Tag: Jeff Danklefsen

• Election results: A lot happened last night, most prominently Martha Coakley’s victory in the MA-Sen Democratic primary, with 47% of the vote to Michael Capuano’s 28, Alan Khazei’s 13, and Stephen Paglicua’s 12. Coakley is poised to become the Bay State’s first female Senator; the big question for the Jan. 19 general is whether Republican state Sen. Scott Brown (who won the GOP nod 88-12 over Jack E. Robinson) can break 40%. In Kentucky, the Dems’ run of pickups in the state Senate came to a screeching halt, as Jodie Haydon lost to GOP state Rep. Jimmy Higdon 56-44 in a previously GOP-held open seat in SD-14, so the Senate’s composition stays at 20 (plus 1 GOP-leaning indie) to 17 in favor of the GOP. The GOP also picked up a previously Dem-held seat in the state House, HD-96. Republicans also retained SD-4 in Arkansas‘s dark-red northwest. In Birmingham, Alabama’s mayoral race advances to a runoff between attorney (and 2007 loser) Patrick Cooper and Jefferson County Commissioner William Bell. And in Los Angeles, Assemblyman Paul Krekorian won a vacant City Council seat despite being widely outspent by Christine Essel — which sets up an Assembly special election and temporarily leaves Dems there shy one seat.

• AR-Sen: With some encouragement from labor and the netroots, it looks like Lt. Gov. Bill Halter may actually be moving forward on plans to mount a Democratic primary challenge to Blanche Lincoln from the left. He’s in Washington DC meeting with labor officials and blogosphere leaders.

• FL-Sen: In more evidence of Charlie Crist’s willingness to take money from anyone, a mailer from a big fundraiser hosted for Crist by Broward County developer Ron Bergeron headlined one particular large contributor: Joseph Cobo, the Broward County Health Commissioner who’s currently under criminal investigation for corruption. Cobo was quickly removed from the host committee and Crist’s camp said the mailer was a “draft” mistakenly sent.

• OH-Sen: David Plouffe, one of the architects of Barack Obama’s campaign, has weighed into the Democratic Senate primary (despite not having any obvious connections to Ohio). Plouffe endorsed Lee Fisher over Jennifer Brunner in a fundraising e-mail, perhaps suggesting subtle White House moves to consolidate things behind Fisher and start gearing up for the general.

• AK-Gov: It was clear that newly-appointed Gov. Sean Parnell was going to face a primary fight with a member of the state’s political establishment, but the surprise today seems to be which one. Former state House speaker Ralph Samuels announced he’s running for Governor today. In summer, another former speaker, John Harris, had said he was going to run against Parnell, but today’s ADN article makes no mention of Harris; it does list Bill Walker and Gerald Heikes as other GOP candidates. The flashpoint in the Parnell/Samuels race appears to be oil industry taxes imposed by that known tax-and-spend liberal, Sarah Palin; Parnell supports continuation of them while Samuels wants an end.

• IL-Gov, IL-Sen: In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, incumbent Pat Quinn picked up some Chicago-area endorsements, from Rep. Danny Davis and an array of aldermen; he also recently got the Sierra Club’s nod. His opponent, Comptroller Dan Hynes, however, got an endorsement from a major union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, and a victory of sorts by getting the AFL-CIO to not endorse. The AFL-CIO did, however, just endorse Alexi Giannoulias in the Senate race.

• NH-Gov: As expected, social conservative activist Karen Testerman launched her bid for Governor in New Hampshire. She brings some name recognition to the race based on her radio show and a long track record of religious right rabble-rousing, but isn’t expected to pose much of a challenge for Democratic incumbent John Lynch as he seeks a barely-precedented fourth term.

• FL-02: Faced with the realization that state Sen. Al Lawson is staying in the Democratic primary race no matter what, Rep. Allen Boyd is taking advantage of his big cash edge to run a TV spot already. Despite his vote against health care reform last month, he’s running an ad that’s basically pro-HCR (although with the GOP-sounding hedges thrown in there).

• IL-14: It didn’t take long for the last remaining minor player to bail out of the GOP field in the 14th, the third in a week. Jeff Danklefsen will apparently be taking his name of the ballot, and endorsing state sen. Randy Hultgren. Hultgren’s camp is also keeping an eye on Mark Vargas, who dropped out but endorsed Ethan Hastert; they want to make sure Vargas actually pulls his name off the ballot instead of remaining on there and splitting the anti-Hastert vote.

• KS-02: Because even when you vote the conservative position 95% of the time, that’s just not conservative enough… freshman Republican Rep. Lynn Jenkins, already facing a credible Democratic challenge in the form of state Sen. Laura Kelly, may now face a primary challenge from state Sen. Dennis Pyle, who filed candidacy papers last week. (Former state Treasurer Jenkins was from the “moderate” wing of the party in Kansas, and beat religious right ex-Rep. Jim Ryun in the 2008 primary.)

• MD-01: Something seems amiss at the Andy Harris camp, as he prepares for a rematch against Dem freshman Rep. Frank Kratovil; his campaign manager, Mike Spellings hit the road. Other insiders say it was just a personality clash.

• NJ-02: I don’t know if anyone was counting on Democratic state Sen. Jeff Van Drew making his long-awaited run against Rep. Frank LoBiondo next year, but the question was asked. Van Drew says “the likelihood is not there,” but didn’t completely rule it out.

• PA-07: Here’s what the GOP establishment had been hoping to avoid: the possibility of a contested primary in the open 7th, where the field was painstakingly cleared for former US Attorney Pat Meehan. Dawn Stensland, the former news anchor for the Philly Fox affiliate, says she’s considering a run for the Republican nomination. Unfortunately for her, she comes with her own built-in attention-grabbing scandal relating to her husband, another local news anchor, having an affair with yet another competing local news anchor.

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon is in Washington DC this week to meet with Republican bigwigs about her bid for the Senate in Connecticut, meeting with Mitch McConnell, Jon Kyl, Orrin Hatch, and the knuckle-draggers at FreedomWorks. McMahon’s visit is accompanied, however, by stories in The Hill and Politico that focus on professional wrestling’s dangerous conditions, and lack of health insurance or union representation — and are replete with quotes from former wrestlers decrying McMahon and her company.

• KS-Sen: The previous few rounds of polling for Rep. Todd Tiahrt in the Kansas GOP Senate primary haven’t looked so hot, but the newest offering from SurveyUSA finds him back in the thick of things. Rep. Jerry Moran now leads Tiahrt 37-34, compared with a 43-27 gap in early October. Crosstabs suggest Tiahrt has pulled back into a tie in Kansas’s northeast (the Kansas City suburbs) — with Moran dominating the rural west and Tiahrt dominating the Wichita area, the KC suburbs are the decisive region.

• OR-Gov: State Republican leaders are still casting their nets about, despite former NBA player Chris Dudley bringing a lot of money to the table. With some troubled that Dudley “has not delivered any ideas at all” (and with their best-known candidate, Bill Sizemore, having gotten arraigned for tax evasion yesterday) many have now set their sights on state House minority leader Bruce Hanna, a conservative from the state’s rural southwest; Hanna says he’s “listening with interest” to their entreaties.

In the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up department, Jerry Wilson, founder of exercise machine maker Soloflex, was originally going to run for Governor under the banner of Oregon’s Naderite Progressive Party, but somewhere along the way decided it would be better to run for one of the major party noms so he’d have a better chance, and inexplicably decided to run for a Republican. Wilson just found out that he  missed the deadline by several months to change his party registration to be able to do so (he’s a Democrat), so now he’s decided to run as a Democrat. (The pro-marijuana Wilson might want to, y’know, lay off it a little while he’s trying to put together a political campaign.) Also on the Dem side, the state’s AFL-CIO announced that it won’t be endorsing in the race until at least March, which has to be seen as a victory of sorts for ex-SoS Bill Bradbury in that they don’t view ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber as having the nomination locked down and are waiting to see how things shake out.

• TX-Gov: With heavyweight Houston mayor Bill White having settled into the Democratic field in the Governor’s race, the remaining candidates are assessing their options. Kinky Friedman was expected to drop out today, but announced that he’ll take at least a few more days to meet with supporters, and with White and Farouk Shami, before pulling the plug. (Shami was a big donor to Friedman last time.) The independently wealthy Shami sounds like he’s staying in, although he’s now suffering the usual fate of celebrity business candidates: the revelation of his paltry voting record (including no vote in the 2008 general, and no votes in any Democratic primary elections, with at least one in a Republican primary instead). And on the GOP side, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, faced with the realization that the Senate election may not be happening any time soon, just filed for re-election to another term as LG.

• FL-02: That was fast. (And not very good message discipline, either.) After confirming yesterday that he was considering a move over to Florida’s statewide CFO race, Democratic state Sen. Al Lawson backtracked today and said he’s sticking with his longshot primary challenge to Rep. Allen Boyd instead.

• ID-01: An intramural fight is breaking out among Idaho Republican legislators, as state Rep. Raul Labrador seeks the Republican nomination to take on Rep. Walt Minnick next year. State Sen. Mike Jorgenson is demanding Labrador drop out, attacking him for his work as a — gasp — immigration lawyer; the two have previously clashed over immigration policy in the legislature, including Jorgenson’s proposal to bar illegal immigrants from receiving state benefits. There’s no clue given where Labrador’s opponent, Vaughn Ward, stands on immigration issues, but it’s interesting to see the same cheap-labor/close-the-borders fissures opening up here that erupted in, say, the UT-03 primary last year.

• IL-14: One more dropout in the GOP field in the 14th, as young Mark Vargas, a former Defense Dept. employee in Iraq, got out of the race. Unlike other recent dropout Bill Purcell, though, Vargas endorsed Ethan Hastert on his way out the door. Jeff Danklefsen is the only minor player left on the playing field between Hastert and state Sen. Randy Hultgren.

• NJ-03: The 5’9″ John Adler is certainly vulnerable to wedgies and wet willies from the 6’7″ Jon Runyan, but now he’s vulnerable to the dreaded Rear Admiral as well. Maurice “Mo” Hill, a Toms River Township Councilor, dentist, and retired Navy rear admiral, says he’ll likely run in the GOP primary against Runyan, despite local party leaders’ hopes to avoid a contested primary like the one that sank their hopes last year. Hill says he’ll move forward if he gets the backing of his local Ocean County party, regardless of how the other counties’ organizations go.

• PA-06: Chester County Recorder of Deeds Ryan Costello bailed out on his run in the GOP field in the 6th, finding all the oxygen in the race gobbled up by self-funding moderate Steven Welch and well-known conservative state Rep. Curt Schroder. Schroder, meanwhile, nailed down the endorsements of two more Republican legislators in the area: Berks County state Sen. Mike Folmer and newly-elected state Montgomery County Sen. Bob Mensch.

• SC-01: Another Republican is getting into the primary against vulnerable Rep. Henry Brown in the Charleston-area 1st (joining “Tumpy” Campbell): attorney, Navy vet, and former Mt. Pleasant city councilor Mark Fava. Could this have the effect of splitting the anti-Brown vote, though? On the Dem side, restauranteur Robert “Bob” Dobbs was joined several weeks ago by commercial pilot and Air Force vet Robert Burton.

• TN-08: State Sen. Roy Herron isn’t getting a completely free shot in his primary to replace retiring Rep. John Tanner in rural western Tennessee: he’ll face off against 34-year-old Luther Mercer II, an educator and son of a Madison County Commissioner. Meanwhile, eager to generate more Tanners, the GOP has unveiled its target list of aging House Democrats in red districts to push to retire (mostly just via press release attacks for now — perhaps there will also be a sustained attempt to blanket their offices with brochures for oceanfront Florida condominiums as well). Recall, though, that Tanner said the prospect of a good fight was the one thing that was potentially keeping him from retiring, suggesting this has the potential to backfire in some cases.

• Mayors: Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu had said this summer that he wouldn’t seek to become the next mayor of New Orleans. When most other big-names like city council president Arnie Fielkow and state Rep. Karen Carter Peterson subsequently declined, Landrieu apparently sensed a mayoralty for the taking. Now he’s apparently changed his mind, and says he’ll launch a mayoral campaign next week. (Landrieu narrowly lost the mayor’s race to Ray Nagin in 2006.)

• WATN?: 80-year-old former New York state Sen. majority leader Joe Bruno, who turned Albany into his personal fiefdom for decades, just got convicted of two felony corruption charges. And former Rep. Chip Pickering, one of the C Street House residents who bailed from a promising career after an embarrassing affair, is staying classy. He was last seen getting into a physical altercation at his young son’s soccer game — with an opposing team’s soccer coach already wearing a neck brace.  

• NC-Sen: Republican pollster Civitas poked at the Senate race, not doing head-to-heads but looking at favorables for Richard Burr and two of his likeliest challengers, SoS Elaine Marshall and Rep. Mike McIntyre. Marshall and McIntyre are little-known, with 12/7 favorables for Marshall and 13/10 and McIntyre (although he was at 38/12 in his district). The bad news for Burr? He’s barely doing better than them, with 31/19 favorables (meaning 50% don’t know him or have no opinion).

• NY-Sen-B: Marist dribbles out the Senate half of its newest New York poll today (Gov was yesterday), and it finds a super-tight race in the Dem primary in wake of yesterday’s sorta-kinda entry by Carolyn Maloney: Maloney leads Kirsten Gillibrand, 38-37 (compared with a 36-31 Gillibrand lead in May). Gillibrand wins against both George Pataki (46-42, up from a 46-38 deficit last time) and Peter King (48-32). Marist doesn’t do general election head-to-heads with Maloney, although for some reason they poll a GOP primary between Pataki and King (51-36 for Pataki) despite the decreasing likelihood that either of them run.

Also of interest: Bill Clinton will be appearing at a Maloney fundraiser scheduled for July 20. Clinton isn’t wading into the race with an endorsement at this point, though; this was in the works long before Maloney announced her run, as payback for Maloney’s 2008 primary support for Hillary Clinton, and he also headlined a Gillibrand fundraiser in March.

• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey got another endorsement from one of the more conservative members of Pennsylvania’s House GOP delegation: PA-09’s Bill Shuster.

• AL-Gov: The Democratic field in the governor’s race in Alabama seems to be solidifying; the last question mark, Supreme Court Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb, announced that she won’t be running. With a lot of establishment figures waiting on the fence to see if an alternative to Rep. Artur Davis and Ag Comm. Ron Sparks shows up, expect them to start choosing sides soon. Davis, meanwhile, has been staffing up with some key political players, adding Joey Ceci and David Mowery to his team (who managed the successful campaigns of freshman Reps. Parker Griffith and Bobby Bright).

• CA-Gov: Sure, California’s an expensive state, but Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman have reported gigantic hauls even by the Golden State’s outsized standards. Brown raised $7.3 million in the year’s first half, while Whitman raised $6.5 million. Steve Poizner and Gavin Newsom raised huge sums and are still far behind — Poizner raised $1.3 million and loaned himself another $4 million, while Newsom raised $1.6 million, much of it online.

• MN-Gov: The tradmed seems to be intent today on talking up Norm Coleman’s next logical step as being running for Governor of Minnesota, although Minnesota reporters and politicians in the know are trying to point out the sheer ridiculousness of that idea. (If Norm’s going to be doing any running soon, it’s running away from the FBI, as they investigate his links to Nasser Kazeminy.)

• RI-Gov: The Democratic primary for the open Rhode Island Governor’s seat was looking to be a three-way slugfest, but Lt. Gov. Elizabeth Roberts yesterday announced that she would run for re-election instead of for Gov. Although she had started staffing up for the race, she couldn’t have been encouraged by poll numbers which showed her at a disadvantage with likely opponents Treasurer Frank Caprio and AG Patrick Lynch.

• SC-Gov: Gov. Mark Sanford seems to have taken a few steps backwards this week. A snap poll from yesterday by SUSA now finds 69% of South Carolinians saying resign, as opposed to 28% saying stay. 63% say they have “no trust” in Sanford. Here’s an interesting red flag: only 20% say Lt. Gov/party boy Andre Bauer is “completely prepared” to become Governor, with 38% saying “somewhat prepared” and 34% saying “not prepared.”

• WI-Gov: Real estate developer and ex-Rep. Mark Neumann, who held WI-01 from 1994 to 1998 before losing narrowly to Russ Feingold, announced his gubernatorial candidacy yesterday. Neumann’s entry had been widely anticipated; he’ll face off against Milwaukee Co. Executive Scott Walker in the GOP primary.

• CA-45: With Rep. Mary Bono Mack having defected on the cap-and-trade vote, the rightosphere has been calling for her head. Their favored replacement, term-limited state Senator Dennis Hollingsworth, quickly said “no” to a primary challenge, so their wish-list has turned to ex-state Sens. Jim Battin and Ray Haynes and ex-state Rep. Bonnie Garcia.

• IL-14: A second GOP challenger got into the race against Rep. Bill Foster, although this guy doesn’t sound like he’ll pose much of a threat to Ethan Hastert for the nom. Jeff Danklefsen hasn’t run for office before and is “maintenance manager for a property management company.”

• LA-03: The Hill reported last week that Democratic efforts to find a replacement to Rep. Charlie Melancon have focused on state Rep. Gary Smith, who was going to run for the open seat in 2004 but deferred to Melancon. State Rep. Fred Mills was also interested, but state Rep. Damon Baldone, who might be the highest-profile candidate, is about to run in a special election for a state Senate seat and is unlikely to follow that with a U.S. House run.

• PA-06: With the 2nd quarter just wrapped up, look for lots of financial reports to start getting leaked. Here’s a nice place to start: Doug Pike, in the 6th, is looking at a haul of over $500K for the quarter, thanks a recent D.C. fundraiser starring Allyson Schwartz and Patrick Murphy.

• WI-08: We’re building up a backlog of Republicans trying to take on Rep. Steve Kagen. Businessman Reid Ribble jumped into the field, joining Door Co. Supervisor Marc Savard and Brown Co. Supervisor Andy Williams.

• WV-02: With some prodding from the DCCC, Gov. Joe Manchin’s former general counsel, Carte Goodwin, is looking into challenging Rep. Shelly Capito Moore in the Charleston-based 2nd.