Tag: Ron Sparks

Well, nothing’s official, but check out this press release that found its way into my inbox:

Gubernatorial candidate Ron Sparks will hold press conferences on Tuesday, December 29 to discuss the his campaign for Governor and next year’s race for the 5th Congressional District seat in North Alabama.  The press conferences will be held at:

Huntsville: 10:00 a.m., Madison County Courthouse Steps

100 Northside Square

Birmingham: 1:30 p.m., Linn Park

Montgomery: 4:00 p.m., Sparks campaign headquarters, 4240 Carmichael Rd

If you’re announcing that you’re running for Congress, you usually don’t take your announcement tour on the road to places outside the district (Birmingham and Montgomery) that you’re supposedly interested in representing. While I suppose Chris Van Hollen still has some time on the clock to make a last minute plea, I don’t think you should hold your breath. Ron Sparks seems to think that he has a good shot at being Alabama’s next Governor. I think he’ll eventually come to regret this choice, but that’s just my take.

So what’s next? If the DCCC is smart, they’ll lean hard on Public Service Commissioner Susan Parker, who was the candidate they should have lined up behind in 2008. However, while Parker hasn’t officially ruled out the race, I’m hearing credible word that it’s more likely that she’ll run for re-election to the PSC. Democrats would then have to settle for someone further down the totem pole — one such name that I’ve heard being considered is Deborah Bell Paseur, a former district judge who narrowly lost a race for Alabama’s Supreme Court in 2008. But I’m sure we’ll hear more names in the coming days.

UPDATE: This tweet says that Sparks isn’t running.

RaceTracker Wiki: AL-05

• TX-Gov, TX-Lt. Gov: Former Travis County D.A. Ronnie Earle has decided to run for Lt. Governor, and not Governor or Attorney General. Republican incumbent David Dewhurst has filed to run for re-election, though many expect that he’d jump into an open seat Senate race, in the seemingly unlikely event that Kay Bailey Hutchison resigns. Earle joins Austin deli owner Marc Katz in the Democratic primary.

• AL-05, AL-Gov: Democrat Ron Sparks, Alabama’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries, says that he will make a decision on switching from his gubernatorial campaign to a run against turncoat Rep. Parker Griffith within the next 48 hours. I don’t have any special insight here, but it sure sounds like Sparks is actually going to make this move. If Sparks takes a pass, there are a number of lesser-known potential candidates who sound interested, according to the Huntsville Times. Meanwhile, Griffith’s Tea Party-backed primary challenger, Les Phillip, is whacking Griff hard over his past donations to Harry Reid and Howard Dean. I wonder if Griffith realizes how big of a miscalculation he made.

• FL-02: For all the GOP’s success in “expanding the map” of House pick-up opportunities next year, Roll Call notes that the party is more or less empty-handed in their pursuit of a challenger to ultra-Blue Dog Rep. Allen Boyd. GOP political consultants seem to be holding out hope that a self-funder may parachute into the race before the state’s March filing deadline.

• NY-01: Republican businessman Randy Altschuler is already up on the air, launching broadsides at Democratic incumbent Tim Bishop for his TARP votes.

• PA-06: Democrat Doug Pike had hoped that an early injection of his own personal wealth coupled with a batch of endorsements from local Democrats would keep the primary field clear in his effort to wrest control of the open seat district that Republican Jim Gerlach is leaving behind. Not so fast. Already dealing with the surging candidacy of Manan Trivedi, Pike has picked up a second primary challenger in Lower Merion Township Commissioner Brian Gordon.

• PA-16: Democratic activist Lois Herr, trying for a third crack at entrenched GOP incumbent Joe Pitts, is now facing a primary from pro-life Democrat John J. McClure.

• WA-03: Retiring Dem Rep. Brian Baird tells the Politico National Journal’s Reid Wilson that he thinks that Denny Heck, a well-traveled name in Washington political circles, will run for his seat. As we’ve mentioned here before, Heck was a state Rep. in the 80s, lost a Superintendent of Education race, became Gov. Booth Gardner’s chief of staff, and then founded TVW, the state’s local equivalent of C-SPAN.

• NRCC/TX-32: Pete Sessions Deathwatch, Vol. 4? “I love you and believe in you. If you want my ear/voice — e-mail.” That’s the message that NRCC Chair Pete Sessions sent to banker Allen Stanford just hours after federal investigators charged him with fleecing investors to the tune of $7 billion. The muck raking crew over at TPM has the full background on this sordid story.

• Party Switching: DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen is “very confident” that there will be no more defections from the Democratic caucus this cycle. Meanwhile, the Southern Political Report has a piece analyzing the longevity of party switchers, and finds some decidedly mixed results.

• Strategy: The Democratic game plan for the 2010 elections appears to hinge around the argument that the GOP will “repeal” health care reform. DSCC Chair Bob Menendez: “I would simply say to my Republican friends, what are they going to campaign on? That they’re going to repeal 30 million people who have health insurance under this package? That they’re going to repeal closing the gap on Medicare?” Note that this is exactly what Newt Gingrich is pressing the GOP to embrace.

Happy Holidays, everybody! Here’s a mercifully brief edition of the Daily Digest for your perusal today.

• CO-Sen: Former GOP Lt. Gov. Jane Norton is looking to “channel” the passion of teabaggers who insist that Barack Obama is a baby-killing Muslim into a fearsome GOTV operation for her campaign against Sen. Michael Bennet. Sadly, this is no exaggeration.

• CT-Sen: In the wake of Joe Lieberman’s nutfuckery in the healthcare reform process, a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows that his standing has taken a big hit back home across the country — his favorable rating is at 31-34, down from 40-28 two weeks earlier. (Update: Whoops; I didn’t realize that this was a poll of “adult Americans”, not Connecticut voters. That’s not exactly as useful.)

• AL-05: Democrats have a pair of credible candidates giving consideration to a run against newborn GOP Rep. Parker Griffith. State Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks has stated that he’s thinking about switching from his gubernatorial bid over to a Congressional campaign. Another very appealing candidate is state PSC Commissioner Susan Parker, whose ties to the district are stronger than Sparks’. Parker says she’s giving the race consideration, and will make an announcement after the holidays.

• MN-06: PPP has some up-ballot observations from their latest House poll. Namely, Norm Coleman and Mark Dayton are damaged goods.

• PA-10: It’s looking more and more clear that John McCain and other national Republicans completely crumbed the play in their efforts to snag a second defection from the Democratic House ranks. Not only did they hand Carney a beautiful talking point (“Hey, John McCain thinks highly enough of me to ask me to join the GOP caucus!”), but they’ve also set the state Republican Party scrambling to disassociate themselves from the national play. The PA GOP says that they had no part in the recruitment effort, saying that they’re looking for “real Republicans” to beat Carney. Meanwhile, Snyder County Commissioner Malcolm Derck, himself the only candidate of note in the GOP primary, called McCain’s efforts “a slap in the face to all rank-and-file Republicans working to take back the seat”. At least this is still excellent news… for John McCain!

• NY-State Sen: SSP data guru jeffmd takes a look at Obama’s performance in each of New York’s state Senate districts in an effort to answer the question: why does the GOP control so many seats?

• Judges: Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor is leading a new campaign to eliminate the election of judges. (Good idea.)

An omnibus of the latest and greatest Parker Griffith news:

• Things got off to a rocky start for freshly-minted turncoat GOP Rep. Parker Griffith when his hometown paper, the Huntsville Times, eviscerated Griffith’s defection as a move made out of self-preservation that will end up hurting his district, which is heavily dependent on government funding for various aerospace and missile defense projects.
• The Times was of course correct in their assessment that Griff’s split would hurt his district — Nancy Pelosi just stripped him of his committee assignments.
• Griffith’s move has also cost him at least some of his staff and political associates: his press secretary called it quits, and all of his DC consultants have severed their ties with him.
• Griffith was also forced to respond to the news that his campaign downloaded voter data from the Alabama Democratic Party just hours before his switch was made official. Griffith has said that they will delete that data. Also, in the run-up to his switch, Griffith conducted internal polling on the general election — but won’t disclose what the results were.
• Republicans must be thrilled to welcome such a staunchly conservative Democrat into their ranks, right? Well, no. Not only are the local teabaggers unsupportive of Griffith, it appears that Republicans higher up the food chain are joining the purity chase, too. State Treasurer Kay Ivey, who is currently running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, slammed Griff for defecting merely as a “ploy” for self-preservation, and that his enrollment in the Republican ranks is an “insult to every grassroots activist who commits untold hours in devotion to getting candidates elected”. (The irony, of course, is that Ivey herself used to be a Dem.) Was this the warm embrace that you were counting on, Griff? Perhaps calling yourself a “lifelong Democrat” and, in previous campaigns, running on a platform of giving “health care for all of the citizens” isn’t the type of background that the Republican base can accept under any circumstances these days — no matter how much you try to apologize for it.
• And speaking of Republicans who want a piece of Griffith’s hide, here’s a familiar name who may be itching to step up: insurance executive Wayne Parker, who gave Griffith a close shave in 2008, is saying that he’s seriously considering an entry into the Republican primary.
• So who will run for the Democrats? There are a few options — after all, this district has a pretty healthy Democratic bench. For one, there’s Susan Parker, a member of the state’s Public Service Commission and former State Auditor. Parker was actually interested in the race back in 2008, but demurred after Griffith jumped in. (It was a shame to me at the time, and an overwhelming shame now.) The problem is that Parker is up for re-election to the PSC next year — so she would have to choose between a relatively easy re-election campaign and a hard-fought congressional scrap.

  The other choice is a name that any self-respecting SSP fan is thoroughly familiar with: state Commissioner of Agriculture and Industries Ron Sparks, who is currently waging an underdog campaign for Governor against Artur Davis. The DCCC called Sparks, and by the sound of it, he seems pretty interested in the campaign. When a candidate doesn’t swat down rumors that he’s considering race-switching with haste, that’s usually a pretty good sign that they’re giving the matter more than just serious thought.

RaceTracker Wiki: AL-05

• FL-Sen: Here’s a big score for Marco Rubio, who’s quickly cementing himself as darling for the conservative movement. He got the keynote address at CPAC’s 2010 gathering, the conservative movement’s version of Lollapalooza. Charlie Crist‘s response? Re-flip-flop on the stimulus! Today he said it was “pretty clear” he did support it at the time. The civil war in Florida is also resulting in a larger spotlight being shone on state party chair (and key Crist ally) Jim Greer, who’s the subject of an interesting (and very critical) Miami Herald piece.

• KY-Sen: A strange kerfuffle erupted in the GOP primary in Kentucky, when Rand Paul earlier this week declined to promise to support Mitch McConnell for minority leader in the face of a hypothetical leadership challenge by Jim DeMint. Paul’s rival, SoS Trey Grayson, pledged fealty to McConnell and attacked Paul for being more beholden to his “Libertarian donor base” than his fellow Kentuckians. Then, yesterday, Paul met privately with McConnell in Louisville, and after having had his brain implant installed a productive conversation, emerged filled with praise for McConnell and saying he had “no reason not to support him.”

• MA-Sen (pdf): Another poll from local pollsters Suffolk give a big lead to AG Martha Coakley, who’s pulling in 44% of the Democratic primary vote. She’s trailed by Stephen Pagliuca at 17, Rep. Michael Capuano at 16, and Alan Khazei at 3. (Coakley was at 47 and Capuano at 9 in September according to Suffolk.) Also, there appears to be one route to victory for Republican state Sen. Scott Brown: make sure that Alan Khazei somehow wins the primary. Brown beats Khazei 33-30, while losing 58-27 to Coakley, 48-29 to Capuano, and 49-27 to Pagliuca. (Brown leads perennial candidate Jack E. Robinson 45-7 in the GOP primary.)

Meanwhile, Capuano got another endorsement from among the ranks of his House colleagues, this one pretty high-profile: Nancy Pelosi. Pagliuca, on the other hand, is trying to dig out of his self-created hole, when he “misunderstood” a debate question and said that he supports reinstating a military draft.

• AL-Gov: Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks seems to have hit on an issue that differentiates him from Rep. Artur Davis in their Democratic gubernatorial primary fight: health care reform. Davis voted against it (seemingly earning him the sudden enmity of the entire netroots), and now Sparks has been loudly touting the public option, as he did at an appearance before the Madison County Democratic Women yesterday.

• CO-Gov: State Senate minority leader Josh Penry thumbed his nose rather unsubtly at ex-Rep. Scott McInnis as he departed the governor’s primary race, saying in a recent interview that not only was he not endorsing McInnis, but also that he still felt that he would be the better candidate. Is he heading for a Tom Tancredo endorsement instead? (After all, Tancredo did a lot to boost Penry’s campaign.) We can only hope.

• IL-Gov: State GOP chair (and would-be Mark Kirk antagonist) Andy McKenna got a substantial boost in his quest for the GOP gubernatorial nomination. He got the endorsement of Tom Cross, the state House minority leader.

• MD-Gov: Republican ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich seems to be giving more weight to the idea of a rematch against Martin O’Malley, if recent comments to the press are any indication. The Republican gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey may be giving him some added incentive.

• TX-Gov: A new Rasmussen poll finds Gov. Rick Perry opening up a big lead over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican gubernatorial primary: 45-36, with 4% to Paulist Debra Medina. This is a big reversal from September’s Rasmussen poll, which gave KBH a 40-38 edge. Hutchison is still racing to the right, as she said that she’d be likely to try to opt out of the public option as governor, but Perry is leading that race too, cheerfully let us know that Barack Obama is “hell-bent on taking America towards a socialist country.”

• DE-AL: State Rep. Greg Lavelle, one of the names dropped by Rep. Mike Castle as suggestions for a successor, said that he won’t take on the uphill task of trying to hold Castle’s seat. Businessman Fred Cullis is the only Republican running so far.

• NC-11: Rep. Heath Shuler’s role in a 2007 land swap has the potential to hurt him next year. The Tennessee Valley Authority’s inspector general cleared him of wrongdoing in the matter (as did the House Ethics committee), but the TVA is saying that Shuler wasn’t honest to the press about it, when he said that there hadn’t been any contact between himself and the TVA.

• NY-23: Although there’s nothing to suggest that Doug Hoffman is in a place where he can catch up to Bill Owens, it’ll still be a while till the election can be certified — possibly not till early next month. (Unfortunately, this means putting off the final results of our predictions contest from last week! We’ll keep you posted.)

• SC-04: Republican Rep. Bob Inglis keeps backing away from his party’s right wing (and probably away from his job, in his dark-red district). He said that he can’t “identify” with what we called the “hard right.” Interestingly, he still identifies as “religious right,” but seems to counterpose that against the teabaggers’ movement, also saying: “As a religious right guy, I’m thinking there was a guy named Jesus who had some things to say about these kinds of concepts. And I don’t want to live in a society that lets a few test cases die on the steps of the hospital. I can’t go there.”

• VA-St. Sen.: The Democrats still control the Virginia state Senate (thanks to none of its seats being in the balance in the election last week), but it’s a fragile 21-19 edge. Especially troublesome: 83-year-old Charles Colgan only reluctantly ran for reelection in 2007, Ralph Northam considered flipping to the Republicans earlier this year, and now Bob McDonnell seems interested in taking a page from Steve Beshear and Eliot Spitzer by appointing Senate Dems to cushy jobs in his administration. On the plus side, though, there are two special elections coming up, to replace Republicans who were elected to other positions last week. The seat of Ken Stolle (new Virginia Beach sheriff) is pretty Republican-leaning, but new AG Ken Cuccinelli’s seat in Democratic-leaning Fairfax County is a potential pickup.

• Redistricting: This is interesting; Republicans keep pushing to make redistricting fairer in Indiana, despite that they’ll control the process coming out of the next census. SoS Todd Rokita has already pushed for laws to make it a more neutral process, and now state Senate President Pro Tem David Long is pushing for an independent commission to draw legislative boundaries.

• Votes: Here’s a first: Republicans actually regretting doing something wrong. They’re privately saying that they “failed to anticipate” the political consequences of a no vote on the Franken amendment, that leaves them exposed to charges of insensitivity to rape victims and hands ammo to Democrats. (Well, maybe that’s more regretting getting caught, rather than regretting doing something wrong…)

• OFA: Organizing for America is firing up the Batsignal, summoning volunteers on the ground in 32 districts that were won by Obama but are held by House Republicans. The plan is for the volunteers to visit the Reps’ offices and demand support for health care reform.

• AR-Sen: With Blanche Lincoln already facing the vague possibility of a primary challenge from her right from Arkansas Senate President Bob Johnson, now there are rumors that she might face a primary challenge from what passes for the left in Arkansas, from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. Halter would focus on Lincoln’s health-care related foot-dragging, but apparently has a track record of threatening to run for higher office and then not following through, so this, like Johnson’s bid, may amount to a big bowl of nothing.

• HI-Sen: Congratulations to Senator Daniel Inouye, who today becomes the third-longest-serving Senator in history and, adding in his House tenure, the fifth-longest-serving Congressperson. The 85-year-old Inouye has been in the Senate for almost 47 years. Inouye passed Ted Kennedy today, and will pass Strom Thurmond in another eight months, but is still chasing Robert Byrd. (Unfortunately, Inouye may be spending his special day being a jerk, by trying to remove Al Franken‘s anti-rape amendment from the defense appropriations bill.)

• KY-Sen: Feeling the heat from Rand Paul in the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky, establishment choice Trey Grayson played the “you ain’t from around these parts, are you?” card, calling himself a “5th generation Kentuckian” and Texas-born Paul an “outsider.” (Of course, by implication, doesn’t that make Grayson the… “insider?” Not exactly the banner you want to run under in 2010.)

• LA-Sen: David Vitter spent several days as the lone high-profile politician in Louisiana to not join in the condemnation of Keith Bardwell, the justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple. Given the uselessness of his response, he might as well not have bothered — Vitter’s spokesperson still didn’t condemn Bardwell, merely rumbling about how “all judges should follow the law as written” and then trying to turn the subject to Mike Stark’s Vitter-stalking.

• AL-Gov: This is a good endorsement for Ron Sparks, but it’s also interesting because it’s so racially fraught: former Birmingham mayor Richard Arrington, the first African-American to be elected that city’s mayor in 1979, endorsed Sparks instead of African-American Rep. Artur Davis Jr. in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Arrington puts it: “I think if we are ever to move forward, across racial lines in this state, we have got to begin to trust each other, work with each other, and I think Ron Sparks can be the kind of governor that helps to make that possible.”

• FL-Gov: Rasmussen released part III of its Florida extravaganza, finding that Republican AG Bill McCollum leads Democratic CFO Alex Sink 46-35. (This is the same sample that had Marco Rubio overperforming Charlie Crist against Kendrick Meek.)

• IA-Gov: Ex-Governor Terry Branstad’s Republican primary rivals aren’t going to go away quietly. Bob vander Plaats attacked Branstad on his insufficient conservatism, ranging from sales tax increases during his tenure, choosing a pro-choice running mate in 1994, and even fundraising for Nebraska’s Ben Nelson.

• NJ-Gov (pdf): One more poll out today, from Rutgers-Eagleton, finds Jon Corzine with a small lead. Corzine leads Chris Christie and Chris Daggett 39-36-20. This is the first poll to find Daggett breaking the 20% mark; also, with the addition of this poll to the heap, it pushes Corzine into the lead in Pollster.com and Real Clear Politics’ regression lines.

• OR-Gov: Two different candidates have suspended their campaigns due to family health problems. One is pretty high-profile: state Sen. Jason Atkinson, who was initially considered to have the inside track toward the GOP nomination in Oregon but who had, in the last few days, been the subject of dropout speculation. (Could this mean that Allen Alley might actually somehow wind up with the nomination?) The other is John Del Arroz, a businessman who had put a fair amount of his own money into a run in the Republican field in CA-11. Best wishes to both of them.

• RI-Gov: While conventional wisdom has seen ex-Republican ex-Senator and likely independent candidate Lincoln Chafee as having a strong shot at capturing the state house by dominating the middle, he’s running into big a problem in terms of poor fundraising. He’s only sitting on $180K, compared with Democratic state Treasurer Frank Caprio’s $1.5 million; that’s what happens when you don’t have a party infrastructure to help bolster the efforts.

• CT-04: While it’s not an explicit endorsement, Betsi Shays, the wife of ex-Rep. Chris Shays, gave $500 to state Sen. Rob Russo last quarter. Russo faces off a more conservative state Senate colleague, Dan Debicella, for the GOP nod to go against freshman Rep. Jim Himes.

• IL-14: Cross out Bill Cross from the list. With Ethan Hastert and state Sen. Randy Hultgren probably consuming most of the race’s oxygen, the former Aurora alderman announced that he wouldn’t be running in the crowded GOP primary field in the 14th to take on Democratic Rep. Bill Foster after all.

• LA-03: Houma attorney Ravi Sangisetty announced his run for the Democratic nomination for the open seat left behind by Charlie Melancon. He’s the first Dem to jump into the race, but certainly not expected to be the only one. He’s already sitting on $130K cash.

• PA-11: After a long period of silence, Hazleton mayor Lou Barletta has re-emerged and sources close to him are saying it’s “highly likely” he’ll try another run at Rep. Paul Kanjorski, who narrowly beat him in 2008. Barletta is encouraged by the lack of presidential coattails and the primary challenge to Kanjorski by Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien — although it’s possible that, if O’Brien emerges from the primary, he might perform better in the general than the rust-covered Kanjorski.

• NJ-St. Ass.: If you haven’t already, check out NJCentrist’s diary, filled with lots of local color, on the upcoming elections in New Jersey’s state Assembly. Republicans seem poised to pick up a couple seats in south Jersey, which would bring them closer but leave the Dems still in control.

• State Legislatures: Another fascinating graphic from 538.com, this one about the ideological makeups of various state legislatures. Apparently, political scientists have found a DW/Nominate-style common-space method of ranking all state legislators. The reason this is brought up is because of NY-23 candidate Dede Scozzafava, who it turns out is pretty near the center of New York legislative Republicans, not the flaming liberal she’s made out to be, although that puts her near the nationwide center of all state legislators, because NY Republicans are still, believe it or not, pretty centrist on the whole. There’s plenty else to see on the chart, including how Mississippi and Louisiana Democrats (who control their legislatures) are still to the right of New York and New England Republicans, and how (unsurprisingly, at least to me) California and Washington are the states with the simultaneously most-liberal Democrats and most-conservative Republicans.

• Mayors: In New York, incumbent Michael Bloomberg is holding on to a double-digit lead according to Marist, beating Democratic comptroller William Thompson 52-36 (with Thompson down from 52-43 last month). In Seattle, Joe Mallahan is opening up a lead over Mike McGinn according to SurveyUSA, 43-36, compared with a 38-38 tie three weeks ago. (The Seattle race is nonpartisan and both are very liberal by the rest of the country’s standards, but Seattle politics tends to be fought on a downtown interests/neighborhoods divide, and this race is turning into no exception as the previously amorphous Mallahan is consolidating most of the city’s business and labor support.)

• Nassau Co. Exec: Candidates slamming each other over ticky-tacky financial mistakes like unpaid liens is commonplace, but it’s not commonplace when the unpaid liens add up to almost a million dollars. Republican Nassau County Executive candidate Ed Mangano has a whopping $900K liens against property owned by his family business. (Nassau County is the western part of Long Island’s suburbs.)

• Fundraising: CQ has one more slice-and-dice of the third quarter fundraising information, listing the  biggest self-funders so far this year. Top of the list is Joan Buchanan, who already lost the Democratic primary in the CA-10 special election, who gave herself $1.1 million. In 2nd place is Republican Brad Goehring, running in CA-11 and self-funder to the tune of $650K; 7 of the list of 10 are Republicans.

• CO-Sen: That was fast… two days after saying he was probably going to drop out of the Colorado Senate race, now Weld County DA Ken Buck is likely to stay in the race. Apparently there has been enough conservative discontent over the seeming annointment by the NRSC and state party of former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton as the nominee that Buck may feel he can ride that backlash to primary victory. (Norton may well be conservative herself, but she’s such a blank slate that there’s no way to tell, and at any rate, conservative activists aren’t taking kindly to DC meddling this year, as we’ve seen in the Missouri and New Hampshire races.)

• FL-Sen: Too cute by half? Charlie Crist’s appointment of his ex-Chief of Staff, George LeMieux, to the Senate is getting panned by many of the major newspaper editorial boards in the state. (J)

• IA-Sen: Big Bruce Braley boffo boomlet busts! The sophomore Representative confirmed that, despite a sudden flurry of speculation, he’ll stay where he is, and not run against Chuck Grassley for the Senate. Former state legislators Bob Krause and Tom Fiegen are already in the race.

• IL-Sen: Here’s another Senate race where the GOP rabble is getting restive about one candidate getting the establishment stamp of approval. There are eight other candidates besides Mark Kirk, and religious right ultra-conservatives are trying to coalesce behind one, with Hinsdale real estate developer Patrick Hughes seeming to get the most mention. The most notable name in the anti-Kirk camp? Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, who’s 85 and still going strong. The article does mention that there have been several other Senate primaries in Illinois where a conservative upstart beat the establishment moderate, most notably Al Salvi’s upset of Bob Kustra in the open seat race of 1996.

• KY-Sen: You better believe it’s on. Rand Paul’s backers are gearing up for another Moneybomb!, this time cleverly scheduled for the same day (Sep. 23) as Trey Grayson’s big DC fundraiser where he’ll be feted by 23 Republican Senators.

• LA-Sen: David Vitter seems like he has an endless supply of horse’s heads to put in the beds of potential GOP primary opponents. This time, former Lt. General and Katrina recovery hero Russel Honore backed down within a few days of his rumored interest appearing, much the same as with Suzanne Terrell and John Cooksey.

• MA-Sen: There was a brief flurry of speculation that Vicki Kennedy, Ted Kennedy’s widow, would be the placeholder short-term appointee to his seat (assuming Massachusetts Dems followed through on changing state law regarding appointment), pushed along by Sens. Dodd and Hatch. However, it now appears she’s not interested in the interim appointment (or running in the special). Meanwhile, the many contenders among the Massachusetts House delegation are watching what ex-Rep. Joe Kennedy II does; Ed Markey and Michael Capuano, for instance, both sound eager to run in the special election but will defer to a member of the Kennedy family.

• NV-Sen: There’s the old expression about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, but Harry Reid and the Las Vegas Review-Journal are getting into a little pissing match. Reid told the LVRJ that “I hope you go out of business.” The LVRJ’s publisher shot back, calling him a “bully” and decrying his “creepy tactic.” (I expect a Reid press release saying something about rubber and glue is forthcoming.)

• AL-Gov: The specific details seem few and far between, but Ben Smith leaks some tidbits about an AL-Gov poll commissioned by the Alabama Education Association (the state’s teacher’s union, naturally a pro-Democratic organization). It’s good news for Rep. Artur Davis, who leads all GOPers in the race, ranging from ex-judge Roy Moore by 6 to Treasurer Kay Ivey by 12. Davis also leads Ag Commissioner Ron Sparks by 30 in the Dem primary, and has a 3-to-1 favorable ratio.

• NJ-Gov: The Jon Corzine camp is out with a hard-hitting new TV spot, nailing Chris Christie over his undisclosed loan to carpool buddy Michele Brown. Also, unsurprisingly but critical to his survival, Corzine got the SEIU‘s endorsement last Friday.

• PA-Gov: Scranton mayor Chris Doherty has been casting a wide net as he looks for a step up, considering the Lt. Gov. spot and a PA-11 primary challenge against Paul Kanjorski, but now he may be considering the big enchilada: a run for Governor. With the two Dem frontrunners both anti-abortion Pittsburgh-area Dems (Allegheny Co. Exec Dan Onorato and state Auditor Jack Wagner), there’s may be an opening for someone pro-choice from the East (which is something ex-Rep. Joe Hoeffel is also considering).

• VA-Gov: Republican AG Bob McDonnell’s attempts to position himself as a moderate in the Virginia Governor’s race hit a big snag this weekend, as the Washington Post took a look at the master’s thesis he wrote while a 34-year old graduate student at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. McDonnell railed against feminists, working mothers, contraceptive use by married couples, cohabitators, homosexuals, and fornicators. McDonnell protests rather weakly that his views have “changed” since he wrote the thesis.

• CA-10: SurveyUSA is out with their final poll of the special election to replace Ellen Tauscher, and finds little movement in the past two weeks. Lt. Gov. John Garamendi (D) leads with 25%, followed by Republican David Harmer with 20%. The other two major Dems in the race, state Sen. Mark DeSaulnier and Assemblywoman Joan Buchanan, are at 16% and 12%, respectively. (J)

• MO-04: Retiring GOP Sen. Kit Bond seems displeased that national Republicans are trying to knock off veteran Democratic Rep. Ike Skelton next year. In an interview during a recent Cardinals game, Bond said that “it’s very very important for us to have a man like Ike Skelton” in Congress. (J)

• Data: The Office of the House Clerk has released its biennial summary of the 2008 presidential & congressional elections (PDF). The document contains official results for every federal race in the nation, all in one place. (D)

• 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.  

• AL-07: Former Selma Mayor James Perkins (who was defeated in his attempt to seek a third term in 2008) is jumping into the open seat race here. He is likely to draw support away from Terri Sewell, Artur Davis’s preferred successor, also a Selma native.

• AL-Gov: Speaking of good ol’ Artur, he’s released an internal poll which shows him up 56-26 over Ron Sparks and 54-25 over Sue Bell in the Dem primary. He also purports to lead Republican Bradley Byrne by a 43-38 margin. I’m finding it hard to believe that a congressman has such high name rec (59-6 for Davis among Dems statewide!). But the best checksum: This survey has Obama’s favorables at 58%. Last month, SUSA had them at just 48%. Which do you think is more likely? In other AL-Gov news, state Sen. Roger Bedford (D) says he won’t run.

• IA-Gov: State Auditor David Vaudt, one of only two Republicans holding statewide office in Iowa, has declined to challenge incumbent Gov. Chet Culver next year.

• NC-Sen: Both Reps. Bob Etheridge and Mike McIntyre are leaving the door open to a Senate bid, with McIntyre sounding more enthused. Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton is “not considering” the race, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker is “not looking at running,” and state Rep. Grier Martin claims his “decision to decline a chance to run against Elizabeth Dole was also not to run in 2010.”

• NV-Gov: Jim Gibbons’ poll numbers are just horrendous – in a new Mason-Dixon survey for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, 54% say they would “definitely vote to replace” him. Gibbons’ campaign manager claims things are lookin’ up, because his boss’s approvals were 25-69 in a January Reno Gazette poll but are an awesome 17-52 in this one.

• NV-Sen: Meanwhile, the same poll finds pretty lousy numbers for Harry Reid as well, but better than Gibbons’. Reid gets 45% “definitely replace,” but his approvals are “only” 38-50. The big difference, of course, is that the GOP doesn’t really have any strong candidates to challenge Reid, while plenty of folks are lining up to take a whack at Gibbons.

• FL-CFO: Checking in with an old friend, it looks like Annette Taddeo is considering a run to replace Alex Sink as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer.

• Redistricting: CQ has a story on five key races that could affect congressional redistricting. Roll Call has published the second half of its two-part series on the same subject (part one here). And finally, the National Conference of State Legislatures is holding the first in a series of training seminars on redistricting in San Francisco, June 11-14.

• NY-20: Jim Tedisco has moved into a 12-vote lead as the counties continue to engage in recanvassing of the lever-pull machines, which will continue next week. (Paper ballots are impounded at least until the scheduled court hearing on the 6th.)

In other news, Tedisco stepped down from his role as minority leader in the Assembly today. (That shouldn’t necessarily be seen as a sign of confidence in winning the election; he was facing a no-confidence vote from his caucus.)

• SD-Sen: The 2010 South Dakota senate race isn’t looking very fruitful for Dems, even in the unlikely event we run a top-tier recruit. (If Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin goes for a promotion, at this point she seems more interested in governor.) R2K polls SD for Daily Kos and finds that John Thune runs ahead of both ex-Sen. Tom Daschle, 53-40, and Herseth Sandlin, 51-39. All three have pretty good favorables; South Dakotans just seem to prefer to keep Thune where he is.

• CT-Sen: In the wake of yesterday’s terrible poll, a primary challenger to Chris Dodd has already popped out of the woodwork. Roger Pearson, the former First Selectman of Greenwich, has formed an exploratory committee. He seems little-known outside (or even inside) of Greenwich, but we’ll have to see if he can catch an anti-Dodd wave.

• AL-Gov: Looks like the Democratic primary for Governor is about to get pretty crowded; state Sen. Roger Bedford is now openly mulling a run, and the inside chatter appears that the controversial but powerful northern Alabama legislator is pretty serious about a bid.

Meanwhile, ArturD2 is kvetching like a five year-old over the probable entry of Ag Comm’r Ron Sparks into the race. (J)

• NH-Sen: Despite entreaties from the NRSC, Judd Gregg says he won’t seek re-election. Apparently, he wants to devote all his time to supporting the president’s agenda in the Senate. (D)

• CO-Sen: Appointed senator Michael Bennet pulled in startling fundraising numbers for the 1st quarter, raising $1.37 million. Bennet is facing a paltry field of GOPers so far (with ex-Rep. Bob Beauprez their best bet), so this may actually serve more to cause former state house speaker Andrew Romanoff to think twice about a primary challenge.

• AK-Sen: With charges dropped against Ted Stevens, Alaska GOP chair Rudy Reudrich wants a do-over on last year’s election. Gov. Sarah Palin also endorsed the idea, despite her taking an anti-Stevens stand in the closing weeks of the election. However, Rep. Don Young doesn’t support the idea, saying Mark Begich “will be in the Senate and will do a good job.” (In fact, Young has a totally different idea: Stevens should run for governor in 2010 against Palin.) Stevens’ friends in the Senate also seemed resigned to the election being over.

• RI-Gov: Ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee seemed to back off a bit from previous statements that he will be running for governor as an independent, saying that he will decide by May whether or not to run, once his current position (teaching at Brown) ends.

• Votes: Yesterday was the big vote in the House on the Obama budget. After a lot of public vacillation, even Joe Cao voted no, joining every other Republican. 20 Democrats voted no; it’s a who’s who of who’s vulnerable (with a few entrenched Blue Dogs joining them): Barrow, Boren, Bright, Childers, Donnelly, Foster, Griffith, Kosmas, Kratovil, Kucinich, Markey, Marshall, Matheson, McIntyre, Minnick, Mitchell, Nye, Perriello, Taylor, and Teague. The only ‘nay’ votes in districts won by Obama were John Barrow (who’s actually been fairly cooperative so far this session), Bill Foster (usually a good guy, but a deficit hawk), and Dennis Kucinich (who assumedly voted against the budget from the left for not containing enough magic ponies). In the Senate, a few hours later, Evan Bayh and Ben Nelson were the only defections.

• NASA: Here’s a guy we’re glad to see land on his feet: Nick Lampson, who used to represent NASA’s Houston-area facilities in TX-22, is now on the short list of potential NASA Administrators. Even Pete Olson, the guy who defeated Lampson, is advocating for Lampson.