Tag: MA-St. Sen.

The main event last night was Rep. Alan Mollohan‘s slightly surprising loss in the Dem primary in WV-01 to state Sen. Mike Oliverio. Maybe not that surprising, given Mollohan’s seeming lack of preparation (the guy hasn’t had a competitive primary in literally two decades) and weak fundraising and GOTV organizing. Compounding that: increased attention on Mollohan’s ethics woes (although Mollohan had formally been cleared, that didn’t keep the cloud from going away, or Oliverio from exploiting that), as well as, of course, the generalized anti-incumbent anti-Washington sentiment in both parties, a residual of voter anger over the crappy economy.

The DCCC was notably cool to Oliverio in their post-election statement, as there seems to some wait-and-see regarding how Oliverio clarifies his anti-Nancy Pelosi comments as they size him up. Still, even with their apparent distate for Oliverio, that’s probably part of a bigger ambivalence on their part (paralleled by some NRCC disappointment), as it’s quite possible that Oliverio may perform better in November than Mollohan would have, being a “fresh face” free of the taint of incumbency, and free of Mollohan’s ethical baggage and his tough pro-HCR vote (I don’t think HCR in itself is as much of anchor in this district as the Beltway media might have you believe, but the abortion angle on HCR seemed to be a liability, compounded by the Susan B. Anthony List’s involvement in the race).

And while conservative Dem Mollohan was no prize overall, it’s worth noting that he was about as liberal a guy as we were going to get in this R+9 district; the PVI/Vote Index has him as 2008’s 11th most overperforming Democrat according to National Journal scores (consistent with Nate Silver‘s math, who finds him 8th most valuable Democrat). Of course, if Oliverio goes on to win in November and moves the ball a few paces to the right, even he’ll probably still be overperforming the district’s lean; while most of what came out of Oliverio’s mouth during the campaign was pretty alarming, he at least has a solid pro-labor record, in the form of strong AFL-CIO ratings.

In the GOP primary, ex-state Rep. and former state GOP chair David McKinley pulled out a decent victory, with 35% of the vote (to 27% for Mac Warner and 21% for Sarah Minear); he’ll face Oliverio. Anti-incumbent sentiments were on display in the WV-03 and NE-02 primaries, where Dem Nick Rahall and GOPer Lee Terry pulled in only 67% and 63% respectively against small-time opponents. Rahall will face off in November against ex-Dem ex-state Supreme Court Justice (and BFF of Massey Energy head Don Blankenship) Spike Maynard, who prevailed over a fractured GOP field with only 30%. Finally a couple state legislative results: the GOP held Scott Brown’s former Massachusetts state Senate seat in the outer reaches of Boston’s suburbs, with state Rep. Dennis Richard Ross winning, while in Georgia, Jason Carter, the grandson of Jimmy Carter, is the newest member of the state Senate after holding a safely-Dem district in DeKalb County.

• Special elections/Runoffs: Believe it or not, it’s a busy election night tonight. Top of the list is the special election in FL-19, where the successor to Robert Wexler will be chosen. In this D+15 district in the more middle-class parts of the Gold Coast, the Democrat, state Sen. Ted Deutch, is heavily favored. The parties haven’t gotten involved, and Republican Ed Lynch (who lost a lopsided decision to Wexler in 2008) is hamstrung by the presence of independent right-wing candidate Jim McCormick.

It’s runoff day in Texas, with almost all the action on the GOP side. TX-17, between self-funder Bill Flores and 2008 candidate Rob Curnock, and TX-23, between self-funder Quico Canseco and ex-CIA agent William Hurd, are the marquee races as far as the U.S. House goes. There are also some GOP runoffs in some state House races, an interesting mixed bag of open seat succession races, teabaggish challenges to GOP incumbents, and challenges to vulnerable Dems. Finally, there’s a culture war clash between just-very conservative and super-duper conservative in two statewide contests: one for the Supreme Court (with Rick Green, the former state Rep. known for punching the guy who beat him in 2002, representing Team Crazy), and one for the Board of Education (between Marsha Farney and Brian Russell, with Russell the movement conservative here).

Finally, there’s some state legislature action in Massachusetts, California, and Florida. Primaries for two state Senate seats are in Massachusetts, the ones held by now-Sen. Scott Brown and now-disgraced Anthony Gallucio. This is the de facto election in Gallucio’s dark-blue seat, seeing as how no Republicans are running, but the winner between state Rep. Lida Harkins and doctor Peter Smulowitz in the Dem primary will face off against GOP state Rep. Richard Ross on May 11 to succeed Brown. In California, there are two legislative specials; using the California system, each one will likely head to a runoff (unless someone in the cluttered fields breaks 50%). Both seats will likely turn out to be holds: SD-37 is in Republican exurban Riverside County, while AD-43 is in Democratic Glendale in LA County. And in the Florida Panhandle, dark-red HD-04 should be an easy Republican hold.

• AR-Sen: Looks like Blanche Lincoln picked the wrong week to stop acting like a Democrat. She got seriously outraised by Bill Halter in the first quarter, earning $1.3 million (Halter got $2 mil). She also spent more than she earned, running a blitz of TV ads, probably to the tune of $2 million, as her cash on hand dropped $700K –although it’s still a high $4.7 million. Still no word yet from the race’s key Republicans.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina filled in the last blank in the California Senate race; her fundraising total for the first quarter was $1.7 million, edging out Tom Campbell (who pulled in $1.6 million). Both GOPers lagged Barbara Boxer’s $2.4 million.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is still trying to find something that’ll stick to Marco Rubio, and he’s trying again to link ex-state House speaker Rubio to some of the other less savory elements among legislative leadership. He’s up with a new ad trying Rubio to another former speaker, Ray Sansom, who’s currently under indictment for charges of falsifying state budget items.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias is lagging Mark Kirk on the cash front; he raised $1.2 million last quarter, compared with Kirk’s $2.2 million. Giannoulias didn’t release cash on hand figures, which may not be too impressive either considering that he had to fight through a competitive primary.

• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP looked at the primaries only in the North Carolina Senate race (they’re on May 4). On the Dem side, former state Sen. Cal Cunningham is still within striking distance of SoS Elaine Marshall; she leads Cunningham 23-17, with Kenneth Lewis at 9 and 5% for assorted minor candidates. (Last month, Marshall led Cunningham and Lewis 20-16-11.) On the GOP side, Richard Burr is at 67%, with his closest competition, Brad Jones, at 7.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Quinnipiac finds a lot of same-ol’-same-ol’ in the Empire State: Andrew Cuomo crushing, and Kirsten Gillibrand crushing anyone non-Pataki. Gillibrand trails non-candidate George Pataki 45-40 but leads actual candidate Bruce Blakeman 47-25 (none of the other third-tier GOPers get polled); she’s also sporting her highest-ever approvals, at 47/25. (Pataki beats Blakeman in a GOP primary, 64-15.) On the Governor’s side, Rick Lazio is still poised to be GOP nominee; he leads Steve Levy and Carl Paladino 34-11-11 (note that the poll was in the field prior to the whole bestiality thing). Andrew Cuomo dispatches Lazio 55-26, Levy 57-24, and Paladino 60-24.

• OH-Sen: I’d assumed Lee Fisher had been on the air before, but he’s just now launching his first TV spots of his campaign with the primary only weeks away (apparently marshaling his resources for the general). Fisher also pulled down the endorsement of Cleveland mayor Frank Johnson, although he didn’t gain the backing of his own home town’s Democratic party (in Shaker Heights), which instead declined to endorse.

• PA-Sen: Here’s a bit of a surprise: Joe Sestak succeeded in his ballot challenge, getting last-minute conservadem entrant Joe Vod Varka kicked out of the Democratic primary, setting up a two-man fight against Arlen Specter. If Sestak’s going to have any hope of knocking off Specter, he’ll need to consolidate every anti-Specter vote (and also not have the Slovak-American vote — a big segment in western Pennsylvania — split).

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold had a successful fundraising quarter, considering right now he’s only running against the specter of Tommy Thompson. Feingold earned $1.34 million, leaving him with $4.26 million CoH.

• FL-Gov: Rick Scott has decided, rather belatedly, to throw his hat in the ring in the Republican field in the Governor’s race. If the name’s familiar, he’s a former hospital-industry businessman who funded much of the initial anti-HCR astroturfing efforts via his organization Conservatives for Patient Rights. He’s sound teabaggish themes about establishment candidate AG Bill McCollum (despite McCollum taking the lead on the GOP AGs’ anti-HCR lawsuit). Considering that state Sen. Paula Dockery is already trying to run against McCollum from the right and getting no traction, it’s hard to see Scott going anywhere with this, though.

• NM-Gov: Lt. Gov. Diane Denish, the lone Dem in the race, is dominating the fundraising front; she raised $1.1 million in the six-month reporting period and has $2.6 million CoH. Among the GOPers, former state party chair Allen Weh leads both in money raised ($691K, although $500K was a personal loan) and CoH ($544K). Dona Ana County DA Susana Martinez raised $428K and sits on $364K CoH.

• PA-Gov: Here’s a blow to, well, everybody in the Democratic field; after not being able to find two-thirds support for anybody, the AFL-CIO won’t be endorsing any particular candidate in the Dem primary. Former Philadephia city controller Jonathan Saidel got their Lt. Gov. endorsement.

• AL-05: Party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith (most recently in the news for forgetting his party-switch and billing the DCCC for expenditures) surprised his GOP primary opponents at a debate by asking them sign a unity pledge that the losers of the primary would campaign for the winner in November. No thanks, said both Mo Brooks and Les Philip.

• DE-AL: Looks like wealthy self-funder Michelle Rollins, the NRCC’s preferred recruit in the race, has some competition on the big bucks front in the GOP primary. Real estate developer Glen Urquhart just announced that he has $512K in his account (of course, $500K of that came from his own pocket).

• FL-08: Alan Grayson had another big fundraising quarter, thanks in large part to netroots moneybombing (especially his March event which brought in $500K). He raised $803K in the last three months, bringing his CoH total to $1.5 million (along with the possibility of writing checks to himself).

• HI-01: CQ has an interesting piece on HI-01 that focuses primarily on just how difficult it is (especially for “mainland” pollsters) to poll in Hawaii. With only two polls of this race having seen light of day so far, the main takeaway may be that anyone’s guess is as good as mine where the race stands.

• MI-01: One of the top Republicans on everyone’s candidate list for the newly-opened seat in MI-01 has said that he won’t run. State House minority leader Kevin Elsenheimer said he won’t run, even though he’s termed out of the House and needs something else to do. (Elsenheimer, from the Traverse City area, is disadvantaged by not coming from the Upper Peninsula portion of the district.)

• MS-04: Here’s one other eye-catching fundraising note: a Dem incumbent who got outraised by Republican opposition previously considered inconsequential. Rep. Gene Taylor raised $41K and has $221K CoH, while GOP state Rep. Steven Palazzo raised $125K and has at least $100K CoH. Let’s hope Taylor doesn’t hit the “snooze” button for another quarter. National Journal’s latest fundraising outline also has noteworthy numbers from Charlie Dent (PA-15), Dan Debicella (CT-04), and Rick Crawford (AR-01).

• Redistricting: With the Fair Districts redistricting initiative seeming destined to make the ballot in Florida, now the Republican-controlled legislature is trying to get its own redistricting initiative on the ballot, in an apparent effort to clarify (or gut) the Fair Districts proposals. The Senate’s proposal deals with the thorny questions of VRA-mandated districts and communities of interest, which aren’t addressed in satisfactory manner by the original initiatives, which forbid designing districts in a manner that is favorable to one party or the other.

• Demographics: Josh Goodman has an interesting look at population change in Texas, similar to some work we’ve done at SSP over the last few years; he finds that while Texas’s largest counties are becoming swingier, its fastest-growing counties are still pretty solidly Republican (although the growth in these counties is in demographics that aren’t likely Republican). Of course, the parts of the state that are becoming less and less of the state, percentage-wise — the rural parts — have become even more conservative than the fast-growing exurbs, so in a way that’s progress too.

One of the things that I value about the netroots in general, and about SSP in particular, is the ease with which it allows me to find information on specific elections and and races that the MSM would never dream of covering (I guess us nerds are just too few to be a profitable marketing demographic).

As an MA resident and Democratic activist, I’d like to dedicate this, my very first SSP diary, to developing race to succeed State Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts’ Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex State Senate District. I think that this is a vital race for political nerds across the country to watch, because it has the opportunity to change the narrative here in New England, where conventional wisdom is that we Democrats are about to be the victims of a 1990/1994 style Republican wave this November.

The race for Scott Brown’s former State Senate seat is relevent across the region because it is traditionally one of the swingiest of swing districts in the Commonwealth.

A little history:

The Norfolk, Bristol and Middlesex seat was held by the former Republican floor leader in the MA Senate right up until 1992, when it was won by a young, charismatic and openly lesbian county prosecutor named Cheryl Jacques. Jacques was (and is) a national figure in the LGBT rights movement, and is a former president of Human Rights Campaign (she resigned from the Senate to take that position and move her family to Washington in March of 2004). Jacques was also the progressive standard-bearer in the 2001 special election for US congress that was eventually won by the less-than-liberal US Rep. Steve Lynch of South Boston.

http://www.cheryljacques.org/

Scott Brown, than a little-known State Rep. from his native Wrentham, went on to win the special election caused by Jacques’ resignation over her CoS in a massive upset, winning by only a handful of votes despite the fact that the special election was scheduled for the day of the 2004 Presidential Primary, which was unopposed by President Bush on the Republican side.

http://www.boston.com/news/spe…

The Candidates:

There are three currently declared candidates in the race for Scott Brown’s Senate seat, two Democrats and one Republican.

The Republican is formidable. He is Wrentham State Rep. Richard Ross, a Scott Brown protege who succeeded Brown in the State House when Brown moved up to the Senate. Unlike Brown, Ross has a moderate reputation, having been one of only a handful of Republican supporters of gay marriage during the key votes on the Constitutional Amendment in 2007. Ross, like Brown, is charismatic and a strong campaigner.

On the Democratic side, we have a two candidates who probably could not be in sharper contrast with one another. State Rep. Lida Harkins is a 21-year veteran of the State Legislature, and was a trusted lieutenant to both of our most recently previous Speakers of the House, Tom Finneran and Sal DiMasi, both of whom are currently facing federal corruption charges. Harkins is also a conservative on some social issues, such as choice. But she is a proven vote-getter in her hometown of Needham, the biggest D-leaning town in the district, and a close-in suburb of Boston.

Needham Town Meeting member Dr. Peter Smulowitz is young- 33- and has only two years in elected office under his belt. Smulowitz, however, has the advantage of having been in this race the longest- he declared his candidacy against than-incumbent Scott Brown last November- and the organizational and fundraising advantages that go along with it. Smulowitz has almost double the CoH than Ross does, and almost seven times as much as Harkins, and he also already has a campaign organization in place, with a top-notch staff, open campaign office and in-place volunteer network. Smulowitz also benefits from not being associated with the taint of Beacon Hill (We Massholes are very, very annoyed at our state legislature right now), and of being the pro-choice progressive in a primary race where liberal voters will almost certainly dominate.

I’m supporting Dr. Smulowitz because I believe he will not only be a better progressive legislator in office, but I also believe he would be our party’s strongest nominee against the formidable Rep. Ross. While Ross could paint Harkins as the out-of-touch insider from Beacon Hill, since she has been there 21 years to his 6, Smulowitz, who is not currently serving in the legislature, could do the same to Ross. I believe it’s also vital not to underestimate the power of an already-assembled organization in the short time frame of a special election.

Candidate websites can be found here:

Ross (R) :    http://reprichardross.org/

Smulowitz (D) :   http://petersmulowitz.com/

Harkins (D) : No campaign website up yet, legislative website here http://www.mass.gov/legis/memb…

As I mentioned earlier in this post, this will be a vital race for Democrats to win, not because we need another seat in the MA State Senate (although that’s always nice…) but because a win here can change the narrative about Democratic doom and Republican ascendency in our state. Check out the candidates, and if you’re in the area, come help out!

UPDATE:

Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray announced today that she is scheduling the special election for Scott Brown’s former State Senate seat for April 13th (primary) and May 11th (general). That means that it’s just a little more than two months before we find out who our nominees are!

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul makes an interesting point: he’d like SoS (and GOP primary rival) Trey Grayson to recuse himself from his secretarial duties during the May election. In other words, he doesn’t want Grayson to count the votes of the election that he’s running in. (Unsurprisingly, Grayson’s spokesperson says “no.”)

• MA-Sen: An AFL-CIO post-game poll finds that a majority of labor households in Massachusetts went for Scott Brown in the special election, by a narrow 49-46 margin. The one consolation Democrats might take from that failure is that a large majority of respondents said they were “choosing the best candidate” rather than “sending a message to Washington,” which suggests that the success (or lack thereof) of the two campaigns at defining the individual candidates is the main story here.

• NY-Sen-B: This seems to exist mostly at the level of idle speculation, but people in the know are wondering whether Harold Ford Jr.’s apparent entry into the Democratic primary may open the door for other primary candidates who considered the race and then thought better of it to get back in, out of hopes they might shoot the gap in the middle.

• PA-Sen, PA-07: Pennsylvania’s Democratic party chair, T.J. Rooney, is now publicly urging Rep. Joe Sestak to “pull a Gerlach” and bail out of his Senate primary bid while heading back to nail down his suburban swing seat instead. This isn’t that remarkable, as Rooney has been outspoken all year in his desire to avoid paralyzing primaries – but you’ve gotta wonder if Sestak, who’s stalled a bit in the polls lately, is considering it in the back of his mind.

• WI-Sen: Rarely has so much ink been spilled writing about a four-word quotation (“I’m not saying no”), but with that utterance yesterday from ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson, thus begins a whole ‘nother round of speculation as to whether the 68-year-old Thompson’s unlikely bid to challenge Russ Feingold will ever materialize.

• KS-Gov: State Sen. Tom Holland sounds willing to step up and take on the job that no one seems to want: running against Sen. Sam Brownback in the open gubernatorial race in Kansas. Holland represents one of the state’s few purplish areas, with a district that includes part of college town Lawrence, but he clearly plays to win, as seen in the fact that he’s beaten two different incumbent Republicans in his state legislative career.

• AK-AL: Between being kind of old and on everybody’s “most-likely-to-be-indicted” list, Alaska’s Don Young is a tempting target, from both the left and right. He got another primary challenger yesterday: never-before-elected telecommunications executive Sheldon Fisher. Gadflyish businessman and blogger Andrew Halcro (who won 10% as an independent in the 2006 gubernatoril race) has already said he’ll run against Young in the primary, too.

• AR-01: As we reported yesterday, Rep. Marion Berry is sounding kind of unenthused about much of anything right now. Fleshing out that interview we mentioned, Berry said it’s his “intention” to run again, but, as part of a longer excursis waxing philosophical about his own mortality, wouldn’t make an absolute commitment to sticking around.

• HI-01: A fourth entrant (and a third Democrat) seems likely to get into the special election to replace retiring Rep. Neil Abercrombie: state Sen. Will Espero is starting an exploratory committee. Because of the weird all-parties, winner-takes-all nature of the election, the fear is that a Democratic pileup could open the door to a victory by lone Republican Charles Djou – but a recent Mason-Dixon poll of the race finds Djou a distant third behind well-known Democratic opponents Ed Case and Colleen Hanabusa, and it’s unclear whether Espero has the name rec to make much of a dent one way or the other on that.

• MA-10: Republicans in the Bay State are taking a renewed interest in competing in House races there, usually something that gets completely neglected. In the wake of Scott Brown’s victory, former state Treasurer Joseph Malone is now saying that he’s planning to run against Rep. William Delahunt in the 10th, which is probably the least secure district for Democrats in the state; covering Cape Cod and much of the South Shore, it’s at D+5, but the source of some of the darkest red on this week’s map. Delahunt was unopposed in 2008. The GOP is also interested in fielding candidates in the 3rd and 5th against Jim McGovern and Niki Tsongas, two other blue-collar Catholic districts that gave big margins to Brown.

• MS-01: Here’s a surprise: after painstakingly clearing the GOP field for state Sen. Alan Nunnelee and getting him off to a good fundraising start, the NRCC is now meeting with Fox News talking head Angela McGlowan about a run against Rep. Travis Childers in the 1st. McGlowan hasn’t been elected before, but she does have experience as a staff member to Sen. John Ensign.

• NJ-03: In addition to being an NFL player, NJ-03 Republican candidate Jon Runyan is apparently also a gentleman farmer in his spare time. He owns a 20-acre spread in rural New Jersey, but pays only hundreds of dollars in property taxes each year on 15 of those acres thanks to using them as farmland – in order to raise four donkeys. (I’m sure the irony of raising donkeys is lost on no one, although the land probably isn’t zoned to allow for elephants instead.)

• NY-23: The Doug Hoffman camp is touting an internal poll showing him with a big lead over potential rivals for the GOP nomination this year, including the more establishment figure of Assemblyman Will Barclay. Hoffman, still benefiting from a lot of name rec after gaining national attention from the special election, leads Barclay 56-22 in a hypothetical 4-way contest also involving would-be-picks from last time Matt Doheny and Paul Maroun.

• MA-St. Sen.: The good news is that Democrats may have a shot at picking up Scott Brown’s Senate seat in a special election (date TBA). The seat covers parts of Middlesex, Bristol, and Norfolk counties in Boston’s southwestern suburbs. 21-year state Rep. Lida Harkins says she’ll run for the Democrats; physician Peter Smulowitz also intends to run. State Reps. Richard Ross and Elizabeth Poirier may run for the GOP. The bad news? They don’t really need a pickup, as the Dems already have a 34-4 edge now (with one other vacancy in a safe Dem seat to be filled, thanks to the resignation of prison-bound Anthony Galluccio).

• Supreme Court: As you probably know, the Supreme Court opened the door yesterday to a flood of special interest money into the election process with their decision in Citizens United. The case allows corporations, labor unions, and other similar entities to make unlimited independent expenditures on behalf of candidates, although they still can’t make direct contributions to the candidates’ warchests. Rich Hasen’s Election Law Blog and How Appealing have roundups of links to many different discussions as to what all it means. (Everyone seems to agree it’s a big deal, but just how big a deal seems up for debate.)

• Census: Census Director Robert Groves is out with a timetable for all the movements that will occur over the next few months to get the Census up and running, seemingly to be executed with military precision. And if just can’t get enough Census discussion, Groves even has his own blog now.