by 8 in the Senate race. The results help cast a little more doubt on the composition of that particular sample, as the state’s widely popular Democratic Governor, John Lynch, leads former Senator John Sununu (who I’ve never seen mentioned in connection with that race) by only 48-43. Lynch beats the only announced candidate, businessman Jack Kimball, 52-31, and vaguely interested state Senator Chuck Morse 51-29.

• NJ-Gov: PPP tried out some alternate scenarios in New Jersey involving replacement Democrats for Jon Corzine (although Corzine hasn’t made any moves to get out, and it’s unclear why he would at this point, with his numbers improving somewhat). The bottom line is, it wouldn’t help anyway; Rep. Frank Pallone loses big-time to Chris Christie 43-23 (with Chris Daggett at 15). Newark mayor Corey Booker doesn’t fare much better, even though he has very high approval ratings: he loses 41-33-13.

• OR-Gov: We’ll definitely have a contested primary on the Democratic side, despite the entry of heavyweight ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber. Former SoS Bill Bradbury is staying in the race, preparing to announce today, and yesterday releasing a video endorsement from his most prominent backer, former Gov. Barbara Roberts, who preceded Kitzhaber in office. Meanwhile, Kitzhaber released a literal shitload of endorsements yesterday, with many of the state’s key Democrats (AG John Kroger, Treasurer Ben Westlund, Superintendent of Education Susan Castillo, Multnomah County Chair Ted Wheeler, ex-Portland mayor Vera Katz, ex-Rep. Darlene Hooley) and some names who’d been bandied about as possible candidates (state Sen. Mark Hass, Portland city counilor Randy Leonard) on board — not a lot of oxygen left for Bradbury, or for Rep. Peter DeFazio, if he still wants to get in.

• PA-Gov: Scranton mayor Chris Doherty is almost certain to run for the Democratic nod for Governor, insiders are saying. He’s staffing up (including some heavy hitters, including media pro Tad Devine) and polling.

• TX-Gov: Rasmussen’s new poll of the Texas governor primary on the Republican side has a big surprise: it’s the first poll in ages (since May) to give a lead to Kay Bailey Hutchison. KBH leads incumbent Rick Perry 40-38, with somebody named Debra Medina, who’s from the Ron Paul wing of the party, pulling in 3% of the vote… apparently pulling in enough of Perry’s base of teabag/secession nuts to flip the race to KBH. Rasmussen’s May poll had Perry up 42-38.

• CA-42: Republican Rep. Gary Miller has drawn a wealthy primary challenger, Lee McGroarty, an executive with an investment firm. Ethical clouds related to real estate deals have followed Miller, but he’s probably more vulnerable to an anti-insider primary challenge than a Democrat in this R+10 Orange County district.

• NY-23: After Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts dropped their barely-explicable holds on the confirmation of Rep. John McHugh for Secretary of the Army, the New York Republican was confirmed last night. The three candidates — Democrat Bill Owens, Republican Dede Scozzafava, and Conservative Doug Hoffman — now are waiting to see when the special election is scheduled. State law requires David Paterson to schedule the election between 30 and 40 days from his announcement of the date, so in order to schedule the election on the regular election day of Nov. 3 (like everyone expects will happen), he’ll need to delay the announcement for at least another week.

• Campaign Finance: Last month, a federal judge ruled that Connecticut’s relatively new campaign matching fund system violated the First Amendment, saying it impermissibly put unfair burdens on “hopeless” minor party candidates that it did not also place on equally hopeless major party candidates running in uncompetitive districts. (The decision was in part based on the Supreme Court case that struck down the federal Millionaire’s Amendment last year.) AG Dick Blumenthal is appealing to the Second Circuit. Meanwhile, some folks in Arizona are concerned that this ruling might implicate their own public financing system. (D)

• 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 Denver Post does some interesting digging into how former House speaker Andrew Romanoff wound up in the Senate Democratic primary against Michael Bennet after all. Governor Bill Ritter tried to give the Lt. Gov. spot to Romanoff after Barbara O’Brien left the position in January, but the deal collapsed, leaving Romanoff to decide on the primary instead this summer.

• IL-Sen: Chicago’s city treasurer, Stephanie Neely, has decided not to run in the Senate primary. However, Chicago’s inspector general David Hoffman seems to be taking tangible steps to get into the race, saying he’ll make a formal announcement after Labor Day.

• MA-Sen: Rep. Stephen Lynch picked up filing papers for the Senate special election in Massachusetts, indicating he’s likely to soon join Martha Coakley. Lynch, who represents a heavily blue-collar Catholic district based in south Boston, would likely be the only anti-abortion Democratic in the race, but he has strong ties with organized labor.

• MD-Gov: While most of the question marks surrounding the Maryland governor’s race involve whether or not GOP ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich wants a rematch with current Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, now some are wondering if O’Malley will face a primary challenge from former Prince George’s Co. Executive Wayne Curry. Speculation centers on how O’Malley has nailed down endorsements from Dems all over the state but is missing some key endorsements from PG County.

• NJ-Gov: Wow, what is it with this guy? So it turns out that back in 2002, Chris Christie turned his sail barge the wrong way down a one-way street, struck a motorcyclist (who was taken to the hospital)… and didn’t get a ticket. No claims about a tow-truck driver recognizing Christie this time – here, we know he identified himself to the officer on the scene. When he was asked if Christie’s title affected the officer’s decision not to issue a summons, the police director said “I don’t think I want to make that kind of deduction, but I think the facts speak for themselves.” Ouch. (D)

• OR-Gov: Lots of movement in the Oregon governor’s race now that John Kitzhaber is in. Democratic state Rep. Brian Clem (who had set up an exploratory committee a few months ago) quickly moved to endorse Kitzhaber and not just get out of the way but join Kitz’s campaign as a director. Meanwhile, Republican state Senator Jason Atkinson — who finished third in the GOP primary in 2006 and has “next in line” status — informally told his hometown paper, the Medford Mail-Tribune, that “he’s running,” although the formal announcement won’t happen for a while. Finally, it sounds like Rep. Peter DeFazio is making a move to… do something. He’s still considering the race, but will make a decision “around Labor Day,” which is soon.

• SC-Gov: Here’s a tea leaf that Jim Rex, who’d be the Dems’s strongest candidate, seems likely to get in the gubernatorial race. In the midst of touring the state and raising money, he says he won’t run for another term as Superintendent of Education.

• AZ-01: It sounds like the GOP has a candidate lined up in the 1st, to against freshman Dem Ann Kirkpatrick, who’s a definite improvement over the sad Sydney Hay from last time. Former state Senate majority leader Russell “Rusty” Bowers (also a former state Rep., and now a sand-and-gravel industry lobbyist) seems like he’s set to run.

• IN-08: The NRCC, however, wasn’t able to pin down a challenger to Brad Ellsworth in the 8th. Former Vandenburgh County Commissioner and county assessor Cheryl Musgrave decided not to run against Ellsworth, although she is considering a state House run instead against incumbent Dem Gail Riecken.

• PA-03: The GOP had been previously struggling to find anyone at all to go against freshman Dem Kathy Dahlkemper, but now they’ve landed someone fairly impressive sounding. John Onorato (not to be confused with Dem gubernatorial candidate Dan Onorato) is the former Erie County Solicitor (analogous to DA in most states), giving him a large constituency to build on.

• SD-AL: State Rep. Shantel Krebs of Sioux Falls said that she’s considering challenging Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in 2010. Krebs would likely need to get past Chris Nelson, the state’s two-term Secretary of State, in the GOP primary though; he’s also in the “considering” phase. (Remember that South Dakota House districts are teeny constituencies, with only 22,000 residents each.)

• NYC-Mayor: One more SurveyUSA poll of the Dem primary in the Big Apple. William Thompson and Mark Green have pretty clear paths in the Mayor and Public Advocate primaries (Thompson leads Tony Avella 52-14), but check out the Comptroller’s race. It’s a three-way slugfest between three city councilors: 25% for John Liu, 24% for Melinda Katz, and 21% for David Yassky.

• Ads: The DNC, via Organizing for America, is running cable TV spots for four potentially vulnerable House Dems, thanking them for their pro-stimulus votes: Ben Chandler, Martin Heinrich, Travis Childers, and Zack Space.

• Polling: The Masters of the Crosstabs were all on hand to do a panel on polling at Netroots Nation last month: Charlie Cook, Mark Blumenthal, Nate Silver, and Charles Franklin, moderated by Greg Dworkin (aka DemFromCT). At the link, you’ll find a video of their session. (Charlie gives a nice shout-out to SSP at about 7:40, and again at 80:20, where he talks about the “growing sophistication of the blogosphere.”) (D)

• Humor: Autotune the News 8 is out, in case you’ve ever wanted Joe Biden to sing you a slow jam.