Tag: Mitch Landrieu

AK-Sen: Just an FYI: The Tea Party Express has now spent $550K on behalf of Joe Miller – quite a sum in a super-cheap state like Alaska. (That means they’ve poured in about $200K in just the last week.) Remember, the TPX is the organization that helped power Sharron Angle to victory. Knocking off an incumbent senator is a much bigger task than beating Chicken Lady, of course, but the teabaggers are determined to keep this one interesting. (Also, any day I get to write about Chicken Lady is a good day.)

KY-Sen: Rand Paul, subjecting himself to a rare press conference, announced his preferred way of combating drug abuse in Eastern Kentucky. Instead of using federal dollars, he prefers church-based options: “I like the fact that faith is involved, that religion – Christianity – is involved, and I’m not embarrassed to say so. You have to have innovative local solutions to problems.” Paul still called for the end of earmarks to fund Operation UNITE, an anti-drug program, which caused some awkwardness for his host, Hopkins County Attorney Todd P’Pool, who has made use of UNITE himself. (And yes, that awesome name is NOT a typo.)

NH-Sen: Paul Hodes has a new ad up, featuring music he wrote himself, which continues a theme we’ve seen elsewhere – namely, referring to Congress as some kind of daycare center for overgrown children. I’m not really sure how effective this characterization really is, given that it’s been incumbents who keep deploying it. Anyhow, NWOTSOTB, though the Hodes campaign tells us it’s “a significant buy in both the Manchester and Boston media markets” that’s going up on both broadcast and cable today.

OR-Gov: Good news for Dem John Kitzhaber: The Oregon Progressive Party declined to nominate a candidate for governor, meaning that there won’t be anyone on the ballot running to Kitz’s left. Jerry Wilson, creator of the Soloflex, had been hoping for the Prog nod, and says he may run a write-in campaign instead.

AZ-03: Just a day before the primary, Dan Quayle emerged from his undisclosed potatoe to pen an email on behalf of his embattled, pathetic spawn, Ben. At this point, though, nothing can undo the Shame of the Super-Son.

CA-52: Democrat Ray Lutz has ended his 11-day hunger strike, which he launched in an attempt to get Rep. Duncan Hunter to meet him for a series of debates. Hunter actually did say he’d meet for an Oct. 15th debate, though he claims he was planning to accept that date even before Lutz went on his strike. Lutz, of course, is claiming victory – and if this tactic really did have its intended effect, I wonder if we’ll ever see anyone else try it again.

IA-03: Rep. Leonard Boswell’s been hitting Republican Brad Zaun on his flip-floppery over agricultural subsidies, and it seems like he’s landed a solid blow. In Iowa, anything less than maximal statism in support of the ethanol industry is usually a political sin, but Zaun couldn’t help himself at a teabagger debate earlier this spring. Zaun related a conversation with a farmer, who asked him “What are you going to do for me and the biofuels industry?” Zaun’s description of his own response: “Nothing.” Boswell’s put out his first radio ad of the cycle (NWOTSOTB) featuring this very quote.

IL-11: Debbie Halvorson is getting a new campaign manager. Julie Merz, who has previously worked for Dennis Moore and Jim Matheson, is taking over for Travis Worl. It’s always hard to say whether moves like this reflect campaign turmoil, a sign that the team is upgrading, or just natural turnover. The only tea leaf we have here is that Worl’s departure was announced before Merz’s hiring was.

LA-02: A good get for Cedric Richmond: New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu just gave the state legislator his endorsement yesterday. Richmond faces fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta in the primary, which is this Saturday (note the unusual date).

NV-03: Republican media buying company Smart Media Group says that AFSCME has put down $240K for ads against GOPer Denny Joe Heck. The union hasn’t filed an independent expenditure report yet, though.

NY-01: Republican George Demos is up with his first TV ad, attempting to out-conservative opponents Randy Altschuler and Ed Cox – and doing his best to make himself unelectable in the general election by painting himself as “pro-life.” NWOTSOTB. Meanwhile, Altschuler succeeded in knocking Cox out of the Conservative Party primary, though Cox has vowed to appeal the judge’s ruling.

NY-25: Republican (and Mama Grizzly) Ann Marie Buerkle says she won’t rule out SSP – the bad kind of SSP, of course:

“There’s so many options when it comes to privatization. I would have to look at each plan that’s being proposed… but I would certainly consider looking at it.”

• AR-Sen: Barack Obama is cutting a radio ad in support of Blanche Lincoln as she faces a primary challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. Also on the ad front, here’s an ad that both Lincoln and Halter agree on. Both have condemned the anti-Halter ad from Americans for Job Security as racist; the ad uses Indian actors and backdrops to accuse Halter of having offshored jobs. AJS’s head says he sees nothing wrong with the ad and won’t be pulling it; it’s a big ad buy and scheduled to run for the next two weeks in the leadup to the primary.

• KY-Sen: Lots happening in Kentucky, most notably a strange switcheroo by Christian right leader James Dobson. He outright switched his endorsement from Trey Grayson to Rand Paul, blaming GOP insiders for feeding him misinformation about Paul (such as that he was pro-choice). Dobson’s endorsement is bound to help the Paul attract some social conservative voters uneasy about his libertarianism, and also helps paint Grayson as tool of the dread insiders. True to form, Grayson is touting a new endorsement that’s pretty insidery: from Rep. Hal Rogers, the low-profile, long-term Rep. from the state’s Appalachian southeast corner and a key pork-doling Appropriations member. Grayson is also touting his own internal poll, which shows Paul and Grayson deadlocked at 40-40, contrary to, well, every public poll of the race.

• LA-Sen, LA-LG: Here’s the first non-Rasmussen poll of Louisiana we’ve seen in a while, not that it has Charlie Melancon in a particularly better position.  It was conducted by Southern Media & Opinion Research on behalf of businessman Lane Grigsby (a wealthy meddler in Republican politics, last seen swaying LA-06 in 2008 with hundreds of thousands of IEs from his own pocket). Vitter leads Melancon 49-31, and Vitter has 55/36 favorables. It also seems to be the first poll to take a look at the Republican all-party jungle primary in the developing Lt. Governor’s race (created by Mitch Landrieu’s election as New Orleans mayor). State Treasurer John Kennedy (the ex-Dem and loser of the 2008 Senate race) leads the pack at 21, followed by SoS Jay Dardenne at 15, Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell at 14, St. Tammany Parish President Kevin Davis at 6, and state GOP chair Roger Villere at 2. (Kennedy and Campbell, however, haven’t announced their candidacies yet.) (H/t Darth Jeff).

• NC-Sen: PPP has one last look at the Democratic primary in the Senate race, although this one may well be going into overtime (someone needs to break 40% to avoid a top-two runoff). They find Elaine Marshall leading Cal Cunningham 28-21 (a bigger spread than her 26-23 lead one week ago). Kenneth Lewis is at 9, with assorted others taking up another 9%. PPP also polls on the potential runoff, finding Marshall would beat Cunningham in a runoff 43-32 (as Lewis’s voters would break to Marshall by a 47-32 margin).

• NH-Sen: Kelly Ayotte seems to be leaving any “moderate” pretenses in the dust, as she just came out in favor of Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigrant law. (Of course, New Hampshire is one of the whitest and least Hispanic states in that nation, so it still may not wind up hurting her much.)

• NV-Sen: Research 2000, for Daily Kos, came out with a poll of the Nevada Senate race last Friday. Nothing unusual here, inasmuch as they find Harry Reid not looking as DOA as Rasmussen always does, though there are still lots of flies circling around him. Reid’s faves are 37/53, and he trails Sue Lowden 45-41 (with 4 for the Tea Party’s Scott Ashjian, 2 for “other,” and 2 for Nevada’s unique “None of the Above” line). He also trails Danny Tarkanian 43-41 and Sharron Angle 44-41. Despite Lowden getting low marks for her chicken bartering proposals (14/81 approval of that, including 27/68 among Republicans), she still has 42/34 favorables overall and is leading the way in the GOP primary, although perhaps by a narrowing margin: she’s at 38, to 28 for Tarkanian, 13 for Angle, and 12 for “other,” with 9 undecided.

• OH-Sen: One last poll sneaked under the finish line before tomorrow’s Democratic primary in the Ohio Senate race. Quinnipiac finds last-minute momentum for Lee Fisher (in the wake of actually spending some money on TV ads): he leads Jennifer Brunner 43-23. It pretty much seems to depend on name rec (which, in turns, depends on ads): Fisher has 44/8 favorables among likely primary voters, while Brunner is at 26/7 (with 65% having no opinion of her).

• AZ-Gov: I hadn’t been aware until today that controversial Maricopa Co. Sheriff Joe Arpaio was still seriously considering a run in the GOP gubernatorial primary (especially since, with Jan Brewer signing the anti-illegal immigrant law into effect, his main raison d’etre to challenge her was gone). At any rate, after making a big show of “major announcement today!” he then issued a brief press release saying that he wasn’t going to run.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman is treading carefully in the wake of the Arizona immigration law’s passage, probably mindful of the California GOP’s short-term gains but long-term ruin in the wake of Proposition 187. Meg Whitman came out against it (while primary opponent Steve Poizner supports it), perhaps an indication that she feels safe enough to start charting a moderate course for the general election.

• CT-Gov: Two interesting developments in Connecticut: one, former HartStamford mayor Dan Malloy, Ned Lamont’s main Democratic primary opposition, will qualify for public financing of his campaign. This will help Malloy compete on a somewhat more level playing field against Lamont, who can self-finance. Also, the Democratic field shrank a little, as one of the minor candidates in the field, Mary Glassman (the First Selectwoman of Simsbury) dropped out and signed on as Lamont’s Lt. Governor running mate instead.

• IL-Gov: Democratic running-mate-for-a-day Scott Lee Cohen followed through on earlier threats, and today announced his independent candidacy for Governor. His rationale? “I believe that the people of Illinois have forgiven me.”

• MN-Gov: Needless to say, I’m feeling better about our chances in Minnesota, as newly-anointed GOP nominee Tom Emmer is laying down markers way, way outside the Minnesota mainstream. Turns out he’s a full-on “Tenther,” having recently sponsored state legislation that would purport to nullify all federal laws that are not approved by a two-thirds supermajority in the Minnesota legislature. (He also recently said that the Arizona immigration law was a “wonderful first step.”)

• NY-Gov: We’re getting very mixed signals on the Steve Levy campaign for the GOP nomination. On the one hand, Levy is claiming that the RGA is ready to pony up $8 million to $10 million in support of his campaign. On the other hand, state GOP chair Ed Cox, the guy who arm-twisted Levy to get into the race in the first place, is privately expressing worries that Levy won’t get the 50% of county chairs’ endorsements to get the ballot line, and there are rumors that he’s now floating the idea of a Rick Lazio-Steve Levy ticket.    

• OH-Gov: Incumbent Dem Gov. Ted Strickland is going on the air starting on primary election day, with a major TV ad buy of 1,000 points each in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Dayton. Strickland has $2 million more cash than John Kasich, so he probably figures now’s the time to use it.

• OR-Gov: A variety of polls have popped up of the primaries in Oregon, whose fast-approaching primary is kind of dwarfed by higher-profile affairs in Arkansas, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania on the same day, May 18. Tim Hibbitts (on behalf of Nike and Standard Insurance, in case there was any doubt that Oregon is, in fact, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Phil Knight) found John Kitzhaber firmly in control of the Dem primary, leading Bill Bradbury 50-21. Local TV affiliate KATU also commissioned a poll by SurveyUSA, which was taken in mid-April but they seem to have sat on the results until now. It’s apparently the first public poll of the Republican primary; they find Chris Dudley, who’s been spending heavily on TV time, leading the pack at 28. Allen Alley is at 13, under-indictment Bill Sizemore is at 11, John Lim is at 7, and assorted tea-bagging “others” add up to 8.

• UT-Gov: Looks like those rumors that Democratic candidate Peter Corroon was going to pick a Republican running mate were right. Corroon tapped state Rep. Sheryl Allen, one of the legislature’s leading moderate GOPers, as his number two.

• OH-17: Insert obligatory “beam me up” joke here! Ex-Rep. Jim Traficant, out of prison, is looking to get back in the game, and he’ll be taking on his former employee, Rep. Tim Ryan, by running as an independent in his old district, the 17th. While there had been rumors that Traficant was also going to file to run in the next-door 6th (as, bizarrely, you can run in multiple different districts in Ohio), but he decided against that. Bear in mind that Traficant already ran against Ryan in the 17th as an independent shortly after his 2002 conviction and House expulsion, but only got 15% in that race.

• AZ-Sen: Looks like the Maverick has finally been broken (as he’s decided that it’s preferable to spend six years chewing his cud while fenced in the GOP pasture, instead of getting sent prematurely to the glue factory). In the face of a potentially serious primary from the right from J.D. Hayworth, John McCain says not only is he no longer a maverick, but he “never considered himself a maverick.” (Except for in all those campaign ads from two years ago?) In response, Hayworth said McCain is trying to “encourage amnesia.”

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There’s a new LA Times/USC poll of the two major races in California, with a mixed bag of results for Democrats. Like most pollsters, they find that Republican Meg Whitman has pulled into a small lead over Jerry Brown in the governor’s race, thanks to her nonstop deluge of self-funded advertising; she leads Brown 44-41, while she leads Steve Poizner in the GOP primary 60-20. On the Senate side, Barbara Boxer leads a Generic Republican by a surprisingly wide 48-34. Polling Generic R seems pretty weird, though, considering that there are only two likely opponents for her: Tom Campbell leads Carly Fiorina in the GOP primary 29-25, with Chuck DeVore lagging at 9. One other bit of good news for Dems: by a 46-29 margin, voters prefer to back a candidate who backed health care reform.

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet is playing it safe, making plans for a petition drive to make sure his name is on the ballot in November. He needs at least 30% at the Democratic state convention to qualify, but his Plan B seems to be an acknowledgment that he may be facing a rough time at the convention too. Remember that he lost at the caucus level to former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff (whose main source of strength seems to be insiders and activists, rather than the broader population).

• IN-Sen: CQ takes a look at the NRSC’s private teeth-gnashing over the possibility that kooky ex-Rep. John Hostettler might beat ex-Sen. Dan Coats in the primary, something that can’t be ruled out in an anti-establishment year like this one. They’d then have to decide whether they want to financially prop up Hostettler, a legendarily poor fundraiser who’s relied on shoestring campaigns and religious right ground troops. Still, a reasonably competent Hostettler ought to be able to make short work of Coats in the GOP primary, given the amount of material he has to work with: for instance, it turns out that Coats, when lobbying for King & Spaulding, lobbied Congress in favor of cap and trade, the same legislation he claims he now opposes.

• NV-Sen: If there’s one reason not to quite count out Harry Reid yet, it’s his ability to bring in the campaign cash. He brought in more than $1.5 million for the quarter, giving him more than $10 million in receipts so far this cycle. Sue Lowden, ostensibly the GOP’s top contender, says she raised about $500K and will match that dollar-for-dollar from her own personal stash. Danny Tarkanian raised $445K last quarter.

• NY-Sen-B (pdf): These numbers are a little stale, but we found there were some more useful numbers buried in that Marist poll from last week where the topline was just the usual rigamarole about the Kirsten Gillibrand vs. George Pataki matchup that’s very unlikely to happen (especially not if Al D’Amato has anything to say about it). They also tested some head-to-heads with the lesser GOPers who are actually in the race: Gillibrand beats Bruce Blakeman 54-25, Joe DioGuardi 54-27, and David Malpass 54-25. They also looked at the GOP primary, finding DioGuardi winning it with 18, followed by Blakeman at 10, Malpass at 9, and non-candidate Dan Senor at 4. A permutation including Pataki finds Pataki at 62, with DioGuardi at 7, Blakeman at 4, and Malpass and Senor at 2. In other news, Gillibrand picked up an endorsement today from one of her biggest skeptics, Assemblyman and Kings Co. Dem chair Vito Lopez. Lopez had been considering backing Harold Ford Jr., way back in those heady days of February.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi is still saying he’s “completely undecided” about running for Senate, but will do it if he thinks he has a “50% chance” of winning. Here’s one more bit that might help move his decision along, though: financially, he’d be starting from scratch against Patty Murray, who raked in another $1 million last quarter, bringing her total war chest to $5.9 million.

• AL-Gov: I gather from the comments that SSP is full of mustache aficionados, and this news might prove heartbreaking to them: Ron Sparks shaved off his legendary ‘stache. He says this was a spur-of-the-moment decision at the barber shop (and hopefully not the result of thorough focus grouping?). I just hope Travis Childers doesn’t decide to follow suit.

• NY-Gov: Wealthy businessman Carl Paladino has decided to go ahead with his teabaggish-sounding campaign for Governor, kicking off his bid today in Buffalo. He’ll be running in the GOP primary, although he’d previously made noises about a possible independent run. Unfortunately, his rollout might be overshadowed by other news today… that he had a daughter with his mistress 10 years ago, and kept the child secret from his wife until last year.

• OH-Gov: In response to pressure to release his financials, John Kasich released his 2008 tax returns. Kasich earned $615K from now-kaput Lehman Brothers in 2008, including $183K base and a $432K bonus (but no “golden parachute” as Lehman Brothers collapsed). Oh, by the way, he also earned $265K as a Fox News commentator, $166K in speaking fees, $62K as an associate for Schottenstein Property Group, $45K as an Ohio State Univ. lecturer, $77K for being on the board of directors of two companies, and $122K in interest and dividends. Just your average teabagging Joe Lunchpail.

• HI-01: Charles Djou is trying to get some mileage out of the fact that neither Ed Case nor Colleen Hanabusa lives in HI-01. This kind of thing usually doesn’t matter much even in most other states, and seems to matter even less in Hawaii, though, where the island of Oahu gets split between the two districts and no one seems to care that Mazie Hirono lives in the 1st instead of HI-02.

• CO-04: Rep. Betsy Markey is near the top of most people’s vulnerable Dems lists, especially after her pro-HCR vote, but her cash haul may go along way toward allaying fears. She pulled in $505K, with $355K of that coming between Mar. 21 (the HCR vote) and Mar. 31. Her vote (plus being in Sarah Palin’s sorta-metaphorical crosshairs) seems to have helped, not hurt. Likely GOP opponent Cory Gardner raised only $75K last quarter after the HCR vote.

• ND-AL: One GOPer who is doing well on the fundraising front is state Rep. Rick Berg, who pulled in $483K in the first quarter. $330K of that came in the last 10 days of the quarter, although that seems to have more to do with his winning the state party’s endorsement rather than the HCR vote. Most of the rest of that took the form of $100K from his own pocket. Between this and the downdraft from John Hoeven at the top of the ballot, looks like Rep. Earl Pomeroy’s in for a real race this year.

• PA-06: Doug Pike picked up another labor endorsement, and it’s a big one: the AFL-CIO. They also backed Paul Kanjorski in the 11th, who’s being challenged by Corey O’Brien in the primary.

• RI-01: Here’s one more huge House Democratic fundraising haul, although this isn’t a race that the DCCC has been sweating too hard. Providence mayor David Cicilline pulled in a huge $725K (although some of that was checks re-written away from his mayoral fund to his newly-established House fund). His main Democratic rival, former state party chair William Lynch, raised $230K (including $100K of his own money).

• TX-17: Bill Flores pulled in an endorsement that will help in his GOP primary runoff against Rob Curnock, from perhaps the most unlikable man in the entirety of American politics, ex-Sen. Phil Gramm. In fact, that district may be conservative enough that it might still be a positive in the general.

• LA-LG: Republican SoS Jay Dardenne’s plan for an easy upgrade to the position of Lt. Governor (left vacant by Mitch Landrieu’s move to mayor of New Orleans) ran into a bit of a snag. He’s facing GOP primary opposition now from the state GOP chair, Roger Villere.

• CA-Init: Proposition 15 looks to be the only interesting initiative on the June primary ballot in California, and it lays some important groundwork for countering the flood of corporate money into elections. The Fair Elections Act, as it’s called, is a pilot program for public financing of state races; if passed, it’ll publicly fund the 2014 and 2018 Secretary of State races, which, if successful, could lead to a broader system.

• Fundraising: There are a number of other fundraising roundups today, courtesy of National Journal’s Reid Wilson and also the crew at TPM. Other highlights include Tom Campbell, Pat Toomey, Bob Dold!, Colleen Hanabusa, Bruce O’Donoghue, and various OR-Gov contestants.

• Teabaggers: Ed Kilgore continues his hot streak of dismantling the myth of the teabaggers, pointing to today’s Gallup/USA Today poll as more evidence that they’re nothing more than louder, angrier Republicans (who’d like access to a time machine). Only 7% say they’re Democrats, and while many say they’re independents, all evidence suggests they’re not from the center but those indies who think the GOP is too establishment, too liberal, or just too unsalvageable.

• RNC: You might remember several weeks ago the RNC lost a case in the D.C. District Court, squelching their desires for unlimited “soft money” contributions, which they felt they should be able to do in the wake of Citizens United. The RNC has decided to go ahead and appeal the case to the Supreme Court, although it doesn’t seem likely it’ll be decided in time for this year’s general election. (If you’re wondering why the case is bypassing the DC Circuit, McCain-Feingold allows challenges to it to leapfrog directly from the trial level to SCOTUS.)

• Census: Here’s an interesting tidbit: despite her early anti-Census fearmongering, Michele Bachmann’s district is actually well outpacing much of the nation on Census form return rates. Counties in her district have had an especially high return rate, ranging from 68-71% (compared with the current national average of 50%). Perhaps Republicans have decided it’s better in the long-term to, y’know, get conservative parts of the country to get accurately represented, rather than to try to appeal to the black-helicopters fringes, if Karl Rove cutting an ad urging Census participation is any indication.

• O2B: Finally, over at the Great Orange Satan, there’s an open call for nominations for the Orange to Blue program. Stop by and suggest some names of candidates who should get the netroots’ financial help this year.

• AR-Sen: Cue up that old Jim Hightower saying about how there’s nothing in the middle of the road but squashed armadillos. Blanche Lincoln, already facing strong GOP opposition, is getting hit with salvos from her left flank too. The Sierra Club is running radio ads against her, attacking her opposition to allowing the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.

• HI-Sen: In case there was any doubt, the 86-year-old Daniel Inouye confirmed that he’s running for re-election and a ninth (!) term; he’ll have his campaign’s official kickoff tonight. The GOP says it’s “too early” to discuss whether they’d field a candidate to go against him. Republican Gov. Linda Lingle hasn’t made a truly Shermanesque statement, but has said that she’s concentrating on her last year in office and not running for anything else.

• MD-Sen: There were brief waves of panic yesterday generated by a rumor (originating on a right-wing local blog, who claimed to have an impeccable source) that Barbara Mikulski, 73 years old and slowly recovering from a leg injury last year, was about to retire too. The rumors were quickly rebutted by staffers, though.

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand got another endorsement from one of the many Democrats associated with a potential primary challenge against her: former NYC comptroller and mayoral candidate William Thompson.

• IL-Gov: It’s the final day of counting absentee and provisional ballots in the Illinois governor’s race today, but state Sen. Kirk Dillard (who trailed by 406 votes to state Sen. Bill Brady after Election Day in the GOP primary) says he won’t concede today regardless of the final number. He’ll wait at least until Feb. 23, when counties submit reports to the state Board of Elections.

• MI-Gov: A quick change of heart for former state Treasurer Bob Bowman, who opened up an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic gubernatorial nod last week. He pulled the plug instead, offering a cryptic explanation that he “just couldn’t commit at this time.” Bowman was probably a long-shot for the nomination, although his self-financing capability could make things interesting.

• OR-Gov (pdf): It looks like most of the action in the Oregon governor’s race is in the Democratic primary, and even there, it may not be shaping up to be an edge-of-your-seat affair. Ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber released an internal poll (by Fairbank Maslin Maullin & Metz) giving him a convincing lead in the primary over ex-SoS Bill Bradbury. Kitzhaber is at 55, with Bradbury at 21 (and self-funding Soloflex founder Jerry Wilson at 2). Both are extremely well-regarded by the Democratic electorate, with Kitzhaber at 69/16 and Bradbury at 54/13.

• TX-Gov: Too bad newspapers can’t vote, because polls show Kay Bailey Hutchison losing the GOP gubernatorial primary to Rick Perry by a wide margin among actual humans. However, she swept the endorsement derby over the last few days among the state’s major papers: the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, and the Austin American-Statesman.

• FL-25: Democrats are leaning hard on Joe Garcia for another run in the 25th, now that it’s an open seat, and it seems to be working. Garcia, the former county Democratic chair and a current Energy Dept. official, came close to defeating Mario Diaz-Balart (who’s scurrying off to the open seat in the safer 21st); he’s been talking to the DCCC in the last few days and rounding up his previous staffers. On the GOP side, state Rep. David Rivera is already in and state Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla is certainly talking like a candidate, saying he’ll give Rivera “an old-fashioned ass-whooping.”

• IL-11: This isn’t the way to start your general election campaign off on the right foot. GOP nominee Adam Kinzinger, an Air Force vet, had to revise the military credentials section of his bio after a Facebook poster called attention to possible discrepancies in his record. Kinzinger, the NRCC’s favored candidate, left some feathers ruffled on the right en route to his easy primary victory.

• MI-03: A decent-sounding Democrat is stepping forward to run for the open seat left by Republican Vern Ehlers (where Barack Obama nearly won last year, although it’s a historically Republican area with a strong GOP bench). Attorney Patrick Miles is past president of the Grand Rapids bar association, and a Harvard Law classmate of Obama. On the GOP side, state Rep. Justin Amash, who declared his candidacy the day before Ehlers’ retirement announcement, got the endorsement of western Michigan’s biggest power broker: Amway guru and 2006 gubernatorial candidate Dick DeVos.

• MS-04: Rep. Gene Taylor has perhaps the reddest district held by any House Democrat, so it’s surprising that, with the general sense of a Republican-favorable year, no prominent GOPer has tried to surf the red tide against the usually-unassailable Taylor. A local elected official has finally stepped up, though: state Rep. Steven Palazzo.

• PA-06: One other internal poll, clearly intended to scare rich guy Steven Welch from burning any more of his money against Rep. Jim Gerlach in the GOP primary. Gerlach’s poll has Gerlach leading Welch by a head-spinning 71 to 6. Somehow I can’t imagine it’s really that bad, but Welch clearly has an uphill fight ahead of him.

• PA-12: There’s a little more clarity to the developing fields in the 12th, where two prominent potential candidates said no thanks. On the Democratic side, Jack Hanna, the state party’s southwest chair, passed. And this is a bit more of a surprise, on the GOP side: Diane Irey, a Washington County Commissioner who ran a medium-profile campaign against John Murtha in 2006 (but didn’t break 40%), decided not to run either; she’s endorsing Tim Burns, Some Dude already in the race who apparently has self-funding capacity (unlike 2008 candidate Bill Russell, who just has BMW Direct in his corner). Despite the district’s recent turn at the presidential level, this is one district where the disparity between the two parties’ benches may make the difference for the Dems.

• SD-AL: The GOP already has two decent challengers in the field in South Dakota, the state’s SoS, Chris Nelson, and state Rep. Blake Curd, who brings his own money with him. A third possible entrant seems likely now: state Rep. Kristi Noem, the assistant majority leader, says she’ll announce her candidacy soon. State Reps. in South Dakota have tiny constituencies, so name rec may be an issue – but more ominously, there are also rumors that term-limited Gov. Mike Rounds may be considering the race (although he sounded pretty disinterested when asked).

• LA-LG: SoS Jay Dardenne, who recently decided against a promotion to the Senate by challenging David Vitter in the GOP primary, now has another promotion in mind. He’d like to be elected Lt. Governor, now that that job is open (with Mitch Landrieu having departed to become New Orleans mayor). Gov. Bobby Jindal will appoint a temporary successor until the November election, but what Jindal would really like is to get rid of the whole LG position altogether (although he’ll need to get the legislature to cooperate on that idea, which doesn’t seem likely).

• NH-St. Sen.: There’s a special election tonight in the New Hampshire Senate, to fill the seat left behind by Republican Ted Gatsas, elected in November to become mayor of Manchester. Democratic state Rep. Jeff Goley faces Republican state Rep. David Boutin. The election gives Democrats the chance to push their edge in the Senate to 15-9, as well as just to make an assertive statement in New Hampshire, where they face tough retentions in both U.S. House races this year.

Well, he sure made that look easy:

Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu appears to have routed five major challengers in today’s mayoral primary, riding a sense of regret among voters who rejected him four years ago and extraordinary biracial support to claim a rare first-round victory.

With 90 of the city’s 366 precincts counted, Landrieu had 64 percent of the vote, according to WWL-TV. His closest challenger, businessman Troy Henry, had 15 percent.

When he takes office May 6, Landrieu will become the city’s first white chief executive since his father, Moon Landrieu, left the job in 1978. Early analysis shows that Mitch Landrieu’s victory owed to widespread crossover voting by African-Americans, who make up two-thirds of the city’s residents.

This was Landrieu’s third try at the office – he lost in a runoff to outgoing mayor Ray Nagin in 2006. State Sen. Ed Murray’s unexpected departure from the race in January was a big part of Landrieu’s landslide, but the NYT identifies another interesting reason:

Just as the election was gaining heat, the Saints happened to win a trip to the Super Bowl and all talk of the mayor’s race was drowned out for its last two weeks. That made it much harder for lesser-known candidates to gain traction.

As a Jets fan, I am definitely rooting for the Saints over the Colts. Feel free to use this as a Super Bowl open thread!

UPDATE: As Izengabe points out in comments, Gov. Bobby Jindal will get to appoint a replacement for Landrieu (his pick has to be confirmed by a majority of both houses of the state lege). GOPVoter provides a list of possible names, but note that Jindal is also trying to get rid of the Lt. Gov. position entirely.

• FL-Sen: Jeb Bush has studiously avoided explicitly taking sides in the Florida Senate primary, but various actions (like sending out his sons to endorse Marco Rubio) have tipped his hand. Another moment like that today, as he said on a radio interview that he’s “proud” of Rubio and the challenge he’s mounted. Meanwhile, Charlie Crist seems to be digging in rather than making plans to switch to an indie or Dem bid: he’s saying “he’s no RINO,” and perhaps more tellingly, now saying he opposes the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell,” a wedge issue he could be using to propel himself out of the GOP if he so chose. (h/t sapelcovits)

• OH-Sen: Geez, this is just bad to worse for Jennifer Brunner. She’s been holding off on reporting her fundraising again, and here’s why: she raised $93,000 in the fourth quarter, and managed to burn through more than that, leaving her sitting on a whopping total of $60,000 in the bank (1% of what Rob Portman has). Clearly she thinks someone is going to bail her out at some point – I’m just wondering who she thinks it’ll be.

• FL-Gov (pdf): Republican internal pollster McLaughlin & Assocs. finds a sizable lead for Republican AG Bill McCollum over Democratic state CFO Alex Sink: 41-30. That’s right in line with both Rasmussen and Quinnipiac’s most recent looks at the race, so this one seems to be moving away from Sink for the time being.

• IL-Gov: With all the new allegations popping up about pawnbroker-turned-LG nominee Scott Lee Cohen – on top of yesterday’s news about his rap sheet, today’s news features his steroid use and resulting ‘roid rage and sexual violence — I’m starting to wonder where the other Lt. Governor candidates were in terms of doing opposition research. For that matter, where was the media? That’s the kind of thing that sells papers, if nothing else. At any rate, Cohen is saying he isn’t stepping down (having invested more than $2 million of his own money in winning the race purely on name rec), while Pat Quinn is reduced to saying that “the situation will resolve itself.” Ex-Sen. Adlai Stevenson is advising Quinn to take the same route he did in 1986 when he was saddled with a LaRouchie running mate, which is to abandon ship and make a third-party run. Of course, that didn’t work too well for Stevenson, who lost anyway, although he was running an uphill fight against popular Gov. Jim Thompson.

The one bright spot for the Dems in all this is that the GOP may be months away from having a candidate. State Sen. Kirk Dillard, who came up 406 votes short, isn’t conceding, and is saying let’s wait until all the absentee and provisional ballots (possibly up to 10,000 of them) are counted. Even if he wants a recount, that won’t be able to start until the race’s certification in early March.

• MN-Gov: The Democratic field in the Minnesota governor’s race got a little smaller, as state Sen. Steve Kelley dropped out. He was probably motivated by his poor showing on Tuesday’s informal straw poll, where he finished with 4%, behind at least half a dozen other candidates and “uncommitted” as well.

• OR-Gov: With ex-SoS Bill Bradbury getting a Howard Dean endorsement, ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber just rolled out an endorsement of his own from another netroots favorite: Steve Novick, who barely lost the 2008 Senate primary. Kitzhaber, of course, was one of the few establishment figures to line up behind Novick, so Novick is returning the favor. (You’ve gotta love the photo of the two of them at the link.)

• AL-05: Looks like the Democrats are moving closer to a candidate to take on Parker Griffith (or whoever defeats him in the GOP primary). Taze Shepard, a Huntsville attorney and elected member of the state Board of Education in the 90s, is considering the race. He has quite the pedigree, too: he’s the grandson of John Sparkman, who represented the 5th from 1936-1946 and then was Alabama’s senator from 1947 to 1979 (and was the Democratic VP nominee in 1952). Also, Griffith may have a little more company in the GOP primary, and it’s an old foe: businessman Wayne Parker, who narrowly lost to the Democratic version of Griffith in the open seat race in 2008.

• MA-10: There are increasing retirement rumors about Rep. William Delahunt, since, of course, the dominant narrative is that Democrats start to cry and run home as soon as usually-ignored Reps face a halfway-credible challenge. Also feeding the rumors, perhaps, are Delahunt’s fundraising numbers from last quarter: $31K (although he is sitting on $568K). What may be most interesting is that the rumors all come with a likely replacement attached: Joe Kennedy III.

• WA-08: Ex-Microsoft executive Suzan Del Bene brings her own money to the race (and lots of it – she already has $773K on hand, compared with Rep. Dave Reichert’s $477K), but now she’s poised to tap into a nationwide donor base, with an endorsement from EMILY’s List.

• Mayors: So primary season is here for real: the primary election in the New Orleans mayoral race is tomorrow. With a highly cluttered field and one clear frontrunner looming over the field (Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu), the real question here seems to be who manages to get into a runoff with Landrieu (who was polling at 45% in the most recent poll of the race). Other major opponents include John Georges, Rob Couhig, Nadine Ramsey, James Perry, and Troy Henry.

• KY-Sen: I’ve never heard of Bill Johnson before, but bringing six figures to the table is bound to gain some attention. The western Kentucky businessman, who’s running in the Republican Senate primary, said he’s loaning himself $250,000 to try and garner some notice in the big-$ primary between Trey Grayson and Rand Paul.

• LA-Sen: I never thought I’d see the day when urea formaldehyde would become a campaign issue, but Democrats are hoping to use it against David Vitter in the Bayou State. Vitter (who has the backs of Louisiana’s large chemical industry) has been placing a hold on a new EPA administrator’s nomination, partly over concerns that the EPA will more heavily regulate formaldehyde. Unfortunately for Vitter, more than 34,000 Louisiana residents have first-hand experience with urea formaldehyde, outgassing from the paneling of their FEMA-provided post-Katrina trailers.

• MA-Sen: Republican State Sen. Scott Brown has an uphill fight in this month’s special election to overcome the state’s Dem lean and perhaps sentimental desires to keep Ted Kennedy’s seat in Democratic hands. Still, he got an endorsement from the state’s most popular conservative: Red Sox great Curt Schilling.

• NH-Sen: Salt shaker at the ready? ARG has a new poll out of general election matchups in the New Hampshire Senate race, showing a single-digit edge for Republican AG Kelly Ayotte over Democratic Rep. Paul Hodes, 43-36 (their last poll, from September, also gave Ayotte a 7-pt edge). They also poll Hodes against conservative upstart Ovide Lamontagne for the first time, and, in a bit of a head-scratcher, find a similar margin for the less-known and, one would think, less electable Lamontagne, who leads Hodes 37-31.

• MI-Gov: Here’s a Rasmussen poll that slipped our notice over the holidays; as one might expect, Santa Rasmussen had a big lump of coal for John Cherry’s stocking. All three Republicans lead the Democratic Lt. Governor, as other pollsters generally find, but Rasmussen still manages to depart from the other pollsters’ findings: AG Mike Cox, who has generally polled the best against Cherry, here has the smallest edge over him (only 39-34), while loudmouthed right-wing Rep. Pete Hoekstra has the biggest edge (46-32). (This poll was taken before Hoekstra’s grandstanding over the attempted plane bombing, which would serve to raise his name rec outside his western Michigan home turf.) Oakland Co. Sheriff Mike Bouchard leads Cherry 42-32. One hope for Cherry, though, is that, in terms of favorables, he still has higher unknowns than any of the Republicans, giving him room to grow.

• RI-Gov: Jan. 4 has been penciled in as the official launch date for Lincoln Chafee’s independent campaign for Rhode Island for a while now. With it comes news that (against a backdrop of mediocre fundraising so far) he’ll be dipping into the family fortune to propel his race; he just lent his campaign another $200K after starting it off with a previous $110K. Compared with Dem state Treasurer Frank Caprio’s $1.5 million, Chafee has a lot of ground to make up. Meanwhile, Republicans would still like a candidate… any candidate.

• AL-05: Looks like recent turncoat Parker Griffith is having a busy day today, answering his own phones and making his own coffee. Almost his entire staff resigned en masse today, unwilling to join him on his foray into the Republican fold.

• CA-19: Another sort-of-well-known Republican is scoping out the new open seat in the 19th: former SoS, former Assembly minority leader, and 2004 Senatorial loser Bill Jones is considering the race. Fresno city councilor Larry Westerlund is also looking at the race, which already has state Sen. Jeff Denham and former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson in the GOP field… and, as of this afternoon, former CA-11 Rep. Dick Pombo. (I wonder if Tom McClintock is interested in running here? He’s gotta be feeling restless again, having represented CA-04 for a full year now.)

• MN-01, MN-02, MN-03: We might actually wind up with a Democratic former elected official running in John Kline’s 2nd but not in the theoretically more-vulnerable 3rd next door. Former state Rep. Shelly Madore of Apple Valley (who was defeated by a Republican in 2008) has decided to get into the race in Minneapolis’s southern suburbs. (H/t Andrew.) Speaking of the 3rd, Democratic challenger Maureen Hackett is the first to hit the airwaves with a new radio spot; she faces a primary fight with state PTA president Jim Meffert, and the winner takes on freshman Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen. Finally, as expected, it only took Republican ex-state Rep. Allen Quist a few weeks to start bringing the crazy over in the 1st, as seen in recent comments that beating “radical” Democrats in Washington is a bigger battle than beating terrorism.

• NY-20, NY-Comptroller: Republican John Faso (the former Assembly minority leader and 2006 gubernatorial loser) was getting touted for a number of different races: for a run for Comptroller, against Rep. Scott Murphy in the 20th, or maybe even for NY-Sen-B if no other Kirsten Gillibrand challenger stepped up. It looks like he won’t be doing any of those things, saying it’s “doubtful” he’ll run for anything this year. State party chair Ed Cox is pushing Emil Henry Jr. for the GOP’s Comptroller slot now (Henry, a former Lehman Bros. exec, had earlier been trying to generate some interest for a gubernatorial run, apparently to little avail).

• PA-04: Insiders are leaking that former W.D. Pa. US Attorney (and loyal Bushie) Mary Beth Buchanan is increasingly likely to run against Rep. Jason Altmire this year, although the word is she’ll make her decision “soon.” On the flipside, this may mean the likelihood of state House minority whip Mike Turzai running for the GOP is going down.

• TN-08: Jackson-area physician Ron Kirkland will be joining the GOP field, now that this seat is a more tempting target with the retirement of long-time Democratic Rep. John Tanner. Kirkland joins “farmer” (or agribusiness kingpin, if you prefer)/gospel singer Stephen Fincher, who’s already off to a big fundraising start.

• TX-10: With a nasty hole in the lineup looming with the departure of promising candidate Jack McDonald, here’s a big-time save by veteran Ted Ankrum, who’ll file to take McDonald’s place in the 10th. Ankrum, you might recall, was our 2006 nominee in the 10th, and his strong performance with almost no funding is what drew a lot of Dem attention to the potential winnability of this rapidly-bluening seat. (Speaking of filing, the filing deadline in Texas is today. Primaries are soon, too – March 2nd, with potential run-offs on April 13th. Check out SSP’s full sortable primary calendar, if you haven’t before.)

• GA-SoS: With current Secretary of State Karen Handel resigning midterm in order to pursue her gubernatorial bid, Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue got the chance to hand-pick a successor. 38-year-old state Rep. Jim Cole, a member of the House’s leadership, will serve out the remaining year of her term and then run for a full term in 2010. (UPDATE: Or not. Cole has already turned down Perdue’s offer; former state Sen. Brian Kemp now sounds likely to be offered the job. H/t RuralDem.)

• Mayors: Lt. Gov Mitch Landrieu’s path to be the next mayor of New Orleans looks even easier now. His main opposition, state Sen. Ed Murray, opted to drop out, acknowledging that he didn’t want to suffer through an expensive and racially-divisive (Murray is African-American) campaign.

• NRCC: Looks like we’re not the only ones taking notice of the NRCC’s cash-on-hand problems, as the legacy media start to take notice: Politico observes that right now the NRCC has enough money to fund about one big-name House race, not the dozens they’re trying to put into play with various recruiting successes.

• RNC: Reid Wilson has an interesting catch: the RNC is sending money ($20K) to the local party in the Northern Mariana Islands (popu. 86,000), which, of course, don’t have a voting member of the House or any electoral votes. It looks like it may be a little payback from Michael Steele, who owes his chairmanship to votes from the NMI and other insular territories.

• Polltopia: Politico also belatedly picks up on another favorite theme in the liberal blogosphere: what the hell is up with Rasmussen’s numbers? Nate Silver judiciously examined the issue too, over the weekend, pointing out that Rasmussen’s well-documented “house effects” aren’t necessarily indicative of bias per se. Rasmussen’s defenders, of course, will point to Nate’s ratings of Rasmussen’s accuracy, which are high; fitting, as their numbers do tend to converge with reality in a race’s final weeks (as we saw last November in NJ and VA). Still, one question wasn’t raised in either of these pieces over the weekend: how to hold Rasmussen to account for showing out-of-whack numbers long before the election, before they start to fall in line with everyone else (and when they, by virtue of Rasmussen’s frequent polling, can play a large role in shaping the conventional wisdom about who’s up and who’s down)?

• Maps: A denizen of the forums at Dave Leip’s site has put together an even better set of maps of presidential election results by county, dating back to 1840. (H/t metstotop333.)(D)

• Redistricting: A reminder – if you post an entry in the redistricting contest, please e-mail your .DRF.XML file to jeffmd [at] swingstateproject [dot] com. (Instructions for finding your file are here.) This will make it a lot easier for Jeff to judge entries. And the deadline to submit your entry is fast approaching – Sunday, January 10th at midnight Eastern time. (D)

Also, on the redistricting front, Politics Magazine has a lengthy piece on Democrats’ efforts to avoid getting out-hustled by the GOP in both congressional and state-level redistricting. Hint to Bill Burke’s Foundation for the Future and Brian Smoot’s Democratic Redistricting Trust: Reach out to the redistricting geeks here at the Swing State Project. We’re a great untapped resource. One interesting note: This is the first time since the passage of the Voting Rights Act that the White House (and thus the Department of Justice) will be in Democratic hands during the start-to-finish redistricting process. (D)

• Census: The Census Bureau is rolling out a $340 million ad blitz over the next few months to make sure that everyone knows about the Census and that they need to participate. The rollout includes two ads (directed by Christopher Guest and starring Ed Begley Jr., which ought to get the right-wingers a-foamin’ at the mouth) during the Super Bowl, but also $80 million in ad outreach to non-English-speaking populations. Talking Points Memo also has a neat observation about Rep. Michele Bachmann, once the Census’s greatest foe but who’s been surprisingly quiet in her criticisms of it lately: she may need to rely on huge Census turnout by Minnesotans to keep Minnesota at 8 seats, and thus, keep her own seat (the likeliest target for elimination if the state needs to drop to 7 and Dems exclusively control the process).  

• 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.  

• WI-Gov: Hot on the heels of changing Ohio to Lean Dem yesterday, today we’re downgrading the Wisconsin gubernatorial race to Lean Dem as well. We aren’t reacting to any one recent event (the only two polls so far have dramatically disparate results, but they average out to a tight race), but realized that we had no business keeping WI-Gov at Likely Dem if OH-Gov is going to be Lean Dem.

• CA-Sen: Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina seems to be moving toward running against Barbara Boxer after all, not taking formal steps but rubbing elbows with the right people. Here’s some ill-timed bad PR for her, though: Fiorina has been telling people that she’s now CEO of her own company (Carly Fiorina Enterprises) and her own foundation (Fiorina Foundation), but neither one has been registered with the proper state or federal authorities… which might lead some to question her vaunted business organization skills.

• IL-Sen: The Fix reports that alleged field-clearing heavyweight Rep. Mark Kirk may still face a contested GOP primary in the Senate race; state party chair Andy McKenna, recruited as the GOP’s Plan B, seems to be staying in for now, and the state’s Republican congressional delegation is staying, at least publicly, neutral. The flashpoint may be Kirk’s recent vote in favor of cap-and-trade.

• MO-Sen: In the “did he really just say that file?” Roy Blunt offers up a doozy: in a conservative talk radio interview, he said that maybe it would have been better if the federal government had never created Medicare, Medicaid, or VA health care, because it “distorts the marketplace.” Way to put the senior citizen vote in play there, Roy!

• NV-Sen: Off-the-record GOP consultants say that a John Ensign resignation may be “on the table” and that there are worries that there may still be even more undisclosed payments to the Hamptons floating around. If there are public calls for resignation from the other key GOPers in Nevada — Gov. Jim Gibbons, Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, Rep. Dean Heller — it’s time to prepare the fork for sticking (of course, with two of those three in deep scandal of their own, there’s a certain pot/kettle thing going on).

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter made his first aggressive moves against possible primary challenger Rep. Joe Sestak today, calling him a “flagrant hypocrite” for not being a Democrat until 2006. (Sestak was an Independent during his decades of military service, and switched to Dem once he was out of the service.) Hmmm… remind me again which year Arlen Specter became a Democrat? Meanwhile, on the GOP side, the NRSC just can’t help themselves from hiking the Appalachian Trail despite their efforts to fall back in love with Pat Toomey. They’ve been talking behind the scenes with state Sen. Jane Orie about running in the primary (although she’s almost as conservative as Toomey, so it’s not clear what benefit that would provide).

• AK-Gov: Guess who’s saying “thanks but no thanks” to the assistance offered by the divine Sarah Palin: the GOP candidates in the two very-close blue-state gubernatorial races this year, Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell. (On the other hand, Rick Perry, who needs to rally every wingnut he can get his hands on in order to win his primary in Texas, welcomes her.) The Hill also sniffs out a number of other candidates facing possibly tough races who’d like her to stay far, far away, including Reps. Lee Terry, Frank Wolf, Mike Castle, and Pete Hoekstra. (In his efforts to become World’s Most Tone-Deaf Man, Roy Blunt welcomes her help, though.) Finally, check out Peggy Noonan‘s authoritative takedown of Palin today; say what you will about the whole pure evil thing, the woman has a way with words.

• PA-Gov: With a lot of people looking at the Democratic field in the Governor’s race and asking “is that all there is?” a familiar face is considering the race: Montgomery Co. Commissioner (and former Rep. and 2004 Senate candidate) Joe Hoeffel. In his favor, he’d be the only elected official from the Philly area in the race (Tom Knox is from Philly, but has never held office).

• IL-10: With Rep. Mark Kirk kindly leaving an open seat for us, both the Daily Herald and Roll Call take a look at the developing fields in this race. On the Dem side, the leading contenders are state Sens. Michael Bond (already in the race) and Susan Garrett. Dan Seals, who lost in 2006 and 2008 to Kirk, is also considering a third try. The only GOPer in the race is Patricia Bird, but businessman Dick Green and state Rep. Elizabeth Coulson are likely contestants.

• NY-23: Don’t count out state Sen. Darrel Aubertine on becoming the Democratic candidate in NY-23, despite the ongoing craziness in the New York state Senate. Although the July 17 filing deadline is coming up and he hasn’t made any noise about it, Aubertine is still considering it and will have the requisite family sit-down about it once he has the time (which maybe he’ll have, now that the Senate is back to “normal”).

• VA-05: Rep. Tom Perriello has become the focus in the tug-of-war over cap-and-trade. A week after the NRCC made him the sole target of a TV attack ad for voting in favor, the League of Conservation Voters is running thank-you ads in his central Virginia district.

• Mayors: Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu has options, but he ruled out a third run at New Orleans mayor, for which he’d been considered front-runner. A run for Governor in 2011 (or maybe not until the open seat in 2015) now seems likelier. This leaves city councilor Arnie Fielkow in the driver’s seat for the next mayoral election.

• Caucuses: This seems like an odd time for this to happen, in the middle of the fight over health care reform: the Congressional Progessive Caucus canned its executive director, Bill Goold, without much explanation.