Tag: Dean Heller

Good news and bad news for Handsome Harry Reid.

The good news:

Nevada Rep. Dean Heller has decided not to run against Harry Reid (D-Nev.), robbing Republicans of their top recruit against the Senate Majority Leader in 2010, according to an informed source.

Heller, who was elected to the vast 2nd district in 2006, called National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) earlier today to pass on his decision.

Heller turned down the race despite internal Republican polling — conducted by the Tarrance Group — that showed him leading Reid by nine points.

The bad news: the GOP has released internal polling showing Reid losing to Nevada GOP Chair Susan Lowden, which may as well be Generic R at this point.

Vitale & Associates (7/29-30, likely voters):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 42

Susan Lowden (R): 48

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Yeah, this poll was commissioned by “Lowden supporters” who are trying to draw her into the race, but before you dismiss these numbers out of hand, bear in mind that PPP’s Democratic polling guru, Tom Jensen, finds these numbers very believable. Tweeting at your face:

I can believe NV poll showing Reid trailing. Fresh polls in Ark. and Co. prob. wouldn’t be pretty for Dems either.

RaceTracker Wiki: NV-Sen

• FL-Sen: Looks like Charlie Crist has decided that, despite mediocre polling and worse fundraising from Marco Rubio, he’s facing a bigger threat in the primary than he is in the general. Crist came out in opposition to the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor yesterday, trying to shore up what remains of his conservative bona fides.

• IL-Sen/Gov: Here’s an explanation for why Chris Kennedy has been dawdling on declaring for the Illinois Senate primary: he’s considering whether or not to jump over to the Governor’s race instead. This seems very odd… not that he’d have a good chance in either race, but it seems like he’d have a better shot in a primary in an open seat race against Alexi Giannoulias, who has some vulnerabilities, than against Pat Quinn, who’s fairly popular and has the benefits of incumbency. Apparently Giannoulias’s fundraising scared him off.

• MO-Sen: Here’s an interesting tidbit out of Missouri, suggesting that former Treasurer Sarah Steelman is getting less and less likely to run in the GOP primary. Jeff Roe, who ran Steelman’s 2008 campaign, has started working for Rep. Roy Blunt. Blunt still faces a primary challenge from state Sen. Chuck Purgason, though, but he doesn’t pose the same level of threat that Steelman would.

• NH-Sen: This is a big surprise, as he’s been pouring a lot of money into advertising (for his STEWARD organization, though, not as a candidate) and starting to build a staff. Anti-tax businessman Fred Tausch announced today that he won’t be running in the GOP Senate primary after all (or for anything, including the House). Considering that he was lobbing bombs at AG Kelly Ayotte just a few days ago, this is a sudden change of heart. Former Board of Education member and 1996 gubernatorial candidate Ovide Lamontagne may still provide a challenge from the right, though.

• NY-Sen-B: Last night was the vaunted Bill Clinton/Carolyn Maloney fundraiser, which pulled in about $300K for Maloney’s House account. Meanwhile, the Albany Project has an interesting catch in this race. It turns out that there was one question from the internal poll in May that gave Maloney a 34-32 lead over Kirsten Gillibrand that didn’t get released to the public, and only came out in that City Hall News profile from a few days ago: “Asked whom they would vote for if they knew Gillibrand had the support of Schumer and Obama, people chose Gillibrand over Maloney 50-24.”

• IA-Gov: A fifth candidate officially got into the GOP field in the Iowa governor’s race yesterday: little-known state Rep. and pastor Rod Roberts, who represents a rural part of western Iowa. Roberts polled a whopping 1% in a poll last week by the Iowa Republican blog of the GOP primary field; the poll found Bob Vander Plaats leading the field with 46%, trailed by Chris Rants at 16%, and Paul McKinley and Christian Fong each at 3%. Incumbent Democratic Gov. Chet Culver defeats Vander Plaats 48-39 and Rants 46-36.

• NV-02: Ooops, back to square one in the 2nd. Douglas County school board president Cindy Trigg, who said she’d run against Rep. Dean Heller in 2010, has backed out, saying she needs to focus on the school board for now instead.

• NY-23: The NRCC has gone on the air in the 23rd, launching pre-emptive TV attacks on state Sen. Darrel Aubertine before he’s even a declared candidate for the special election, for voting for new taxes in the state Senate. Meanwhile, word has leaked (perhaps from GOP rival Matt Doheny’s camp) that moderate Republican Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava was in fact under consideration for the Democratic nomination, but that they were scared off by unpaid tax problems associated with her brother’s business (for which she’s listed as the COO).

• VA-11: Home inspection company owner Keith Fimian has decided on a rematch with Rep. Gerry Connolly in the now-blue 11th. Fimian, who can self-fund, lost the 2008 open seat race to Connolly, 55-43.

• NY-LG: A New York judge put the kibosh on David Paterson’s appointment of Richard Ravitch as Lieutenant Governor, issuing a temporary injunction to stop it, saying the state constitution does not appear to permit appointment to fill a vacancy in that position. Still, even if the appointment never goes through, it looks like it may have succeeded for Paterson, in terms of forcing Pedro Espada’s hand and breaking the state Senate deadlock.

• OH-AG: As was previously leaked, former Senator Mike DeWine announced today that he’ll run for state Attorney General. He’ll face off against Democratic incumbent Richard Cordray.

• Fonts: Ever wondered about the font that defined the Obama campaign in 2008? Here’s a profile of that “uniquely American” sans-serif typeface, Gotham.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• FL-Sen: Endorsements from U.S. House members aren’t usually a big deal, but this is an interesting one: Charlie Crist just got the endorsement of Los Bros. Diaz-Balart (both Mario and Lincoln), despite the presence of a fellow hawkish Cuban-American in the race (ex-state House speaker Marco Rubio). Not entirely surprising, though, as the Diaz-Balart brothers are generally on the moderate side of the GOP caucus, and have gone for Establishment over Cubano ties in previous endorsements (as in the Senate primary of 2004, when they supported Bill McCollum over Mel Martinez, who still went on to win Miami-Dade County with 80% of the vote en route to narrowly beating McCollum statewide).

Meanwhile, that pleasant golden glow coming from the Crist camp isn’t from his surreal tan, but from the huge pile of money he’s amassed. Crist is expected to announce shortly that he raised $3 million in the last six weeks.

• NV-Sen, NV-02: Rep. Dean Heller still didn’t make it explicit, but it sounds like he won’t be running against Harry Reid in 2010 (and he may also be hinting against a run in the gubernatorial primary). He emphatically said that he “likes his district, likes his constituents and likes his committee assignment” (a valuable spot on Ways and Means).

• AK-Gov: Now that Sarah Palin has some free time on her hands, Michael Steele is tugging on her sleeve and asking for some love for the NJ-Gov and VA-Gov races. (Although I gotta wonder how she’ll play in those states where Obama cleaned up in 2008, and where the educated voters tend to be… how shall I put this delicately? Meritocratic.) Here’s one other interesting bit of news that actually predates Palin’s Freaky Friday by several days: Democratic state Senator Hollis French filed a letter of intent to run for Governor in 2010 (despite fellow Dem Ethan Berkowitz’s potential presence in the race), although who knows if he’ll stay interested now that the race will be against a semi-incumbent Sean Parnell.

One other thought about Alaska that just about everyone in the tradmed seems to be missing. Sarah Palin did have a job in between being mayor of Wasilla and Alaska Governor: she was chair of Frank Murkowski’s Oil and Gas Commission. How long was she on this Commission? Less than a year… until she quit in January 2004 with a big public huff (leaving the Commission in the lurch with only one member), saying “the experience was taking the ‘oomph’ out of her passion for government service and she decided to quit rather than becoming bitter.” She publicly cited her frustration with being unable to be all straight-talky and mavericky about the corruption and backbiting on the Commission, but the resignation also came at a very convenient time for switching over to lay the groundwork for her successful 2006 gubernatorial run.

• PA-Gov: If the Democratic primary for the Governor’s race in Pennsylvania were to be decided by nothing but money, Allegheny Co. Executive Dan Onorato would be winning in a cakewalk. At quarter’s end, he reports more than $4 million in cash on hand, compared with likely rival Auditor Jack Wagner, who has about $325,000. Philly businessman Tom Knox isn’t required to report as he doesn’t hold office, but can self-finance as needed.

• CA-10: Finally, we have a vote for the special election in CA-10. Arnold Schwarzenegger set the date for Sep. 1 for the all-party primary, which in this dark-blue district is where all the action will be, with three top-tier Democrats in the field and a couple intriguing minor Dems as well (but only a minor GOP stand-in). However, under California law, if no one candidate breaks 50% in the primary (which is unlikely to happen with such a crowded Dem field) the race won’t officially be over it goes to a runoff where the Dem faces off against said GOPer, which is set for the regularly scheduled Election Day of Nov. 3.

• FL-24: Yet another GOPer is poised to jump into the race to take on Rep. Suzanne Kosmas in the R+3 Orlando-area district: state Rep. Sandy Adams. She will join state Rep. Dorothy Hulkill, who had announced her intentions last week but officially filed today. (She also joins Winter Park City Councilor Karen Diebel, who got a lot of touting for a day or two before seemingly getting shoved over.)

• Votes: Although we’re only halfway through the year, CQ already has initial party unity scores available for all the members of Congress, as well as similar “presidential support scores.” [UPDATE: Now that I’ve had the time to go over the party unity scores with a fine-toothed comb, I can report that the House Dems are being a much more unified party than the GOP, despite the fact that there are a lot more Democrats overall, and a lot more Democrats coming from districts that lean against them at the presidential level. There are 27 GOPers who have party unity scores below 80% (basically the entire Main Street Partnership: Biggert, Capito Moore, Castle, Dent, L. Diaz-Balart, M. Diaz-Balart, Ehlers, Emerson, Gerlach, T. Johnson, P. King, Kirk, La Tourette, Lance, Lo Biondo, McHugh, C. Miller, T. Murphy, Platts, Reichert, Ros-Lehtinen, C. Smith, Turner, Upton, Wolf, B. Young, and D. Young), while there are only 13 Democrats (the most hardcore of the Blue Dogs: Altmire, Bright, Donnelly, Griffith, Hill, Kirkpatrick, Kratovil, Marshall, Minnick, Mitchell, Nye, Shuler, and G. Taylor). The ratio is similar on the Senate side, with 7 on the GOP side (Collins, Gregg, Lugar, Martinez, Murkowski, Snowe, and Voinovich) and 4 on the Dem side (Bayh, Feingold, and Ben Nelson, plus Specter, although he spent the majority of that period as a GOPer)].

• IL-Sen: Here’s a fairly big-name entrant to the Illinois Senate: Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, who just formed an exploratory committee. Jackson had occasionally been rumored to be interested (to the extent that Jan Schakowksy’s internal poll included her, where she got 17% when explicitly substituted for Burris) but hadn’t taken concrete steps. Jackson has two demographic positives: with Schakowsky out, she’d be the only female in the race (unless, of course, Lisa Madigan gets in, in which case the game would be over anyway), and she’d be the only African-American in the race who isn’t Roland Burris. However, she used to be Rod Blagojevich’s press secretary prior to taking over at the Urban League, so the Blago stench may be hard to wash off.

• ND-Sen: All had seemed quiet on the midwestern front, especially after that R2K poll that showed him getting flattened by Byron Dorgan (57-35), but Gov. John Hoeven recently showed at least a peep of interest in running for Senate after all… even if it was just a statement that he was still making up his mind and would decide by September. GOP state chair Randy Emineth said that Hoeven “wants to” run against Dorgan, but we’ll need to actually hear from Hoeven.

• NH-Sen: The swabbies at ARG! pointed their spyglasses toward the 2010 open Senate seat in New Hampshire, and find that Rep. Paul Hodes would defeat ex-Sen. John Sununu 40-36. No numbers for the much-hyped AG Kelly Ayotte.

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: In the face of relentless wooing from GOP Senators, Rep. Dean Heller has set a deadline of June 30 to make up his mind about whether he runs for Harry Reid’s Senate seat. (Wait a minute… that’s today!) Heller’s other options include staying in NV-02 or running a primary challenge in the governor’s race — where the younger Reid (Rory, the Clark County Commission chair) seems to be staffing up for the race on the Dem side.

• PA-Sen: Joe Torsella, who briefly was running against post-party-switch Arlen Specter in the Democratic primary before dropping out, has endorsed Specter. Not surprising, since Torsella is a big ally of Gov. Ed Rendell, who has pledged his support to Specter.

• CT-Gov: More indications that Ned Lamont is getting serious about running for Governor (probably against incumbent Jodi Rell) in 2010. Lamont is looking at an early-2010 deadline for deciding, but can get away with a shorter timeframe as he can self-fund and won’t need a long ramp-up for fundraising.

• NJ-Gov (pdf): PPP takes their turn at polling the New Jersey Governor’s race and find about what everyone else has been finding: Chris Christie leads incumbent Jon Corzine 51-41, with Christie benefiting from a 60-26 lead among independent voters. Good news, relatively speaking, for Corzine, though, is that Christie’s negatives are rising quickly as he’s starting to get defined in the media, up to 43% favorable and 33% unfavorable.

• SC-Gov: Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer has publicly floated the idea that he would stand down from running in 2010 if he got to be Governor now, if Mark Sanford would just go ahead and resign (please?). His potential 2010 rivals are looking at this as statesman-like grandstanding, especially since it looks like Sanford is digging in.

• AK-AL: In case there was any doubt, the indestructible Rep. Don Young has announced that he’s running for re-election. Young is 76 and in perpetual danger of indictment, but with the state’s political talent gravitating toward the Governor’s race, may have an easier path in 2010 than in 2008.

• CA-36: Los Angeles City Councilor Janice Hahn has been telling supporters that she’s interested in running for Rep. Jane Harman’s seat. She doesn’t seem to be thinking primary, though; Hahn, for some reason, believes Harman (still under a bit of a cloud from the wiretap incident) is up for appointment to something, maybe Ambassador to Israel, in the Obama administration.

• FL-12: State Sen. Paula Dockery made clear that she won’t be running in the 12th; she endorsed former State Rep. Dennis Ross for the job. She seemed to leave the door open to the Governor’s race, saying in her statement that “my passion for public policy is in state government.”

• IL-07: With Rep. Danny Davis looking to move over to the Presidency of the Cook County Board, Chicago-area Dems are already eyeing the super-safe open seat. Davis’s former chief of staff Richard Boykin (now a lobbyist for Cook County) seems to be the first to make his interest publicly known.

• NH-01 (pdf): Manchester mayor (and NH-01 candidate) Frank Guinta is due for the Bad Samaritan Award, as he watched several of his friends (an alderman and a state Representative) beat up another acquaintance in a barroom brawl, ending with the man’s leg being broken in seven places, and then immediately left the scene without reporting it to the police. Guinta said he was unaware of the extent of the man’s injuries and contacted police at that point. No charges have been filed in the incident; still, not the kind of free publicity a political candidate likes to get.

• NY-03, NY-Sen-B: Rep. Peter King is sounding even iffier than before about running for Senate against Kirsten Gillibrand, having scored a desired slot on the Intelligence Committee.

• NY-23: Investment banker Matthew Doheny anted up with a lot of cash to jump into the Republican side of the race to replace Rep. John McHugh: $500,000 of his own money. Roll Call reports that he’ll need the ostentatious display of cash to get anywhere in the candidate-picking process, as Assemblypersons Dede Scozzafava and Will Barclay are both reaching out behind the scenes to party leaders.

• Redistricting: Regardless of what nonsense happens in the New York Senate this session, it’s looking more and more like the GOP’s toehold on legislative power will be vanquished in post-2010 redistricting, regardless of who controls the legislative redistricting process. Because of growth in the city and declines upstate, 1.2 seats will need to be shifted from downstate to NYC (and, as an added bonus, an extra one-sixth of a seat will shift to the city if the Census Bureau goes ahead and starts counting prisoners according to where they’re actually from rather than where they’re incarcerated).

• Fusion Voting: Here’s one way in which Oregon suddenly became a lot more like New York: the state legislature decided to allow “fusion voting,” in which a candidate can run on multiple party lines on one ballot. This will be a boost to minor parties in Oregon, by letting them form coalitions with the major parties instead of simply playing spoiler.

• Fundraising: It’s June 30, and you know what that means… it’s the end of the 2nd fundraising quarter. If you want to give some momentum to your favored candidates, today’s the last day to do it.

(From the diaries – promoted by DavidNYC)

Redistricting is popular around here, so I really don’t need to explain this any more. Here’s a plan for Nevada that’s 3-1. I wanted to protect Berkley and Titus, and create a 3rd Democratic district.

I crunched population data by census block for Clark County into precincts, and by census VTDs for Douglas, Lyon, and Nye Counties.

So here’s the map:

Data (both political and population) after the flip.

Here’s are closeups of Douglas and Clark/Southern Nye Counties:

 

And closeups of the Las Vegas area, the first with precincts and the second with incorporated cities and CDPs labelled.

• DNC/RNC: The RNC seems to win the fundraising month for March, in a bit of a split decision. The DNC reported $7.57 million in contributions last month, while the RNC pulled in $6.7 million. However, $2 million of those Democratic dollars were transferred from the Obama campaign. More ominously, the RNC is sitting on $23.9 million cash on hand and no debt, while the DNC has $9.7 million cash on hand and $6.9 million in debt.

• IL-Sen: Hot on the heels of his $845 fundraising quarter, the new Rasmussen poll shows Roland Burris might want to make some post-2010 plans. 4% of respondents say they will “definitely” vote for him and 54% will vote against, with 39% saying it depends on who’s running. 62% think he should resign, with 24% believing he should remain in the Senate. (The poll doesn’t test Burris in any head-to-heads.) The poll also finds Jesse Jackson Jr. looking badly tarnished in the wake of the Blagojevich implosion: his favorables are now 32-63. One other tidbit that makes Lisa Madigan’s job harder if she runs for IL-Gov: Pat Quinn’s job approval is a surprisingly high 61-37.

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln has drawn at least one legitimate challenger for 2010: state senate minority leader Kim Hendren has announced his candidacy. Hendren has self-funding abilities and a strong base in northwest Arkansas (the traditionally Republican part of the state), which at least gives him a leg up in the primary. Hendren, however, is old (71)… old enough that one claim to fame is that he lost a race to Bill Clinton (the 1982 gubernatorial primary, when Hendren was still a Democrat)… and promising to serve only one term. Lincoln defeated state senators in both her 1998 and 2004 bids.

• NV-Sen, NV-02: GOP Rep. Dean Heller says that “his plan today” is to run for re-election, but he’s also refusing to rule out a run against Handsome Harry Reid. (J)

• IL-14: After getting their pants kicked in by Democrat Bill Foster in two consecutive elections, the Illinois GOP may turn to the Name You Know in 2010 — Dennis Hastert’s son, Ethan. 31 year-old Ethan Hastert, a Chicagoland attorney, says that he’s “exploring” a run for his dad’s old seat, and is already polling his name against Foster in a trial poll. Ethan’s previous claim to fame: serving as assistant to Lewis “Scooter” Libby. (J)

• FL-05: Jim Piccillo will be challenging Ginny Brown-Waite in this light-red district. Piccillo has an interesting backstory: no previous political experience, and was a Republican until last year when he was driven away by the tenor of the campaign, but the recipient of a lot of media exposure after being profiled by the NYT in a feature on Florida Republicans abandoning the party. At least he sounds better than this guy.

• DE-AL, FL-10: Our top-shelf Democratic recruits have launched new websites: John Carney and Charlie Justice. (D)

• Polltopia: Our friends at Public Policy Polling are once again letting readers decide which Senate race they’ll poll next. The choices: Georgia, Illinois, and Oklahoma. Get busy voting and then tell us which race you picked in the comments. (J)

• NY-20 (pdf): This morning’s update from the BoE has Scott Murphy’s lead increasing a bit, up to 56 votes. Brace yourself for later today, though, when Saratoga County (Jim Tedisco’s base) is scheduled to report absentees for the first time.

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter picked up an important backer in the 2010 primary: NRSC chair John Cornyn (who’d, of course, like to limit the number of seats lost on his watch). “As I survey the political landscape of the upcoming 2010 elections, it’s clear we need more candidates that fit their states,” said Cornyn. Although Cornyn doesn’t mention his name, he obviously has in mind a guy who doesn’t fit his state: Pat Toomey, who just happened to officially announce his long-rumored Senate bid yesterday.

• MN-Sen: No surprise here; Norm Coleman, having lost the election yesterday according to a three-judge panel, has filed an appeal with the Minnesota Supreme Court. Election law blogger Rick Hasen looks at yesterday’s opinion and the difficulty Coleman will face in getting it reversed.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio reported raising $250,000 in the last month since opening his exploratory committee, a solid start. Meanwhile, Kendrick Meek continued to dominate the labor endorsement front, picking up the nod from the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, AFL-CIO.

• IL-10: State senator Susan Garrett says she’ll decide within the month whether or not to challenge Mark Kirk (sounding like she’s trying to wait as long as possible to see if Kirk jumps into the senate race and leaves an open seat). Kirk has turned back a number of serious challenges in the 3rd-most Dem-leaning district still occupied by a Republican (won by Obama with 61% of the vote).

• NV-02: A credible Democratic challenger to Dean Heller has materialized. Douglas County school board president Cindy Trigg plans to announce her candidacy next week. This district, once a Republican stronghold, went for McCain by less than 100 votes.

• ID-01: Walt Minnick just got some fundraising help from an unexpected place. Former two-term GOP senator from Idaho Steve Symms is headlining Minnick’s April 23 breakfast fundraiser.

• NRCC: Campaign Diaries has the full list of all 43 Dems targeted in the GOP’s big radio-spot-and-robocall blitz.

• Where Are They Now?: Tom Feeney: just took a job with noted think-tank the Heritage Foundation, to focus on “community outreach.” Bob Ney: just got the 1-3 pm slot on a conservative talk radio station in Moundsville, WV. Chris Chocola: just made it official, that he will be replacing Pat Toomey as head of the Club for Growth. Vito Fossella: just pled guilty to DWI and will serve four days in Alexandria city jail.

• Red Menace: Spencer Bachus (AL-06) just announced that he is holding in his hand a list of 17 socialists in Congress. We all know about Bernie Sanders; anyone care to hazard a guess who the other 16 are?

A quote from today’s Las Vegas Review-Journal neatly (and hilariously) sums up the state of the 2010 senate race in Nevada:

Nevada Republicans have been frustrated by the lack of a clear opponent for Reid, a Democrat who would be considered vulnerable if he weren’t running unopposed.

The article, however, is focused on Sharron Angle, who may wind up, at the very least, preventing Reid from being unopposed. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, she’s a former assemblywoman from Reno who finished a super-close second in the 2nd District primary in 2006, sandwiched between then-SoS, now-Rep. Dean Heller and Dawn Gibbons, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of then-Rep., now-Gov., soon-to-be-unemployed Jim Gibbons. In 2008, she ran in the GOP primary against state senator Bill Raggio (currently the minority leader) from the right, but lost that too.

With top-tier candidates like Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki sidelined by an indictment for misappropriation of state funds, and ex-Rep. Jon Porter settling in on K Street, the Nevada GOP bench doesn’t have much left on it. The national and state parties, nevertheless, haven’t expressed much interest in Angle. She says the push to run has come from “supporters,” and that she…

wasn’t recruited by the state GOP or the National Republican Senatorial Committee, but she said she hopes to talk to them if she gets the commitments she’s hoping for.

Meanwhile, Harry Reid continues to put the “$” in “Vega$,” raising $2 million in the first quarter, with over $5 million cash on hand. If he continues to raise at that clip (in an inexpensive media state like Nevada) and he faces Angle (whose current fundraising goal is $100,000 by May) in the general, this once-thought-vulnerable race may wind up being a footnote in 2010.

• CT-Sen: The new lovefest between Joe Lieberman and the Democratic Party seems to be reaching the point where they need to get a room. In the wake of yesterday’s endorsement of Chris Dodd, Lieberman is today floating the idea of running in 2012 in the Democratic primary, instead of just as an independent. (Of course, unless Connecticut passes a sore loser law in the next few years, what’s the downside? If he loses the Dem primary again, he can just switch back to CfL one more time.)

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: The GOP is running out of options for a good challenger to Harry Reid. Former state senator Joe Heck (who lost his Las Vegas-area seat last year) has decided to run in the GOP primary against chronically embattled governor Jim Gibbons instead. (Although if Heck is going against Gibbons, what is Rep. Dean Heller planning to do then?) With ex-Rep. Jon Porter taking the K Street route and Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki under indictment, the GOP’s Nevada bench is nearly empty.

• PA-Sen: Joe Torsella won’t have the Democratic primary in the Pennsylvania senate race to himself. State Rep. Josh Shapiro, a 35-year-old reform-minded legislator from the Philadelphia suburbs, is now exploring the race. This may be a tea leaf that Rep. Allyson Schwartz isn’t getting in the primary, as Shapiro (who’s in PA-13) would likely run for Schwartz’s seat instead if it were going to be open.

• CA-32: EMILY’s List has weighed in in the CA-32 primary, and they’re endorsing… believe it or not… the woman in the race: Board of Equalization chair Judy Chu. Chu’s main competition is state senator Gil Cedillo, who comes in with the endorsement of nearby House members like Xavier Becerra, Linda Sanchez, and Grace Napolitano (Hilda Solis, who used to occupy CA-32, hasn’t endorsed). The district is about 65% Hispanic and 20% Asian.

• NH-01, NH-02: We’re looking at a crowded field for Republican opponents to Carol Shea-Porter: John Stephen, who barely lost the primary last time to ex-Rep. Jeb Bradley, is eyeing the race, as is Manchester mayor Frank Guinta. Businessman Jim Wieczorek also plans to run. Meanwhile, next door in the open NH-02, radio host Jennifer Horn says there’s a good chance she’ll run again in 2010.  

• FL-22: State house majority leader Adam Hasner has been launching a series of attacks on Rep. Ron Klein over EFCA… is this a preview of the 2010 race? (It’s a Dem-leaning district, but Klein’s 2008 victory margin wasn’t impressive.)

• Votes: Also on the EFCA front, Campaign Diaries has an impressively thorough chart head-counting the positions staked out by all the Democratic senators (and potential GOP votes).

• Blue Dogs: After lifting their self-imposed 20%-of-the-Dem-caucus cap to expand to 51 members, the Blue Dogs are talking about growing again, to 56 members. No word on who that might be (although the door’s apparently open to Scott Murphy if he wins).

• NRSC: Roll Call is running a story today with the banner headline “McConnell Criticizes GOP for Lack of Diversity.” What’s next? “Sanders Criticizes KFC for Serving Chicken?”