Tag: Harold Ford Sr.

FL-Sen: Charlie Crist raised $1.8 million last quarter – better than Kendrick Meek, but quite a bit behind Marco Rubio’s stellar pace. Still, considering there was a chance that Crist’s fundraising could take a major hit after his party switch, this strikes me as a pretty decent haul.

NV-Sen: Sharron Angle teabagged up quite a haul in the second quarter, taking in $2.6 million (with $2.3 million of that coming in the last six weeks or so, according to Aaron Blake). Even though she outraised Harry Reid, Jon Ralston points out that the Majority Leader has quite a bit more cash on hand than the Crazy Lady of Clown Town: $9 mil to $1.8 mil.

CO-Gov: The WSJ has a good piece gaming out the options for the GOP in terms of getting Scott McInnis out of the race, none of them particularly good. They can try to get both McInnis and rival Dan Maes to drop out and offer up a replacement candidate; they can hope McInnis wins the Aug. 10 primary and then push him to drop out; or they can put forward a write-in candidate in the primary. Maes is going nowhere, so option #1 is out, and a write-in at this late stage seems almost impossible. So perhaps their best bet is to ride McInnis for a few more weeks and then kick him to the curb. Good luck with that! Meanwhile, the RGA slammed earlier reports that it was abandoning McInnis, but as Mike Memoli points out, they didn’t mention McInnis’s name once in their press release.

NH-01: Former Manchester mayor Frank Guinta has been trying to paint himself as a peerless opponent of the stimulus, but it turns out that last year, he was complaining about the slow pace at which the state was collecting stimulus funds from the federal government. This problematic stance is getting some renewed attention now because of emails released by the state AG’s office, which include a note from – of all people – GOP senate candidate Kelly Ayotte calling Guinta a “grandstander.” Heh.

NH-02: I guess you’d have to say that Katrina Swett is objectively in favor of repealing gay marriage in the state of New Hampshire. A piece in the Nashua Telegraph is casting a renewed spotlight on the fact that Swett says she only supports civil unions, not marriage equality. That’s a pretty strange position to take in a Democratic primary, especially considering that same-sex marriage is already the law of the land in the Granite State. Fortunately, she’s not running for the state legislature – and hopefully this will help sink her Liebermanesque candidacy.

SC-05: Biden alert! The VPOTUS with the mostest is coming to Columbia on July 23rd to dedicate the Ernest Hollings Library at the University of South Carolina (named after the retired senator, a Biden pal). He’ll also squeeze in a fundraiser with Rep. John Spratt.

TN-09: Willie Herenton, will you please go home now? Harold Ford, Sr., who used to hold this seat, has cut a radio ad for Rep. Steve Cohen, whom he’s been backing over ex-Memphis mayor Willie Herenton. With Ford and President Obama in Cohen’s corner, you’ve got to wonder who exactly Herenton is hoping will power him to victory.

• CT-Sen: I guess I wasn’t dreaming when I thought I heard economist and talking head Peter Schiff say he was still looking into the GOP primary for the Connecticut Senate race Tuesday night on the Daily Show… apparently he’s making a full-court press all week gauging his support for a run. Schiff is a favorite of the Paulist wing of the party, and true to anarcho-libertarian form, he shrugs off the fact that he can’t remember the last time he voted.

• FL-Sen: The Club for Growth doesn’t get involved in Senate primaries very often (RI in 2006 and NM in 2008 being the exceptions), but the fact that Marco Rubio met this week with the CfG and they admitted to being “impressed” suggests that they might get involved here. The CfG may still be reluctant to get involved, though, simply given the unlikely return on their investment with the long odds Rubio faces against Charlie Crist.

• NY-Sen-B: Writer Jonathan Tasini, who got 17% in a challenge from the left to Hillary Clinton in the 2006 Senate primary, announced that he’s going to run against Kirsten Gillibrand in the 2010 primary. It’s still as unclear as ever if Rep. Carolyn Maloney will officially join Tasini in the hunt (and Tasini getting in may make it more difficult for her, seeing as how Tasini would eat into her share of the purer-than-thou vote), but Maloney seems to be testing out various attack lines against Gillibrand in a prerecorded interview with NY1 that will air tonight. Meanwhile, Gillibrand got another prominent endorsement today, although this one may help her more in the general than with the liberal base: former NYC mayor Ed Koch.

• UT-Sen: Somehow Bob Bennett has become flypaper for wingnuts lately. He’s pulled down his fourth primary challenger, businessman and conservative activist James Williams.

• NJ-Gov: The Philadelphia Inquirer looks at a new conundrum for both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie: picking running mates. (This is the first New Jersey gubernatorial election since the creation of the Lt. Gov. position, a need made apparent by the resignations of both Christie Todd Whitman and Jim McGreevey.) This looks like an exercise in ticket-balancing, both in terms of gender and geography. State Senator Diane Allen from the Philly burbs in Burlington Co. (who declined the chance to run in NJ-03) may have the inside track for the GOP nod, although (paging open seat fans) one other name that gets a mention is NJ-02’s Rep. Frank LoBiondo.

• OK-Gov: No surprise here, but AG Drew Edmondson today officially launched his exploratory campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor. Edmondson faces Lt. Gov. Jari Askins in the primary, giving the Dems two strong candidates facing a steep climb uphill against Oklahoma’s ever-darker shade of red.

• DE-AL: Rep. Mike Castle said today that he won’t seek the newly-open position of ranking member on the Education and Labor Committee, saying he wanted GOP stability on the panel. While this doesn’t help us know whether he’s planning to run for the Senate or retire, it does send a pretty clear signal the 69-year-old Castle isn’t staying in the House.

• FL-24: This race is barely a couple days old, and already it’s one of the most heated in the nation. Once Winter Park City Commissioner Karen Diebel announced her run, some local Democrats (although not the Kosmas camp) began pointing to a 2007 Orlando Sentinel article discussing some of her odd actions and outbursts. That brought on a counterattack from state GOP chair Jim Greer, who attacked freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas directly for gutter politicking.

• NV-03: The NRCC hasn’t had much luck on the recruiting front in this D+2 district in the Las Vegas suburbs to take on freshman Rep. Dina Titus. Local banking executive John Guedry looks willing to step up to the plate, though, saying he’s “seriously considering” it. Other possible GOPers include former Clark County GOP chair Brian Scroggins and former state Controller Steve Martin.

• SC-01: With Linda Ketner turning down the rematch against Rep. Henry Brown, all eyes have turned to state Rep. Leon Stavrinakis as a potential Dem nominee. He said he’ll make a decision “sometime in July.”

• TN-09: Rep. Steve Cohen is getting fundraising help from an interesting source, and still one of the most powerful forces in Memphis politics: former Rep. Harold Ford Sr. At first this seems odd, since Ford campaigned against Cohen and in support of his son, Jake Ford, in the 2006 general election (where Ford was running as an independent). However, Ford Sr. is a long-time foe of Cohen’s 2010 primary opponent, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, so that would tend to explain it all.