Tag: Leslie Petersen

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist has to be feeling good about having limited this damage: few major Republican donors have switched over from Crist to Marco Rubio, after his switch to an independent campaign. Only five of Crist’s donors who gave more than $200 pre-switch have given similar amounts to Rubio since then, totalling only $6,340.

• LA-Sen: Clarus Research, on behalf of local TV station WWL, finds a somewhat closer Senate race in Louisiana than other pollster have; they see David Vitter leading Charlie Melancon 48-36 (with Vitter sporting a 51/37 approval). Vitter’s also in solid shape in his primary (suggesting that Chet Traylor internal was pretty thoroughly ginned-up with “informed ballot” questions); Vitter leads Traylor 74-5, with 3 for Nick Accardo.

• MO-Sen: The Missouri Senate race, not the recipient of much national attention until just recently, is now at the epicenter of ad spending. The DSCC is plowing $4 million into ads here (along with $1.3 million in KY-Sen), while Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads is also launching a new ad in Missouri, as well as one in NV-Sen. The combined buy is for $2 million (no word on how it breaks down between the states); maybe not coincidentally, Crossroads raised $2 million in July, almost all of which came from exactly two donors (prominent conservative donors Harold Simmons and Jerry Perenchio).

• WA-Sen: Maybe that usual calculus of adding Dino Rossi and Clint Didier votes in the primary to see if they add up to the Patty Murray votes shouldn’t apply… Didier just held a press conference today to announce that he’s not endorsing Rossi (at least not yet). He said he’d back Rossi if he promised to pledge to support no new taxes, sponsor an anti-abortion bill, and… get this… never vote for anything that would “increase the federal budget.” We’ll have to see if Rossi even bothers dignifying that with a response.

• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: A new “MindField Poll” (yes, that’s what they call it) by local pollster R.L. Repass finds an unsurprisingly large lead for Gov. Joe Manchin in the Senate special election; he leads GOPer John Raese 54-32, and is sitting on a 65% approval. They also look at the gubernatorial election in 2012 in the post-Manchin world, and find GOP Rep. Shelly Capito in the best shape. She beats all Democrats mentioned: Senate President (and Governor, if Manchin quits) Earl Ray Tomblin (43-29), state House Speaker Rick Thompson (44-29), Treasurer John Perdue (44-32), and SoS Natalie Tennant (40-37). Former Republican SoS Betty Ireland was also polled, but loses to all the Democrats (by margins as large as 44-24 to Tennant).

• CO-Gov: On what seems like a quest to be the first ever major party candidate to get 0% in a gubernatorial race, Dan Maes is busy pissing off his one remaining clutch of supporters, the teabaggers, with his choice of the somewhat centrist Tambor Williams as his running mate. She was a supporter of anti-TABOR Referenda C and D, but more aggravating to Maes backers is that although she says she’s anti-abortion, she’s taken some notably pro-choice votes in the leigslature. Maes hasn’t lost any major endorsers over it, but is running damage control on the right.

• IL-Gov: It seems like Pat Quinn may be racing Maes to the bottom, in terms of campaign woes. He and his media team — David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD — parted ways, seemingly at Quinn’s decision. AKPD doesn’t seem to sad to be heading out the door; their terse statement about the parting of ways was, “We and the Quinn campaign agreed that our divergent approaches to disciplined, professional communications are incompatible. We wish Pat well.”

• FL-08: Daniel Webster is getting some last minute help on the stump in the closing days of the Florida primary campaign. Mike Huckabee (who endorsed Webster a long whiel ago) will appear with him this weekend.

• FL-22: Here’s a hilarious little piece on Allen West’s attempts to surround and conquer his district, rather than actually do anything in it: he just opened his new campaign office in West Palm Beach… in FL-23. He recently also held a town hall in FL-19, and perhaps most significantly, lives in Plantation, in FL-20. (It is worth noting the 22nd is one convoluted-looking district.)

• Mayors: That vaunted “anti-incumbent” year hasn’t panned out much in the primaries, but there is one other race coming up soon that looks like it’s on track for a loss by an incumbent. A new Clarus poll of the Washington, DC mayoral race finds Vincent Gray leading incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty, 39-36, in the Democratic primary.

• Rasmussen:

• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks (D) 34%, Robert Bentley (R) 58%

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 27%, John Boozman (R) 65%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 38%, John Robitaille (R) 20%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 32%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 40%, Victor Moffitt (R) 17%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 33%

• WY-Gov: Leslie Petersen (D) 24%, Matt Mead (R) 58%

The Washington Senate primary was the main event last night, even though it the results were entirely predictable (as seen by PPP’s pre-primary poll, which got it almost exactly right). Patty Murray is currently at 46, with Dino Rossi at 34; Clint Didier doesn’t advance, at 12. Both sides, naturally, are foreseeing doom for their opposition based on the results. It’s a little premature to foresee anything, though, since, as if often the case in Washington, only about half of all precincts have reported, and the ones that haven’t reported are disproportionately in Seattle. (50% of King County is in, while 67% of precincts outside of King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties are in.) For what it’s worth, right now there are a few thousand more total GOP votes than there are total Dem votes in the Senate race (taking into account all 15 participants), though that will change once Seattle reports more. And there’s also the problem of getting teabagger votes to switch over from Didier to Rossi; Didier is currently withholding his endorsement, wanting to see “more conviction” and patronizingly insisting on giving Rossi “some coaching” first on how to reach his supporters.

One place where the results don’t bode well for Dems is WA-03, where Denny Heck is currently in first but with only 32%, against a fractured GOP field. He’ll face state Rep. Jaime Herrera, who hit 27%, followed by teabaggers David Hedrick and David Castillo at 13 and 12 (repeating the oft-seen pattern where the Tea Party could have been relevant if only they’d galvanized behind one candidate), and by Dem activist Cheryl Crist, who pulled in a surprisingly large 12, all of it seeming to come from Heck’s left flank. The total GOP vote topped 50%, and as Greg Giroux demonstrates with a terrific spreadsheet comparing the ’08 primaries and generals, there’s not much variation from the Dem and GOP totals in the primary to the November numbers. Americans for Prosperity isn’t wasting any time; they’re already jumping into the district with a $180K ad buy with a negative ad against Heck.

Real Clear Politics sees trouble ahead for Rick Larsen in WA-02, who’s currently ahead of GOPer John Koster 43-41; however, if you do the Giroux-style math, you’ll notice that two other random Dems vacuumed up 10% of the vote, which would project out to a 53-47 advantage for Larsen in a head-to-head. (The good part of the RCP article is about how Washington’s top 2 primary has taken the bellwether position once occupied by Maine’s weird early general election, from which we get the saying “As goes Maine, so goes the nation.”) They also took notice of Rep. Adam Smith finishing in the mid-50s in WA-09; he’ll probably face Pierce Co. Commissioner Dick Muri, although that primary hasn’t been called yet. And in the one seat where Dems are on offense, in WA-08, it’s Dave Reichert vs. Suzan DelBene, who got 48 and 26 respectively (with totals of 59 GOP-41 Dems).

Wyoming’s gubernatorial race came down to the wire on the Republican side. Former US Attorney Matt Mead is the victor, beating state Auditor Rita Meyer 29-28, with Ron Micheli at 26 and Colin Simpson at 16. Mead’s 714 vote lead was within the margin for a recount, but Meyer conceded and won’t seek a recount. Mead will face Democratic former state party chair Leslie Petersen, who won her own primary over Pete Gosar 48-37.

Finally, in California’s 15th Senate district, Republican Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee defeated Dem John Laird in a near-identical replay of their first (but inconclusive) special election. Blakeslee won by a 49-44 margin, only slightly different from the original 49-42 result. As a pointless aside, there were more votes cast in this election (with the district’s more than 800K residents) than there were in the Wyoming gubernatorial race.

• WA-Sen (Top 2): The billed main event tonight is the Senate primary in Washington, but really, there’s not much to see here, other than for Californians to get a good look at what they just signed themselves up for, with the weirdness that is the Top 2 primary. Polling has indicated that a Patty Murray/Dino Rossi is all but inevitable, with teabaggers Clint Didier and Paul Akers having gotten little traction (although they have successfully forced Rossi to the right, rhetorically). The real question for pollwatchers is what percentage Murray and Rossi get, as some sort of tea leaf for November. Polling would seem to project Murray in the mid-40s and Rossi in the mid-30s, with Didier in the low teens, but there is so much expectations management going on that that any result will be immediately spun as imminent doom/triumph. At any rate, the primary has always been a mediocre predictor of the general (just ask Darcy Burner, who beat Dave Reichert in the 2008 WA-08 primary), and that may be compounded today by mischievous Dems crossing over to try to help the unelectable Didier past Rossi (or else sitting out, as there’s no Dem-on-Dem drama anywhere above the state legislative level).

• WA-03 (Top 2): When a number of solid Dems jumped into this open seat race in the wake of Brian Baird’s retirement announcement, this looked like it had the potential for a true rumble in the jungle (primary). But instead it coalesced into something pretty similar to the Senate race, where we were left with one establishment Democrat left standing, Denny Heck (a former state Rep. from long ago, now a wealthy businessman), and on the other side, one underwhelming establishment Republican (state Rep. Jaime Herrera) and a couple feistier Tea Party types (former Bush-era deputy assistant VA Sec. David Castillo, and David Hedrick, whose main claim to fame is shouting down Baird at a town hall). Which GOPer faces Heck is hard to gauge, without any polling evidence; Herrera has the financial advantage (enough to run ads on cable, unlike Castillo), but Castillo has more local endorsements and seemingly more ground-level enthusiasm. If this turns out close, it may be days before we know which GOPer advances, as Washington results are compiled notoriously slowly — ballots postmarked through today can be counted.

• WY-Gov (D): Dave Freudenthal could have opted to challenge term limits in court but decided not to, leaving the Blue Team struggling to field a candidate here. State Democratic Party chair Leslie Petersen jumped in, as did former University of Wyoming quarterback Pete Gosar. and three Some Dudes. No one’s really paid much attention to this primary, given that whoever wins will be considered quite the long shot against whoever the Republican nominee turns out to be. The last (and only?) poll of this race had Petersen leading Gosar 30-22, with undecideds through the roof. Can you really blame the undecided 48% of Wyoming Dems though? (JMD)

• WY-Gov (R): Seven GOPers have jumped into the race, perhaps sensing an opportunity. Four of them exceed the “Some Dude” threshold, namely state Auditor Rita Meyer, former US Attorney Matt Mead, state House speaker (and son of former US Senator Alan) Colin Simpson, and state Agriculture Director Ron Micheli. Sarah Palin’s gotten her grubby Grizzly paws in this race, endorsing Meyer; George H.W. Bush countered with an endorsement of Simpson. The same Mason-Dixon poll had Meyer leading Mead 27-24, with Simpson at 17 and Micheli at 12. No runoffs here, so whoever pulls the plurality tonight will be the nominee. (JMD)

• CA-SD15 (special general): Abel Maldonado vacated this Central Coast state Senate seat months ago after he was confirmed as Lieutenant Governor, but no one got 50% in the special primary, so we’re doing it again! Republican state Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee of San Luis Obispo fell just a tad short of clearing the 50%+1 barrier last time, scoring 49.4% to Democratic teacher John Laird’s 41.8%, with two independents of different parties getting the rest. The frustrating (or humorous) part in all of this is that we get to do this four person dance all over again, since the top finisher of each party moves on from the primary to the general! Given that Blakeslee came so close last time, it’s hard to imagine what’s shifted in the last eight weeks that Laird can pull this out and put the CA Senate Dems one closer to the magic 2/3rds mark. The wildcard, as always in special elections, is low turnout, but given how the enthusiasm gap has been, we can probably get around to anticipating what arcana the special election for Blakeslee’s Assembly seat will bring. (JMD)

Polls close at 9 pm ET (7 pm MT) in Wyoming, and 11 pm ET (8 pm PT) in Washington.

If you have predictions, please feel free to share them in the comments.

CT-Sen: Linda McMahon has already spent at least $22 million on her senatorial bid – and though she has plans to shell out much more, she’s already the fourth-largest self-funder of all time. The good news is that the top three are pretty uninspiring: Jon Corzine (NJ-Sen 2000: $60 million, 50.1% in general); Blair Hull (IL-Sen 2004: $29 million, 11% in primary); Michael Huffington (CA-Sen 1994: $28 million, 45% in general). Check out the second page of CQ’s piece to see who rounds out the rest of the top 10. Only three actually won a seat in the Senate, and all of them served one term or less – by choice!

FL-Sen: Ah – live by the zillionaire asshole, die by the zillionaire asshole. Joe Trippi, who apparently thought he could make a buck by helping schmuckface Jeff Greene run negative ads against Kendrick Meek, has been axed. This is pretty unsurprising, in light of an in-depth story by the St. Pete Times which catalogs just how much of a jerkass Greene actually is. Here’s a representative sample:

Adam Lambert worked as captain of Greene’s 145-foot yacht, Summerwind, earlier this year.

“He has total disregard for anybody else,” chuckled Lambert, who said he was Greene’s 20th and 22nd Summerwind captain (No. 21 quit after a few hours with Greene).

“I don’t think I ever once had an actual conversation with him. It was always, ‘I should just get rid of you, what f—— good are you? You’re just a f—— boat driver. You’re the third-highest paid employee in my corporation and I should just get rid of you,’ ” Lambert, 43, recalled by phone from a yacht in Croatia. “It didn’t bother me. I just felt sorry for the man. He doesn’t seem very happy.”

Quite apropos of all this, Dave Catanese takes a look at the “band of others” which has come together to run Charlie Crist’s campaign. Catanese says that Crist’s team “is staffed by a collection of misfits who run the gamut from longtime loyalists to out-of-state hired guns. They have worked for Democrats, for Republicans and even for prominent independents. As with Crist, ideology appears to take a back seat to winning office.”

MO-Sen: Mostly-failed teabagger Chuck Purgason has an internal poll out (at least, I think it’s an internal) from Magellan Strategies… but that’s not really the point. There are two super-huge problems with this poll. First off, there are literally zero undecideds – Purgason claims he’s beating Dem Robin Carnahan 56-44. Secondly, releasing a general election poll just days before an almost hopeless primary looks extremely unserious. I don’t give a damn about Purgason, but I don’t think either of these issues make Magellan look particularly good.

GA-Gov: Barack Obama is visiting Atlanta to speak to a disabled veterans convention and to host a DNC fundraiser today, but Dem gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes will be visiting other parts of the state. Several prominent Dems are planning to attend the events, including Labor Comm’r Michael Thurmond (our senate nominee), and Reps. David Scott and Sanford Bishop, the latter of whom has a competitive race this fall.

NY-Gov: Steve Levy has completed his transition from widely disliked xenophobic DINO to memorable Republican loser: He said he wouldn’t seek the Independence Party’s line this fall, and formally gave his backing to Rick Lazio.  Meanwhile, Elizabeth Benjamin says a source tells her that another disgruntled Republican, the vile Carl Paladino, is doing the opposite – he’s reconsidering his decision not to run on a third-party line and may run on his own “Taxpayers Party” line if he loses the GOP primary in September. Apparently, the teabaggers are taking the long view here, hoping that they can create a “true” conservative rival to the, ah, Conservative Party, even if that means helping Andrew Cuomo win the gubernatorial race.

WY-Gov: Mason-Dixon did a poll of the Wyoming gubernatorial primaries for the Casper Star-Tribune. On the GOP side, state Auditor Rita Meyer leads with 27, followed by former U.S. Attorney Matt Mead with 24, House Speaker Colin Simpson with 17, and former legislator and state Ag. Director Ron Micheli with 12. For Democrats, former state Dem chair Leslie Petersen leads pilot and former University of Wyoming football star Pete Gosar by a 30-22 margin.

FL-08: Franking – the privilege that allows members of Congress to mail out nominally “informational” materials to constituents at taxpayer expense – is one of those things that’s usually a lame non-issue… until it’s an issue. Incumbents have been pushing the boundaries of proper franking for centuries, and it rarely gets traction in campaigns, but I really wonder if Alan Grayson’s gone too far with this one. He recently sent out a DVD to 100,000 homes in his district (at a cost of $73K) titled “Watch Congressman Grayson in Action!” featuring a few dozen clips of his greatest hits in office. Maybe the video will be popular, maybe no one will care, maybe some Republicans will howl and get ignored – we’ll see.

IL-10 (PDF): It’s a bit musty, but Mike Memoli got his hands on an internal poll from the Dan Seals campaign taken in mid-May by Anzalone-Liszt. The numbers are a damn sight better than most Dem internals, showing Seals with a 46-38 lead over Republican Bob Dold, and a 41-32 lead among independents. Despite the poll’s age, I’d be surprised if things had changed a whole lot since then, given that the air war hasn’t really been joined yet.

IL-13: Dem Scott Harper had apparently been trying to shop the results of an informed ballot test on a recent internal poll from Global Strategy Group but didn’t seem to get many bites. So he finally decided to pull a Raul Labrador and release the proper toplines, despite their utter – almost extreme – suckitude. Rep. Judy Biggert leads Harper by a 55-29 margin. The most ridonc thing is that Biggert felt compelled to put out her own, not-exactly-dueling internal in response. I say that because the numbers in Biggert’s survey (taken by American Viewpoint) show her up 61-28. This was really not a well-managed move by the Harper campaign.

KY-06: Republican Andy Barr, formerly a top legal aide to disgraced former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, is coming under fire for his shoddy handling of a response to a government records request under the state’s equivalent to the Freedom of Information Act when he worked for Fletcher. In a 2007 report, then-AG Greg Stumbo (a Dem) said that Barr’s failure to produce records on account of their alleged non-existence meant that he was responsible for “records mismanagement.” However, Stumbo’s office did not determine that Barr had actually violated the state open records law.

LA-02: The DCCC added state Rep. Cedric Richmond to its Red to Blue program on Friday. This tells me two things: First, the D-Trip doesn’t think much of Richmond’s primary challenger, fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta. Second, DC Dems are concerned enough about Rep. Joe Cao’s staying power that they’re getting involved in a reasonably contested primary, something they have largely avoided this cycle. Now in fairness, Louisiana has a very late primary – August 28th – with an absurdly late runoff on October 2nd. So I can understand wanting to avoid a pressured one-month campaign. Still, this suggests to me that this race is not the “gimme” we might have once imagined.

NY-01: Stuck behind Newsday’s paywall is a story which says that GOPer Christopher Cox has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate fellow Republican Randy Altschuler’s ballot petitions. This is exactly the kind of war that Democrats in New York have been hoping for. I can’t wait to read more about it. And don’t forget that there’s a third candidate in the race, George Demos, who is being publicly slammed for alleged ethical lapses while he was an SEC attorney by a former supporter, John Catsimatidis. You may recall that Cox is engaged to Catsimatidis’s daughter, which explains the old man’s turnabout.

NY-15: You’ve probably already seen this, but Barack Obama said in an interview with CBS News that Charlie Rangel should “end his career with dignity.” Really wonder if the old bull is going to keep fighting this thing.

NY-24: Mmm… donuts. The owner of a local donut shop, Michael Sadallah, filed a lawsuit trying to knock Republican Richard Hanna off the Independence Party line. Sadallah, an Independence Party member, has also donated to Rep. Mike Arcuri. Oral arguments are this week – good luck, dude!

OK-05: True Some Dude James Lankford just earned the endorsement of third-place finisher (and state Rep.) Mike Thompson, who scored 18% in the first round despite spending $900,000. Lankford took 34% and former state Rep. Kevin Calvey had 33%. Lankford and Calvey face off in an August 24th runoff.

Kansas: A rare bit of good news on the voter registration front: Over the last year in Kansas, “Democrats gained 11,260 voters, rising to 460,318; unaffiliated voters increased 38,764 to 490,395, and Republican ranks increased 3,189 to 744,975.” Obviously, that’s a pretty sizable edge for the GOP, but it’s still nice to see Dem gains both in absolute numbers and percentages outstrip the Republicans – especially in such a red state, and especially in a year like this.

• CT-Sen: Where’s the New York Times when you need them? At least we have the Post to go there: way back when she was applying for an appointed seat on Connecticut’s Board of Education, one of Linda McMahon’s selling points was that she had a degree in education. Nope, it quickly was revealed that her degree was in Freedom French (which, to my mind, is a lot harder to parse away through semantic obfuscation than “in Vietnam” — I mean, this is just a flat-out lie). Jodi Rell still picked McMahon for the board.

• IL-Sen: Where’s the New York Times when you need them, Part II? Mark Kirk has had to admit that previous claims about his military experience weren’t “precise,” when it turned out that the “Naval Intelligence Officer of the Year” award went to Kirk’s entire unit, not himself as stated on his website’s bio.

• TX-Sen: Remember when gubernatorial candidate Kay Bailey Hutchison promised to resign her Senate seat as soon as she tied up those last few legislative loose ends? After dragging that out to finish her term instead, now she’s making noises about just continuing on like nothing ever happened and running for another full term in 2012. Questions remain as to whether she’d attract high-profile primary competition if she stayed; would-be competitors would have to be heartened by her weak performance in the gubernatorial primary.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman pretty much ended her viability as a candidate in the general election with her closing argument ad for the GOP primary, where she demands border crackdowns and opposes “amnesty.” (In fact, check out the photo at Politico’s link; one picture says more than 1000 words could about Pete Wilson handing the Prop 187 turd torch to Whitman. UPDATE: Oops, photo not there anymore, but see here.) To make sure the message gets across to those least likely to be enthused about that, the California Nurses Association is running a Spanish-language ad on Hispanic radio stations that replays her comments.

• MI-Gov: This endorsement isn’t exactly a surprise, seeing as how Andy Dillon is widely disliked by Michigan’s public employee unions, but still it’s an important building block for Virg Bernero. The Michigan Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union with 155K members, gave its nod to Lansing mayor Bernero in the Democratic gubernatorial primary; Bernero also has the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, which includes the UAW.

• NY-Gov: Has anyone ever had to confirm to the media that “no, I’m not dropping out,” and then actually gone on to win a race? Steve Levy seems intent on being the first to try to do that. With the mellifluously-named M. Myers Mermel on the verge of getting the backing of the Queens GOP, the GOP/Conservative field is basically collapsing into chaos in the wake of the infighting at the Conservative Party convention, where Levy and Carl Paladino backers forced a placeholder (Ralph Lorigo) onto the Con primary ballot in hopes that Rick Lazio doesn’t win the GOP convention. Paladino’s camp is even talking up the possibility of creating a whole different “Tea Party” ballot line. There’s now also talk of creating a new ballot line out of whole cloth coming from state GOP chair Ed Cox of all places, as a means of helping the GOP’s preferred candidates circumvent the Conservative Party’s preferences.

• SD-Gov: Polling the fast-approaching (June 8) GOP gubernatorial primary in South Dakota has, oddly enough, not been a high priority for any pollsters, so money may be our main guide here. Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard is the clear winner by that criteria, having raised $1.65 mil over the cycle, more than double the $700K of next-best state Sen. majority leader Dave Knudsen. Interestingly, though, South Dakota is the only non-southern state to use runoffs, and with three other candidates in the running, those two may find themselves facing off again in late June.

• WY-Gov: Our long national nightmare is over: we have a credible Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Wyoming. State party chair Leslie Petersen took one for the team and filed the paperwork to run in the Democratic primary on Aug. 17. The Natrona Co. party chair, R.C. Johnson, had said she’d run if no one else did, so I suppose the state chair running when no one else did is, uh, something of an upgrade from a county chair. The Jackson-based, 69-year-old Petersen (assuming she gets past the several Some Dudes in the Dem primary) will face one of not one but four strong GOPers in November.

• CA-45: Rep. Mary Bono Mack and her opponent, Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet, are on the same stage today to celebrate the new Palm Springs Airport control tower. Both were proponents of the construction project and will no doubt try to claim their share of the credit, although Bono Mack has the slight problem of having voted against the stimulus package that paid more than half the costs of the project.

• PA-12: Turnout numbers seem to contradict the GOP’s excuses about how they would have won the special election in the 12th if they hadn’t gotten swamped by a surge in Dem turnout motivated by the Sestak/Specter primary. Turnout in the 12th for the special election was 135K, compared with 203K in the 12th in the 2006 general election.

• WA-03: Here’s a surprise: state Sen. Craig Pridemore, who’d been carrying the liberal flag in the Democratic primary in the open seat race in the 3rd, is prepared to drop out. Pridemore had been lagging on the financial front compared with self-funding establishment choice Denny Heck (who now has the Dem field to himself), but that hadn’t been a deterrent before and it seems like that wasn’t what spurred the dropout. Instead, it was leaked over the weekend that the Washington Education Association was prepared to back Heck, and without the state’s biggest union on his side, Pridemore didn’t have much a route to getting over the top.

• WI-07: It looks like the careful field-clearing for state Sen. Julie Lassa in the Democratic primary in the open seat in the 7th wasn’t entirely successful. She’ll still have to face Joe Reasbeck in the Dem primary. Reasbeck, an author and consultant who doesn’t seem to have held office, seems to be at the Some Dude end of the spectrum, though. He’s announcing his campaign kickoff with a ganja break at Superior’s Richard Bong Museum.

• New Hampshire: SSPers will no doubt enjoy this… a Blue Hampshire blogger has calculated 2004/2008 PVI for each of New Hampshire’s 299 voting wards, not only putting together tables but also a slick map.

• Polltopia: PPP’s latest nugget unearthed from their crosstabs is that Democrats are still holding onto moderates pretty well, contrary to what conventional wisdom has been asserting. Tom Jensen finds that Dems are leading among self-identified moderates in all the key Senate race around the country. (The problem, of course, is that there are more self-identified conservatives than liberals, which accounts for GOP leads in a number of these races.)

• History: Here’s a very interesting bit of history from Arkansas writer John Brummett, looking at the remarkable parallels between the Blanche Lincoln/Bill Halter race, and the long-forgotten 1972 Democratic primary in Arkansas where upstart David Pryor almost knocked off long-serving conservative Democrat John McClellan.