Tag: Charlie Crist

• 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.

• NY-23: There was a brief moment of collective “Holy crap!” earlier today when people realized that the race in the 23rd wasn’t quite over. The Bill Owens lead over Doug Hoffman shrank considerably (down to 3,176 votes currently, compared to 5,335 at the end of election night) after recanvassing, including discovery of some errors in Hoffman-leaning Oswego County. There remain 5,600 absentee votes to be counted, so for the election results to actually change, Hoffman would need to win about 80% of those votes (many of which were sent in while Dede Scozzafava was still in the race). Hoffman’s camp is admitting that the results of the race aren’t about to change, but they say they might not have conceded so quickly on Election Night if they’d known it was going to be so close — meaning that the big story here is that they could have stopped Bill Owens from being sworn in and providing one of the decisive votes on health care reform in the House.

• FL-Sen: Every day now seems to bring a little more bad news for Charlie Crist, and today’s bit is that members of the Florida state GOP are demanding an “emergency closed door meeting” with the state chair, Jim Greer. The meeting-demanders seem to be Marco Rubio supporters, and they’re particularly exercised about Crist’s relationship with sketchy financial backer Scott Rothstein.

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk’s pronounced turn to the right has been unsubtle enough that even NARAL is noticing, and calling him out on it. They’re no longer considering him “pro-choice” after his Stupak amendment vote, and say they’ll be working toward his defeat next year.

• ME-Sen: We weren’t the only ones to take notice of Olympia Snowe’s terrible approvals among Republicans according to PPP. The Family Research Council is now saying that if a conservative candidate shows up to run against Snowe in 2012, the FRC will back them.

• NC-Sen (pdf): PPP’s newest poll of North Carolina finds more of what they’ve been finding all year: people are lukewarm about Richard Burr (with an approval of 40/31) and he only narrowly leads a Generic Dem (44-40). However, Burr does better against named Democrats, including Rep. Bob Etheridge (45-35), SoS Elaine Marshall (45-34), and former Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker (45-33).

• NV-Sen: There’s yet another hapless-seeming Republican entering the GOP Senate field: former Nevada Board of Education member Greg Dagani. Dagani is probably best known for resigning from the Board of Education after getting caught making out with his wife during a public meeting. Wait… his wife, and not a staffer (or someone he met in Argentina and/or the men’s room)? Are we sure he’s a Republican?

• UT-Sen: Here’s a little more information on the two new guys scoping out the GOP field in the wake of AG Mark Shurtleff’s departure, suggesting that they both have the potential to be formidable opponents to Bob Bennett. In fact, these two might do better at gaining the favor of the teabaggers, in that Shurtleff (who was running to the conservative Bennett’s right) was somehow considered not conservative enough in some circles (mostly owing to his immigration stance). Wealthy businessman Fred Lampropoulos was a gubernatorial candidate in 2004, almost forcing Jon Huntsman to a primary. And while lawyer Mike Lee hasn’t run for office before, he’s the son of Mormon leader and former BYU president Rex Lee, which means a lot in Utah (although Bennett’s family’s role in the Mormon church also looms large).

• CO-Gov: Is Scott McInnis about to get Scozzafavaed? The law of unintended consequences seems to point that direction. After ex-Rep. McInnis’s establishment moneybags supporters thought they were being smart by hounding state Senate minority leader Josh Penry out of the GOP primary, that just seemed to tick off the anti-establishment base. And now a much higher-profile (and much less palatable in the general) candidate with a national following to draw on is emerging to take Penry’s place. Yes, it’s ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo, who’s saying that he’ll file to create an exploratory committee in the next few days.

• MN-Gov: Another Republican fell by the wayside in the overstuffed Minnesota gubernatorial race. State Sen. Mike Jungbauer dropped out, citing fundraising troubles and a weak showing in a recent straw poll.

• WI-Gov: People have treated Republican Milwaukee Co. Exec Scott Walker as a strong contender in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, but he seems to have a certain tone-deafness about him: he met with Sarah Palin during her Wisconsin visit to try to secure an endorsement from her… in a state where Barack Obama won 56-42.

• DE-AL: Republicans managed to lure somebody into the open seat race to replace Rep. Mike Castle, despite that this race may be the Republicans’ likeliest House loss in 2010. Fred Cullis, who owns an industrial sales company, said he’d be an “independent voice” for Delaware a la Castle.

• FL-08: I don’t know if this is an indicator of the NRCC having settled on Bruce O’Donoghue as its consensus pick, or a case of Rep. Alan Grayson having yet more success with his voodoo doll, but yet another prospective Republican challenger is turning tail and running. First-term state Rep. Eric Eisnaugle made public his decision not to run.

• FL-16: St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft has previously sounded some moderate notes as he takes on freshman Republican Rep. Tom Rooney in this R+5 district, but he’s not playing it safe on health care. He came out yesterday saying that he’d have voted for the House health care reform bill and against the Stupak amendment.

• PA-17: Republican state Senator David Argall batted down rumors that he’d challenge long-time Rep. Tim Holden in this GOP-leaning Harrisburg-based seat, saying he was “99% sure” he wouldn’t run. Blue Dog Holden seems on track to receive his usual free pass.

• Nassau Co. Exec: Republican Ed Mangano’s lead over incumbent Dem Tom Suozzi expanded to 497 in the recount of the Nassau County Executive race on Long Island. Suozzi also waxed philosophical in an interesting interview with Ben Smith, pointing to a public exhaustion with civic engagement and a return to “self-interest” on tax issues.

• Mayors: Endorsements from the 3rd place finishers were handed out in the runoff elections in both the Atlanta and Houston mayoral races. In Houston, city controller Annise Parker got the endorsement of city councilor Peter Brown, who surprisingly finished behind Parker and former city attorney Gene Locke. (Locke is African-American, Parker is white and a lesbian, and Brown is a straight white guy.) And in Atlanta, city councilor Lisa Borders endorsed state Senator Kasim Reed, consolidating the African-American vote against white city councilor Mary Norwood, who finished first.

• Vote By Mail: Washingtonians are getting pretty tired of watching their elections drag on (the Seattle mayoral race this time). There’s a renewed move afoot in Washington to change election laws to match the mail-in ballot law in better-organized Oregon, where ballots must be received by Election Day instead of postmarked by Election Day. The movement is getting a boost with Gov. Chris Gregoire’s support.

• FL-Sen: There’s probably no good way to spin the firing of the head spinner: after weeks of unending bad press, Charlie Crist has decided the solution is to fire his long-time communication director, Erin Isaac. (Isaac contends that she left on her own, and the timing has nothing to do with Crist’s collapse.)

• IL-Sen, OH-Sen: Two little-known, never-been-elected rich guys are going on the air with TV spots in their respective Senate primaries: Democratic attorney Jacob Meister in Illinois, and Republican auto dealer Tom Ganley in Ohio. Meister may not have much hope in a field with three prominent candidates, but Ganley is trying to gain traction among the anti-establishment right against consummate insider pick Rob Portman in a two-way GOP primary fight. (Ganley’s buy is reportedly only for $60K, so it seems more oriented toward generating media buzz than actually reaching lots of eyeballs, though.)

• NC-Sen: Rep. Bob Etheridge still sounds genuinely undecided about whether to get into the Senate race or not, but he’s now promising a decision by the end of the week. The DSCC is actively courting Etheridge, despite the presence of SoS Elaine Marshall in the race. Meanwhile, two other possible contenders are circling, watching, and waiting: former Lt. Gov. Dennis Wicker says he may run if Etheridge doesn’t, and outgoing Chapel Hill mayor Kevin Foy is still considering the race, saying he’ll decide by the end of the month.

• SC-Sen: Ouch! Lindsey Graham just got a pretty strong repudiation from the local GOP in one of the state’s largest counties, Charleston County. They unanimously voted to censure Graham over his cooperation with Democrats and moderate GOPers. Graham isn’t up until 2014, but it certainly doesn’t bode well for his next primary.

• CO-Gov: Josh Penry’s jump out of the Colorado governor’s GOP primary may have been more of a push. Big-time GOP funder Phil Anschutz is reported to have personally contacted Penry to let him know that he’d be on the receiving end of the 501(c)(4) that he’d created to target anyone opposing establishment candidate ex-Rep. Scott McInnis. (Of course, with news of this having leaked out, that seems likely to just further enrage the teabaggy right and lead them to find a hard-right replacement who, unlike Penry, isn’t worried about having his brand besmirched for future runs. Could Tom Tancredo be that man?)

• CT-Gov: For about the zillionth time in his career, Democratic AG Richard Blumenthal decided not to run for a promotion; he says he won’t get involved in the newly-minted open seat gubernatorial race. However, Blumenthal did nothing to quash rumors that he’s waiting to take on Joe Lieberman in 2012, saying “stay tuned.” Meanwhile, Paulist financial guru Peter Schiff, currently running for the GOP Senate nod, confirmed that he won’t be leaping over to the gubernatorial race, either.

• SC-Gov: Fervently anti-tax state Rep. Nikki Haley has been a key Mark Sanford ally in the legislature, but she’s been lagging in the GOP gubernatorial primary race. A Mark Sanford endorsement would be poison at this point, though, so the Sanfords paid her back with a slightly-less-poisonous endorsement from Jenny Sanford instead. Still doesn’t really sound like the kind of endorsement you want to tout, though.

• FL-08: Republican leaders are increasingly sour on the candidacy of 28 year-old businessman Armando Gutierrez Jr., who is “pissing people off a lot” with his bare-knuckle style. The NRCC is still hoping to recruit a solid challenger to go up against “colorful” Dem Rep. Alan Grayson after months of recruitment mishaps, and the current batch of names being bandied about include businessman Bruce O’Donoghue, state Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, and state Rep. Kurt Kelly. Gutierrez, however, seems to be doing all he can to make the GOP primary an unpleasant proposition. (J)

• FL-19: The Democratic primary in the upcoming special election to replace Robert Wexler is shaping up to be a real snoozefest. Former State Rep. Irving Slosberg, who lost a bitter 2006 state Senate primary to Ted Deutsch, announced yesterday that he won’t be running and that he’s endorsing Deutch. (Slosberg probably has his eye on Deutch’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.)

• ID-01: With state Rep. Ken Robert’s dropout in the 1st, Vaughn Ward had the GOP field to himself for only a couple hours before another state Rep., Raul Labrador, said that he’ll get in instead. Meanwhile, ex-Rep. Bill Sali has been speaking before conservative groups and is still considering an attempt at a rematch with Democratic Rep. Walt Minnick, and says he’ll decide by the end of the month.

• NJ-03: Democratic freshman Rep. John Adler has been seemingly running scared despite the Republicans not having recruited anyone in this swingy R+1 district, probably helped along by Chris Christie’s huge numbers last week in Ocean County. Republicans think they have the right guy to flatten Adler: former Philadelphia Eagles lineman Jon Runyan. Runyan isn’t retired but not on any team’s roster either, and is “considering” the race.

• NY-24: He lost narrowly in 2008 to Democratic Rep. Mike Arcuri, and now businessman Richard Hanna is making candidate-type noises again, with a press release attacking Arcuri’s health care reform vote. Hanna is thinking about another run; Republicans don’t seem to have any other strong candidates on tap in this R+2 district.

• SD-AL: Republican State Rep. Shantel Krebs decided against a run against Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin in 2010. She was facing a cluttered field, with Secretary of State Chris Nelson and state Rep. Blake Curd already in the GOP primary.

• Nassau Co. Exec: So I was wrong about the Seattle mayor’s race being the last one to be called: the Nassau County Executive race is now in mid-recount, and Republican challenger Ed Mangano has a paper-thin (24 votes) lead over Democratic incumbent Tom Suozzi. Democratic Nassau County Legislator Dave Meijas (who you might remember from NY-03 in 2006) is also in a recount.

• VA-St. House: The last House of Delegates race in Virginia was finally called; Republican Ron Villaneuva was certified the victor in the Virginia Beach-based 21st over incumbent Dem Bobby Mathieson by a 13-vote margin, although the race is likely to go to a recount by Mathieson’s request.

• WA-St. Sen.: Democratic State Sen. Fred Jarrett was picked by new King Co. Executive Dow Constantine (who defeated Jarrett in the primary) to be the Deputy Executive. Jarrett will need to resign from the Senate to do so, creating a vacancy in this Bellevue-based, historically Republican but recently very Democratic seat. In Washington, though, legislative vacancies are filled by appointment by the county council (Democratic-controlled in King County, as you might expect), so there won’t be a special election, and the appointee will serve until (his or her probable re-election in) Nov. 2010.

• Generic Ballot: Everyone in the punditsphere seems abuzz today that Gallup suddenly shows a 4-pt GOP edge in the generic House ballot, a big swing from the previous D+2 edge. (Most other pollsters show a mid-single-digits Dem edge, like Pew at D+5 today.) Real Clear Politics points out an important caveat: the last time the GOP led the Gallup House ballot was September 2008, and you all remember how that election played out. Another poll today is perhaps more interesting: Winthrop University polled just the Old South states, and finds a 47-42 edge for the Republicans in the generic House ballot in the south. Initially that may not seem good, but remember that most of the state’s reddest districts are contained in the south, so, after accounting for the heavily-concentrated wingnuts, this probably extrapolates out to a Dem edge still present in southern swing districts.

• Public option: With the prospect of an opt-out public option looming large, the topic of whether to opt out is poised to become a hot issue in gubernatorial races in red states next year. Several states already have opt-out legislation proposed, although it remains to be seen whether any would actually go through with it (when considering how many states turned down stimulus funds in the end despite gubernatorial grandstanding… or how many states have decided to opt out of Medicaid, as they’re able to do).

• WATN?: Congratulations to Charlie Brown, who has accepted a position in the Dept. of Homeland Security. Unfortunately, this means Brown won’t be back for another kick at the football in CA-04.

• FL-Sen: Rep. Bill Young usually steers clear of endorsements, and the GOP Senate primary is no exception, even though Charlie Crist is a resident of his district. After attending a Pinellas County GOP event with Marco Rubio, Young reiterated that he wasn’t endorsing — and that his wife’s repeated gushing to the press that “I love Marco!” wasn’t an endorsement either. (A Pinellas County straw poll is set for January, which could be a big repudiation for Crist if he loses a straw poll in his own county.)

• IL-Sen: The Cheryle Jackson camp has an internal poll via Celinda Lake on the Democratic primary field in Illinois (although Chris Cillizza seems to be the only person who’s seen it yet). State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias has a big, though not insurmountable, lead at 31, followed by Jackson at 13 and David Hoffman at 8. That leaves 45% still undecided, with only about three months to go.

• MA-Sen: One more endorsement for Rep. Michael Capuano in the Senate special election. With the endorsement of fellow Rep. John Olver, Capuano has the backing of the majority of the state’s House delegation.

• ME-Sen: These numbers might be alarming for Olympia Snowe if there was more of a Republican bench in Maine: PPP finds that her approval rating among Republicans is down to 40/46, and Republicans would opt for a more conservative alternative in a hypothetical 2012 primary, 59-31. Snowe has 64% approval among all liberals and moderates, but even in Maine, 68% of GOPers identify as conservatives. Hopefully the Club for Growth already has these numbers and are rubbing their hands together gleefully, which can only serve to drive her further into our camp.

• NY-Sen-B: With William Thompson having acquitted himself well in his narrow mayoral loss, rumors are now flying that have him running for just about everything. Most notably, Rep. Jose Serrano (who had flirted with the idea of a primary challenge for Kirsten Gillibrand) is now floating the idea of having Thompson run in a Gillibrand primary challenge instead. Thompson hasn’t said anything about it himself, but sources close to him say there’s one thing he doesn’t want to do, and that’s challenge Bill diNapoli in a primary to be state comptroller.

• UT-Sen: In the wake of AG Mark Shurtleff’s abrupt departure from the Republican primary field in the Senate race, two more names have surfaced to scope out the race against long-time incumbent Bob Bennett. Neither one has elected experience, but one has conservative bona fides (lawyer Mike Lee) and one has a lot of money (Fred Lampropoulos, who owns a medical equipment company).

• CO-Gov, CO-03: Up-and-coming state Senate minority leader Josh Penry dropped his longshot bid in the GOP gubernatorial primary, where he’s been lagging his former boss, ex-Rep. Scott McInnis, in fundraising and overall traction. Penry says, in wake of seeing what worked and what didn’t work in Tuesday’s election, he’s dropping out so the GOP could present a united front (and also, unspoken, he didn’t want to damage his brand for future runs). With Penry leaving a hole on the right, compared to the occasionally-moderate McInnis, another name-brand conservative is now interested in the race: ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo. As unpalatable as Tancredo might be in a general, he has enough name rec and devoted followeres to make things competitive in the primary. You gotta love seeing the GOP civil war spill over into the gubernatorial races now too.

Rumors started flying that Penry was going to switch over to run against Democratic Rep. John Salazar in the 3rd, but that doesn’t look like it’s happening. One Republican who is running in the 3rd as of yesterday, though, is state Rep. Scott Tipton. It’ll be a rematch, as Tipton lost widely to Salazar in 2006. DA Martin Beeson is also in the Republican field.

• CT-Gov: I wonder if Jodi Rell had advance notice of this poll, and if its ominous results had anything to do with her seemingly sudden decision not to run for re-election next year? Quinnipiac’s newest CT-Gov poll found Rell only narrowly leading SoS Susan Bysiewicz, 46-40 (a bad trend from February, where Rell led 53-32). Rell fared better against Ned Lamont, 53-33, and Stamford mayor Dan Malloy, 52-33. With the race now an open seat, though, the most relevant part of the poll is the Dem primary, which found a close race between Bysiewicz and Lamont, 26-23 for Bysiewicz, with 9 for Malloy, 3 for state House speaker Jim Amman, and 2 for state Senator Gary LeBeau (February’s poll, pre-Lamont, gave Bysiewicz at 44-12 lead over Malloy, indicating that Lamont ate mostly into Bysiewicz’s share). Bysiewicz also beats Lamont’s favorables (43/11, vs. 31/24). They didn’t look at any of the other potential Republican figures in the field.

• NV-Gov: A Republican internal poll (apparently conducted for right-leaning blog Nevada News and Views by PMI) finds former AG Brian Sandoval with a substantial lead in the Republican gubernatorial primary over incumbent Gov. Jim Gibbons. Sandoval leads 36-24, with North Las Vegas mayor Michael Montandon pulling in 7. Democrats, of course, would prefer to face Gibbons, who already comes pre-tarred-and-feathered.

• RI-Gov: An internal poll from ex-Republican Senator and independent gubernatorial candidate Lincoln Chafee gives him the lead going into 2010, despite his campaign’s fundraising and organizational problems. Chafee leads Democratic state Treasurer Frank Caprio and Republican businessman Rory Smith 36-34-8, while Chafee leads Democratic AG Patrick Lynch and Smith 37-24-15. This race looks like it’s shaping up along the lines of the 2006 Connecticut Senate race, with a tossup between D and I, and a Republican spoiler struggling to escape the single digits.

• VT-Gov: The Vermont gubernatorial race is getting even more cluttered, but both developments seem to bode well for the Democrats. For starters, Anthony Pollina, who has run several times as a Progressive and then an independent spoiler (although spoiler may not be the best word since he managed to finish second last year ahead of the hapless Dem), is making noises that he’ll try running as a Democrat next year. With establishment votes already getting split a number of ways in the primary, Pollina has a shot at winning the Democratic primary. The other development is that old-school moderate Republican Michael Bernhardt is considering running as an independent, which presumably would siphon votes out of the Republican column. The 72-year-old Bernhardt is the former state House minority leader, last seen losing the 1988 gubernatorial race to Democratic incumbent Madeleine Kunin.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: A new LA Times/USC poll (conducted by GQR and POS) finds a dead heat in the GOP Senate primary: conservative Assemblyman Chuck DeVore and vapid ex-HP CEO Carly Fiorina are deadlocked at 27 each (despite the fact that DeVore is almost entirely unknown, with favorables of 6/4 — the deal is that Fiorina is, other than Ahnold, the state’s only political figure with negative favorables, at 9/12). They also looked at the GOP field in the governor’s race and find ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman leading the field at 35, followed by ex-Rep. Tom Campbell at 27 and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner at 10. No general election matchups, but probably the most disspiriting number of all is that a whopping 80% of all Californians think the state’s best days are behind it.

• FL-Sen: This seemed already pretty well established when they ran an anti-Crist ad last week, but it was made official today: the Club for Growth endorsed Marco Rubio in his primary challenge to Charlie Crist. Mmmmmm… cat fud.

• IL-Sen: State treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, whose easy path to the nomination seems to have gotten at least something of an obstacle in its way with the candidacy of former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman, got a key endorsement: Rep. Luis Gutierrez. Giannoulias now has the endorsement of four of the state’s House Dems.

• KS-Sen: Also on the endorsement front, Rep. Jerry Moran got one today in the Kansas Senate GOP primary from Arizona’s Rep. Jeff Flake. Kind of odd, as Flake is one of the most conservative House members and Moran is the ‘moderate’ option in the race, but Flake is more on the libertarian side of things rather than a theocon.

• MA-Sen: Finally, something is happening in the sleepy Massachusetts Senate special election Democratic primary. Rep. Michael Capuano hit AG Martha Coakley from the left, attacking her for support for the death penalty, and the PATRIOT Act (Capuano was one of the few to vote against it). And now Coakley is saying she would have voted against the entire health care bill because of the Stupak poison pill, for which Capuano is now attacking her from the right (or at least the pragmatic).

• MT-Sen: Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg pushed back a bit against rumors last week that he was gearing up to run for Senate against Jon Tester in 2012, saying he had no “immediate” plans to run. Rehberg didn’t categorically rule it out, though.

• NH-Sen: He’s been acting like a candidate all year, but Ovide Lamontagne made it official: he’s running for the GOP Senate nomination in New Hampshire. Lamontagne, a lawyer who defeated the establishment candidate in the GOP gubernatorial primary in 1996 (and went onto get demolished in the general), is probably the highest-profile primary challenger to establishment choice ex-AG Kelly Ayotte.

• NY-Sen-B: In case it wasn’t clear that ex-Gov. George Pataki is interesting in running for President, not Senator, he’s making another appearance in Iowa tomorrow, addressing the Scott County GOP Ronald Reagan Dinner in Davenport.

• PA-Sen: Here’s a blast from the past, as one Arlen Specter opponent passed the torch to another. Lynn Yeakel, who lost the 1992 Senate race to Specter by only 3% amidst the media-designated “Year of the Woman,” threw her support to Rep. Joe Sestak in the Democratic Senate primary on Friday.

• NV-Gov: Las Vegas’s colorful Democratic mayor Oscar Goodman is still mulling over whether to get involved in the gubernatorial race (and sounding pretty lukewarm about it), but he says if he does it, it’ll be as an independent and not as a Democrat, setting up a confusing anything-can-happen three-way in yet another state.

• VA-Gov: Here’s a guy to add to the top of the “Do Not Hire” list right next to Bob Shrum: pollster David Petts, who it turns out is largely responsible for the Creigh Deeds strategy of going nonstop negative against Bob McDonnell, focusing on independents, and distancing himself from Barack Obama.

• IL-07: It was decisionmaking day for Rep. Danny Davis (who had previously signed up for both his House seat and Cook Co. Board President, but had to withdraw one filing today), and it’s a bit of a surprise: he’s running for re-election to the House. He had apparently become worried about the possibility of splitting votes with multiple other African-Americans in the race, so he heads back to his nice safe seat in the House. (The question will now be how many of the prominent local politicos who filed to run for the open seat primary now drop out.)

• IL-10: Democratic State Rep. Julie Hamos, who netted a big cash haul last quarter, is the first to hit the airwaves for the fast-approaching House primary against Dan Seals. She’s running a TV spot touting her stand on health care.

• LA-02: So I guess the future isn’t Cao, anymore? Rep. Joe Cao has drawn a lot of heat for his aisle-crossing on health care, but it doesn’t look like he’ll suffer any meaningful consequences from leadership, and he’s even pushing back against Michael Steele’s comments about “coming after” moderate rank-breakers, in understated fashion, saying “He has the right to come after those members who do not conform to party lines, but I would hope that he would work with us in order to adjust to the needs of the district and to hold a seat that the Republican party would need.” Also, Cao has picked up an unusual ally: Alaska’s Rep. Don Young is defending Cao’s vote and even stood watch over Cao as he cast his vote, fending off the horde of GOP arm-twisters.

• NY-23: One of the lingering questions from last week: what the heck happened to all those Doug Hoffman voters that the polls showed? Mark Blumenthal assesses that most voters simply were in flux over that last weekend of polling as two separate events scrambled the status quo, and only made up their mind shortly before voting — and that, in the end, Scozzafava voters disliked Hoffman more than they disliked Owens.

• PA-11: Hazleton mayor and narrow 2008 loser Lou Barletta is still trying to decide on a rematch with Rep. Paul Kanjorski. He’s set a timeline for a late November decision.

• CA-LG: Moderate Republican state Senator Abel Maldonado seems to have the inside track on getting appointed as California’s new Lt. Governor (left vacant by John Garamendi’s election to the House), according to rumormongers. Maldonado seems the likeliest because he’s about the only Republican who can clear the Democratic-controlled legislature, and Dems like the idea because he’d leave behind a Dem-leaning Senate district on the central coast that would be a good pickup target in a special election. There’s also one other GOP-held vacancy coming up in the state Senate (SD-37, a traditionally Republican area in the Inland Empire but one where Obama won), vacated by John Benoit (who became a Riverside Co. Commissioner). Democratic Palm Springs school board member Justin Blake is already running there (along with possibly three different Republican Assemblymen), so there may be two good opportunities for Dems to get closer to the magic 2/3s mark in the Senate.

• NY-St. Ass.: As the orgy of own-eating continues, the rest of the Assembly’s GOP leadership is considering stripping Dede Scozzafava of her status as minority leader pro tem (in retribution for her Bill Owens endorsement). If they do, start counting down the days until she switches parties.

• TX-St. House: Hopes still persist that the Dems can flip the Texas state House in 2010, where they were down only 76-74, but that got pushed back to 77-73 last week when long-time Democrat Chuck Hopson, representing a very conservative rural area in NE Texas, switched to the Republicans. Hopson still might not be able to save his butt; a GOP primary challenger, Michael Banks, already jumped in for 2010.

• HCR Vote: The AFSCME and HCAN are running “thank you” ads in 20 different districts for vulnerable Dems who voted for health care reform.

• Parties: I suppose it was only a matter of time before some clever wingnut figured this out. A conservative Orlando lawyer registered an official “Tea Party” with the secretary of state, making it one of 32 minor parties recognized in Florida.

• Polling: PPP wants your help! They’re asking for polling suggestions in their blog comments, and also have a poll up on where to go next (Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, or Ohio?).

• House: Congratulations to Rep. John Garamendi, who was sworn in yesterday, and Rep. Bill Owens, who was sworn in today. Garamendi and Owens are joining the Democratic caucus as quickly as possible so that they can be eligible to vote on healthcare reform this weekend. (D)

• AR-Sen: Remember how yesterday NRSC chair John Cornyn caved to the party’s right flank, and said that he wouldn’t spend money in primaries or endorse in the future? Well, that lasted about a day: turns out that state Sen. Gilbert Baker, the GOP’s best shot in Arkansas, will be having a fundraiser in Washington DC on the 19th… at the NRSC. (The NRSC did announce that it still didn’t amount to endorsement, and that other Arkansas candidates were still welcome to have fundraisers at the NRSC. Uh, call me when there’s actually a fundraiser for head teabagger Tom Cox at the NRSC building.) More generally, CQ has a nice overview of the tightrope Cornyn is walking as he tries to make some inroads in swing states in 2010.

• CA-Sen: Perhaps in an attempt to give some cover to Cornyn (whose hand-picked candidate, Carly Fiorina, is raising the ire of the Chuck DeVore-supporting right wing), eight GOP Senators all endorsed Fiorina yesterday: a couple from leadership (McConnell, Kyl), the moderate women (Snowe, Collins, and Murkowski), some chit-cashing from last year (McCain and Graham), and one from total right field (Coburn). Tom Coburn’s endorsement is especially surprising in view of fellow wackadoodle Jim DeMint’s endorsement of DeVore. DeMint, for his part, is still attacking John Cornyn’s recruitment efforts today, perfectly encapsulating the right-wing mentality while saying “He’s trying to find candidates who can win. I’m trying to find people who can help me change the Senate.”

• FL-Sen: After Charlie Crist’s bizarre denials that he ever supported the Obama stimulus package, the White House left Crist out to dry yesterday, saying that, yes, in fact, he did support the stimulus.

• KS-Sen: This may fall under the “endorsement you don’t want to tout too loudly” category, although with most of the big-name endorsements so far going to Rep. Jerry Moran in the Kansas Senate race, Rep. Todd Tiahrt will probaly take what he can get. Former AG and Senator John Ashcroft endorsed Tiahrt.

• MT-Sen: Here’s what has the potential to be one of 2012’s hottest Senate races, already shaping up. Rep. Denny Rehberg, the state’s lone at-large Congressperson, met with the NRSC concerning a possible run at Jon Tester.

• CA-Gov: With ex-Gov. Jerry Brown suddenly finding himself with the gubernatorial primary field to himself for now, a familiar face has popped up yet again. Dianne Feinstein, who all year has alternately expressed interest and dismissed rumors of her interest, is now back to saying that she still hasn’t ruled out a gubernatorial run. She’ll wait to see what proposals for fixing the badly-broken state the various candidates put out before deciding whether or not to get in herself.

• IL-Gov: Somehow this got lost in all the shuffle surrounding Election Day, but it’s kind of important: after a short period of being the subject of speculation, Jim Ryan made it official that he’s running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Illinois. He probably becomes the frontrunner in the GOP field, by virtue of name rec: he was the state’s Attorney General from 1994-2002, and lost the 2002 governor’s race to Rod Blagojevich. The rest of the GOP field is a hodge-podge of state Senators and county-level officials, with state GOP chair Andy McKenna maybe the best known of the rest. Ryan’s biggest problem may be hoping people don’t confuse him with imprisoned ex-Gov. George Ryan or weird-sex-fan and 2004 Senate candidate Jack Ryan.

• MN-Gov: Another gubernatorial entry that seemed to fly below the radar this week is also a big one: Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak filed to run for governor yesterday. The well-liked Rybak seems like one of the likeliest candidates to prevail in the very crowded Democratic field.

• NJ-Gov: There are going to be a lot of coulda-shoulda-wouldas in the next few weeks in New Jersey, and here’s a big one already. State Senate leader (and former acting Governor) Richard Codey says that the White House contacted him repeatedly over the summer about taking over for Corzine on the ticket, and that Corzine and Codey even discussed it. Codey deferred to Corzine’s decision to stay in — although Corzine nearly decided to pack it in. Reportedly, internal polls over the summer showed Codey beating Chris Christie by double digits.

• NY-Gov: David Paterson is going on the air with two different TV spots (including one where he admits to “lots of mistakes”), apparently trying to bring up his approvals before deciding whether or not to run again in 2010. Paterson is still looking to move forward on the contentious issue of gay marriage, though, planning to put it on the agenda for next week’s special session. It may not have the votes to clear the Senate, but it hasn’t really been put to the test yet. (The worry is that moderate Republicans in the Senate who might have been on board earlier may be leerier now, afraid of getting Scozzafavaed by the right.)

• NY-23: A rare bit of history was made on Tuesday, in that a seat flipping to the president’s party in a House special election (as opposed to a tough retention, as in NY-20) is highly unusual. The most recent case was in VA-04 in 2001, when Republican Randy Forbes picked up a swing district left open by the death of Dem Norman Sisisky. (Subsequent gerrymandering turned the 4th into a safe GOP seat.) The previous instances before that were in 1989, 1988, and 1983.

• TX-32: Pete Sessions Deathwatch, Vol. 3? One more article piles on the “loser” meme regarding Sessions’ series of NY-23 screwups — and it comes from his hometown paper in Dallas. Meanwhile at home, Sessions is now facing a primary challenge from the right, from financial analyst David Smith. Smith is upset about the Scozzafava thing, but mostly focusing on Sessions’ TARP vote. Still, a primary challenge from the right against one of the House’s most conservative members? Seems like that’d be like going after Tammy Baldwin from the left.

• WI-02: Oh, wait. But that’s exactly what some guy is doing. And he’s not just a rube who fell off the biodiesel-fueled organic turnip truck while reaching for his bong: it’s an actual member of the Board of Supervisors of Dane County (where Madison is). David de Felice is upset that Baldwin hasn’t pushed harder for single-payer health care.

• WI-08: Two different new entries in the Green Bay-based 8th. Physician and Air Force vet Marc Trager got into the Republican field to go against Democratic sophomore Rep. Steve Kagen, where businessman Reid Ribble seems to have the inside track based on fundraising and NRCC-touting so far. And yet another random right-winger is imagining his own head superimposed on Doug Hoffman’s body: former Niagara mayor Joe Stern will run as a grassroots conservative independent in 2010.

• NY Comptroller: A piece on New York 1 speculates that NYC Comptroller Bill Thompson, fresh off a much narrower-than-expected loss to Mayor Mike Bloomberg, could challenge New York State Comptroller Bill DiNapoli in the Democratic primary next year. DiNapoli, you may recall, was appointed to the seat after Alan Hevesi resigned. Thompson said he’s not currently looking at the race, but says that nothing is off the table. (D)

• WA-Init: Referendum 71 was finally called by the press (for the side of equality). Although more votes remain to be counted in the currently 52-48 race, it would require a bizarre turnaround in King County (where it’s currently at 70% approval) to change the result. Meanwhile, Seattle‘s mayoral race is still up in the air; Mike McGinn leads by a 515-vote margin (out of 130,000 counted so far).

• Census: As expected, the Vitter amendment requiring the Census to include a question on citizenship was blocked by Democrats. Conservatives don’t want undocumented immigrants to count for apportionment, and there’s an added incentive for David Vitter, as Louisiana might be able to salvage its 7th seat if such legislation were passed.

• Primaries: MoveOn and DFA are allocating millions of dollars to potential primary challenges against any Democrats who join a Republican filibuster on health care. (The only one who’s on the fence about that and actually up in 2010 is Blanche Lincoln, and nobody of consequence has stepped up to primary her from the left yet, although Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has alluded to the idea.)

• Polling: Mark Blumenthal has a good wrapup of how the various pollsters did on Tuesday. As others have pointed out, IVR polls outperformed live pollsters, at least in the two gubernatorial races (even though they still got weird results in the crosstabs, especially on race). Blumenthal also analyzes what went wrong in NY-23 polling. Also on the polling front, it looks like Nate Silver may have succeeded in scaring off Strategic Vision LLC. As he reports today, not only did they never get around to suing him, but they haven’t released any polls since the imbroglio began, despite that this week’s election would be the prime time to do so.

• WATN?: Finally, we have sad news to report: the Mumpower has finally been contained. Republican Carl Mumpower, the out-of-the-box thinker who lost spectacularly to Rep. Heath Shuler in 2008, got bounced out of his position as Asheville City Councilor on Tuesday.

• FL-Sen: It looks like the Club for Growth has decided to weigh in on the Florida Senate primary, and they’re doing so with a vengeance, with a TV spot going after Charlie Crist’s embrace of the Obama stimulus package. Crist himself has been trying for the last few days to walk back his stimulus support — despite statements on the record from February saying that if he’d been in the Senate, he’d have voted for it. Crist now says he wasn’t “endorsing” it and just playing along so Florida would get a good share of the bennies. (I’m sorry, but my 5-year-old comes up with more convincing excuses than that.)

• NY-Sen-B: Former Gov. George Pataki is reportedly telling friends he’s not that interested in becoming Senator at age 64, and has his eye set a little higher: a presidential race in 2012. The idea of the wooden, moderate Pataki going up against Huckabee and Palin seems a little far-fetched, but a clue in support of that idea is that Pataki joined the Romneys and T-Paws of the world in calling new Manchester, New Hampshire mayor Ted Gatsas to congratulate him. (In case you aren’t connecting the dots, Manchester’s mayor has an outsized influence on NH’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.)

• AZ-Gov: Appointed incumbent Republican Governor Jan Brewer says she’ll run for a full term in 2010. She already faces several minor primary opponents, and may face off against state Treasurer Dean Martin. Her likely Democratic opponent, AG Terry Goddard, who has had a significant lead over Brewer in recent polls, has to be feeling good about this.

• CA-Gov: Capitol Weekly, via Probolsky Research, takes another look at the primaries in the California gubernatorial race, and find free-spending ex-eBay CEO Meg Whitman opening up a lead on her opponents. Whitman leads with 37, against ex-Rep. Tom Cambell at 15 and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner at 6. (Their previous poll, in June, gave a small lead to Campbell at 13, with 10 for Whitman and 8 for Poizner.) On the Dem side, ex-Gov. Jerry Brown led SF Mayor Gavin Newsom 46-19; the sample was completed shortly before Newsom’s dropout last Friday.

• MD-Gov: A poll of the Maryland governor’s race from Clarus Research has a mixed bag for incumbent Dem Martin O’Malley. He defeats ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich without too much trouble in a head-to-head, 47-40, and he has decent approvals at 48/40. Still, on the re-elect question, 39% want to see him re-elected and 48% would like someone new. That would potentially present an opportunity for the Maryland GOP — if they had someone better than Ehrlich to offer, but he’s really the best they have. (By contrast, Barb Mikulski, who’s also up in 2010, has a 53/36 re-elect.)

• OR-Gov: Moderate Republican state Sen. Frank Morse — who, without Rep. Greg Walden or state Sen. Jason Atkinson in the race, might actually have been the GOP’s best bet — said no thanks to a gubernatorial race despite some previous interest; he’ll run for re-election in 2010. Former Portland Trail Blazers center Chris Dudley has formed an exploratory committee to run in the Republican field, though.

• PA-Gov: Here’s an interesting development in the GOP primary field in Pennsylvania: a very conservative state Rep., Sam Rohrer, is scoping out the race and has formed an exploratory committee. Rohrer isn’t well-known outside of conservative activist circles and his Berks County base, but against the moderate Rep. Jim Gerlach and the generally-conservative but ill-defined AG Tom Corbett, he seems like he could peel off a decent chunk of votes on the far right.

• VT-Gov: Add two more Democratic names to the lengthening list in the governor’s race in Vermont. Former state Senator Matt Dunne officially got in the race, and another state Senator, Peter Shumlin, is planning to announce his bid in several weeks. Dunne lost the Lt. Governor’s race in 2006 to current Republican LG Brian Dubie, who is the only declared Republican candidate to replace retiring Gov. Jim Douglas.

• WI-Gov: Rumors keep flying of the Obama administration leaning on ex-Rep. and Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett to run for Wisconsin governor. WH political director Tom Patrick Gaspard met with Barrett. With Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton having recently and surprisingly dropped her bid, Barrett has a free shot if he wants it.

• AZ-03: Dems seem close to pinning down a candidate to run against Rep. John Shadegg in the Phoenix-based 3rd. Lawyer, businessman, would-be-novelist, and former Gary Hart staffer Jon Hulburd is prepping for the race.

• FL-05: The blood is already flowing down Republican streets in the wake of the NY-23 debacle, even a thousand miles away. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, hardly the first name that comes to mind when you think of moderate Republicans (although she is a Main Street member), is now being challenged by a political newcomer in the GOP primary, Jason Sager. One of Sager’s key talking points is Brown-Waite’s support of Dede Scozzafava, on whose behalf Brown-Waite campaigned last week. And more generally, RNC chair Michael Steele (who one week ago was supporting Scozzafava) is flexing his muscles, telling moderates to “walk a little bit carefully” on health care or “we’ll come after you.”

• FL-08: The NRCC has found a couple willing patsies to go up against Rep. Alan Grayson, whom they’ve been interviewing this week. The two contenders are businessman Bruce O’Donoghue (who owns a traffic-signal business… odd, but I guess somebody has to make them) and first-term state Rep. Eric Eisnaugle. (Carpetbagging real estate developer Armando Gutierrez Jr., radio talk show host Todd Long, who nearly beat then-Rep. Ric Keller in last year’s GOP primary, and three anonymous teabaggers are all in the race, but clearly not striking the NRCC’s fancy.) Attorney Will McBride (whose name you might remember from 2006, when he ran in the GOP primary against Katherine Harris) also talked with the NRCC this week, but just pulled his name from contention today.

• MN-01: Another potential challenger to Rep. Tim Walz popped up: former state Rep. Allen Quist. Quist, who ran in gubernatorial primaries twice in the 1990s, is from the state party’s right wing and is a key Michele Bachmann ally (his wife used to Bachmann’s district director). Republican Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau has also been interested in the race.

• MS-01: After all that work to clear the path for state Sen. Alan Nunnelee in the GOP primary in the 1st, the Republicans may still see a contested primary. Former Eupora mayor Henry Ross is seriously considering the race, and making preparations. This may not result in a pitched rural vs. suburbs battle like the previous primary, though; Eupora (pop. 2,400) is near the district’s southern end, near Columbus. Nunnelee is from the Tupelo area, which is also Democratic Rep. Travis Childers’ base.

• NH-02: Katrina Swett has been slow to get into the field in the Democratic primary for the open seat in the 2nd, letting Anne McLane Kuster raise more than $200K unimpeded and secure the EMILY’s List endorsement. Swett may be ready to make a move, though, as she’s been touting a GQR internal poll giving her a 20-point lead in the primary over Kuster. (The actual polling memo hasn’t been released, though, as far as I know.)

• NY-23: Doug Hoffman already has a key House leadership backer for a 2010 race: Indiana’s Mike Pence endorsed Hoffman.

• PA-06: Looks like we have a real race in the Dem primary in the 6th. State Sen. Andy Dinniman, one of the biggest fish in the district and someone who had considered running himself, endorsed physician Manan Trivedi instead of presumed frontrunner Doug Pike. One advantage that Dinniman sees is that Trivedi hails from Reading in Berks County, the part of the district where Dems have traditionally been the weakest.

• Turnout: If you’re wondering what the crux of what happened on Tuesday is, it boils down to terrible turnout. (And it’s pretty clear that higher turnout benefits Democrats, as younger and/or non-white voters who tend to be less likely voters are more likely to vote Democratic.) In Virginia (where the outcome seemed clear long ago), turnout was the lowest in 40 years, including a 10% falloff in key black precincts. And in New Jersey, turnout was also a record low for the state, even though the race was a tossup — indicating a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate. If you want to dig into exit polls for a post-mortem, the New York Times has them available for New York, New Jersey, and Virginia.

• 2010: The White House (or at least David Axelrod) wants to nationalize the 2010 elections, as a means of fixing the Dems’ turnout problems from this week. Expect to see Obama front and center in the run-up to next year’s elections.

• Illinois Filings: With Illinois’s first-in-the-nation filing deadline for 2010 having passed, as usual, our filings guru Benawu is on the scene with a recap in the diaries; check it out.

• CO-Sen: Former state Sen. Tom Wiens made it official; he’s entering the Republican field in the Senate race. With former Lt. Governor Jane Norton wearing the mantle of establishment anointment in this race, Wien’s entry may actually help Norton, by taking non-Norton votes away from conservative Weld County DA Ken Buck. Wiens is a wealthy rancher prepared to put up to half a million of his own dollars into the race.

• FL-Sen: If anyone has to sweating the movement conservatives’ takedown of the pre-selected moderate establishment candidate in NY-23, it’s gotta be Charlie Crist. Here’s one more thing for him to worry about: his job approval according to a new St. Petersburg Times poll is only 42/55. They don’t have him in as dire straits against Marco Rubio in the GOP primary as a number of other pollsters, though — Crist leads Rubio 50-28 — but the ultimate indignity is on the question of whether respondents would choose Crist or Jeb Bush to lead Florida right now, 47% opt for Bush (with 41 for Crist). On the Dem side, Rep. Kendrick Meek leads newly-announced former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre 26-6.

• IL-Sen, IL-07: There a lots of interesting plot lines forming as today is the filing deadline in Illinois. But the big one is: what the hell is up with Patrick Hughes? The real estate developer was considered to be the right-wingers’ go-to guy to against alleged moderate Rep. Mark Kirk in the GOP primary, but now rumors are swirling that he doesn’t have the signatures to qualify. There also seem to be some major ball-droppings for progressives: there’s nobody challenging Rep. Dan Lipinski in the primary in IL-03, and there’s nobody, period, to go up against GOP Rep. Peter Roskam in the R+0 IL-06. In the 7th, where it’s unclear whether Rep. Danny Davis will be coming back or not (he’s filed for his seat, but also for Cook County Board President), he’s facing primary competition from only one elected official: state Sen. Rickey Hendon (Cook Co. Deputy Recorder of Deeds Darlena Williams-Burnett is also a big name, but I don’t think deputy recorder is an elected position). Hendon says he’ll bail out and run for Lt. Governor if Davis sticks around.

Meanwhile, on the Senate front, state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is touting his own internal poll from GQR giving him a 3-point edge on Rep. Mark Kirk in a general election, 46-43. The same poll finds less-known Democrat former Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman trailing Kirk 48-39.

• IN-Sen: Research 2000 (on behalf of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, rather than Kos) found last week that Blanche Lincoln was in serious trouble electorally and that her troubles would mount if she opposed health care reform. They also looked at Evan Bayh, and they found that, a) he’s not in trouble (62/30 approvals, although no head-to-head test against his erstwhile opponent, state Sen. Marlin Stutzman), and b) a majority wouldn’t be moved one way or the other by his health care actions.

• MA-Sen: The start of debates haven’t done much to reshape things in the Democratic primary in the special election in the Bay State. AG Martha Coakley holds a 25-point lead over Rep. Michael Capuano, according to an R2K poll commissioned by local blog Blue Mass Group. Coakley is at 42 and Capuano at 16, with Stephen Pagliuca at 15 and Alan Khazei at 5. Only 52% of Coakley’s voters are firm about it, though, but that’s not much different from any of the other candidates.

• FL-Gov: That aforementioned St. Petersburg Times poll also looked at the governor’s race, and they gave Democratic CFO Alex Sink her first lead in a while; she’s up a single point on GOP AG Bill McCollum, 38-37. More trouble for McCollum: state Senator Paula Dockery, as threatened, now appears to be jumping into the Republican primary, which had been painstakingly cleared for him.

• MN-Gov: If a candidate falls in the Minnesota gubernatorial Republican field, does it make a sound? State Rep. Paul Kohls dropped out, having not gotten much traction according to recent straw polls. That leaves approximately eleventy-seven zillion Republicans left in the hunt.

• VA-Gov: He’s dead, Jim. Four more polls on VA-Gov are out:

YouGov (pdf): McDonnell 53, Deeds 40

Mason-Dixon: McDonnell 53, Deeds 41

PPP (pdf): McDonnell 56, Deeds 42

SurveyUSA: McDonnell 58, Deeds 40

• MI-07: Unseated wingnut Tim Walberg — who’d like to get his job back from freshman Dem Mark Schauer — has some company in the GOP primary next year: attorney and Iraq vet Brian Rooney (the brother of Florida Rep. Tom Rooney) is getting in the race. It’s not clear whether Rooney is any more moderate than Walberg, though; he’s an attorney for the right-wing Thomas More Law Center, the theocons’ answer to the ACLU.

• NY-23: A few more odds and ends in the 23rd. One more key Republican endorser working for Doug Hoffman now is Rudy Giuliani (like George Pataki, not the likeliest fellow you’d expect to see make common cause with the Conservative Party — with neither of them having ruled out 2010 runs, they seem to want to be in good graces with the national GOP, who are all-in for Hoffman now). Rudy’s crack team of robots is making calls on his behalf. Another possible useful endorsement: Watertown’s mayor Jeff Graham is now backing Hoffman. Former candidate Dede Scozzafava, on the other hand, is now cutting robocalls on Democrat Bill Owens’ behalf. Finally, here’s an ill omen on the motivation front: sparse turnout was reported for Joe Biden‘s appearance on behalf of Owens.

• PA-06: One more Republican is getting in the field in the open seat race in the 6th: Howard Cohen, a consultant who is the former Revenue Secretary from the Dick Thornburgh administration decades ago. He’ll face a financial gap against pharma exec Steven Welch, and a name rec gap against state Rep. Curt Schroder, though.

• AL-AG: One incumbent who looks badly endangered going into 2010 is Alabama’s Republican Attorney General, Troy King. Having buddied up with the state’s trial lawyers (thus angering the local business establishment) and also pissed off many local DAs by interfering in their cases, King has lost most establishment support in the upcoming GOP primary against Luther Strange. Two of Strange’s biggest backers are both of the state’s Senators, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby.

• ME-Init: Two more polls on Maine’s Question 1 (where “yes” is a vote to overturn the state’s gay marriage law), both pointing to an excruciatingly close vote. PPP (taken over the weekend) sees it passing 51-47, while Research 2000 (taken last week) gives a tiny edge to “no,” 47-48. (R2K also confirms that Olympia Snowe’s numbers are way off; the once bulletproof Snowe now has approvals of 50/44.)

• NYC: Three more polls all show Michael Bloomberg with an easy path to a third term, beating Democratic comptroller William Thompson. Bloomberg leads 50-38 according to Quinnipiac, 53-42 according to SurveyUSA, and 53-38 according to Marist (pdf).

• Mayors: There are fresh polls in a few other mayoral races. In St. Petersburg, Florida, one of the most hotly contended races around, Bill Foster leads Kathleen Ford 48-44 according to SurveyUSA. (Foster leads among both blacks and conservatives.) The racially polarized race in Charlotte gives a small edge to the conservative white candidate, Andy Lassiter, who leads 50-46 over Anthony Foxx. And in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, all we know is that someone with a difficult-to-spell last name will be mayor. Matt Czajkowski leads Mark Kleinschmidt 45-44. (Czajkowski seems to be the conservative and Kleinschmidt the liberal.)

• State legislatures: In case there wasn’t enough to focus on tomorrow, Josh Goodman points to five legislative special elections tomorrow. The big one is Michigan‘s 19th Senate district, which was vacated by Democratic Rep. Mark Schauer. Republican former state Rep. Mike Nofs may have an edge for the pickup against Democratic state Rep. Martin Griffin, at least based on fundraising. There are also Dem-held seats up in Alabama’s 65th House district, Missouri’s 73rd House district, and Washington’s 16th House district (the reddest Dem-held seat in Washington), and a GOP-held seat in South Carolina’s 48th House district. (UPDATE: TheUnknown285 points us to a whopping seven legislative seats up from grabs in Georgia, too, in his diary.)

• NRCC: Pete Sessions Deathwatch, Vol. 1? This seems odd, given that he’s had some pretty good success on the recruiting front, but apparently the behind-closed-doors potshots are hitting NRCC head Sessions just as heavily as they did Tom Cole last cycle. The complaints aren’t about recruiting, though, but rather about fundraising, where the NRCC is still lagging the DCCC despite the superficial conventional wisdom that Republicans come into 2010 with momentum, and about not keeping enough of a lid on all those nagging intraparty skirmishes that somehow only the blogosphere ever seems to notice.

• Polling: Mark Blumenthal has a thought-provoking piece on polling the cap-and-trade issue. The key problem: no one knows exactly what it is (reminiscent of polling the public option question, too).

• Voting: States are still trying to figure out what to do about the new federal law intended to make sure that military ballots from overseas get counted. At least a dozen states are now actively considering moving their September primaries up in the calendar to comply (including Minnesota, Vermont, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin).

• FL-Sen: Everything’s coming up Milhouse for Rep. Kendrick Meek these days: Rep. Corrine Brown decided not to challenge him in the primary, he’s watching Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio go hammer and tongs at each other on the GOP side, and now he has the endorsement of Florida’s currently most successful Democrat, Sen. Bill Nelson.

• NH-Sen: Oh please oh please… the geniuses at the Club for Growth are considering getting involved in the New Hampshire Senate race, where the position-less campaign of Kelly Ayotte doesn’t seem to be capturing their fancy. (This is buried at the end of an article on how they’re still weighing involvement in FL-Sen.)

• NY-Gov: David Paterson is playing a different tune than before, sounding less defiant and ready to “reassess” if his numbers stay in the tank on into early 2010. Meanwhile, this may be a tea leaf that Rudy Giuliani isn’t planning to run — or simply one Suffolk County resident doing a favor for another one — but Suffolk County (on Lon Gisland) GOP leader John Jay LaValle endorsed Rick Lazio last week, and now Orange County (in the Hudson Valley) GOP leader Bill DeProspo is also endorsing Lazio. (And with Lazio poised to get demolished in a Rudy primary, you wouldn’t likely make that endorsement and risk the Rudy’s wrath unless you had a sense that he wasn’t running.) Finally, Erie County Exec Chris Collins had been considered a post-Rudy Plan B for the GOP, but he seems to have taken himself out of the running with bizarre remarks last weekend comparing Democratic Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver to both Hitler and the anti-Christ.

• VA-Gov: Two more Virginia polls to add to the pile today: Roanoke College (in its first and apparently only poll) finds Bob McDonnell with a 53-36 lead over Creigh Deeds. In another bit of bad news, Republicans lead Democrats 43-33 on a generic ballot question concerning the House of Delegates. Research 2000 also looks at the race, finding a 54-44 lead for McDonnell — one of Deeds’ best performances recently, although that’s not saying much.

• IA-03: Republican state Sen. (and former mayor of the Des Moines suburb of Urbandale) Brad Zaun says he’s seriously considering a run against Rep. Leonard Boswell in the 3rd next year. Mike Mahaffey, former state GOP chair, is set to decide by next week whether or not he’ll run too.

• IL-18: Democrat D.K. Hirner will run for the nomination to face off against Rep. Aaron Schock in the Peoria-area 18th (who benefited from Democratic recruitment problems in his initial run in 2008). Hirner is the executive director of the Illinois Environmental Regulatory Group.

• MN-03: Democratic psychiatrist Maureen Hackett filed campaign papers to run in the 3rd against freshman Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen (who won with only 49% of the vote in 2008). Minnesota PTA president Jim Meffert-Nelson is also planning to announce his bid soon, while state Sen. Teri Bonoff, the district’s heavyweight Dem, is still weighing the race.

• NH-02: EMILY’s List has one more endorsee: attorney Ann McLane Kuster, in the open seat race in the 2nd. You may be wondering “Wait, isn’t Katrina Swett going to run there?” While Kuster is officially in the race and has been fundraising well, Swett hasn’t committed to a bid yet, though… and more importantly, supports parental notification for abortion, making an endorsement unlikely.

• OH-15: Here’s a positive development at both the micro and macro levels: little-known anti-abortion Ron Paul-supporter David Ryon dropped out of the Republican primary field against state Sen. Steve Stivers (who’s seeking a rematch against freshman Democratic Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy), and he’s going to go the third party route. This is good at a micro level because it’s similar to what happened in 2008, when two minor right-wing candidates siphoned off 9% of the vote, allowing Kilroy to get past the pro-choice Stivers despite an underwhelming performance (and without Obama on the ballot driving turnout in a university-dominated district, Kilroy is poised to underwhelm again in 2010). And at a macro level, it may be an indication that various wingnuts are taking stock of the Doug Hoffman situation and saying “Hey, that could be me!” (Thus further exacerabting the rifts in the GOP.)

• OH-16: Buried at the end of an article that’s mostly profiling alleged GOP frontrunner Jim Renacci, there’s news that conservative former Ashland County Commissioner Matt Miller is planning a third run in the primary in the 16th. Miller, if you’ll recall, got 42% in the 2006 primary against long-time Rep. Ralph Regula (which was probably instrumental in prompting Regula’s 2008 retirement), and then almost won the 2008 primary against state Sen. Kirk Schuring. So it’s hardly a foregone conclusion that freshman Democratic Rep. John Boccieri will be facing Renacci next year.

• VA-07: Democratic real estate developer Charles Diradour has decided to scrap his nascent candidacy against Eric Cantor, so it’s back to the drawing board for Dems in the reddish 7th. Cantor has the biggest bankroll of any House Republican, so it’d be an uphill fight, to say the least.

• NY-St. Sen.: With state Sen. Hiram Monserrate intending to stay in the Senate despite having been convicted of misdemeanor assault last week, the Queens Democratic Party (led by Rep. Joe Crowley) is taking the unusual step of recruiting and endorsing a primary challenger to him. Assemblyman Jose Peralta will be running against Monserrate with the local party’s blessing. The Senate is also still considering whether to begin expulsion proceedings against Monserrate.

• PA-S. Ct.: Josh Goodman has a good catch on how the lone Supreme Court race on the ballot in Pennsylvania next week is actually a key race, in terms of state legislative redistricting in 2010. The state’s legislative redistricting board has 5 seats, with two seats from each legislative chamber and the remaining seat chosen by the first 4. But if the two legislative chambers are controlled by different parties (as is currently the case), there’s a deadlock, and the 5th member is chosen by the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court is also currently deadlocked between the parties (3-3, with the victor of next week’s race the tiebreaking vote), so the Supreme Court race essentially is for control of state legislative redistricting for the next decade. In the one poll I’ve seen of the race, Democrat Jack Panella led GOPer Joan Orie Melvin 38-35.

• Polling: PPP is asking for your help again: they’d like to know what you’d like to see for a release schedule over the next week.

• Volunteering: Marriage/partnership equality campaigns in three states are looking for help down the home stretch. The best part is, you don’t even have to leave your chair – all three organizations are looking for folks to make calls to help get out the vote. So if you’d like to help, follow the links for Maine, Washington state, and Kalamazoo, Michigan. The folks in Kalamazoo are also looking for in-person volunteers – click here if you are in the area. (D)

• CT-Sen: With Joe Lieberman back to his usual self-promoting mavericky ways, vis a vis the public option, and with the netroots worked up into a lather, it’s a perfect time for Ned Lamont to step back into the spotlight. The 2006 Democratic primary winner attacked Lieberman’s statements, although he sounded interested but noncommital about the idea of a 2012 rematch.

• FL-Sen: Here’s another sign that the Charlie Crist camp is starting to take the Marco Rubio threat more seriously. They’ve launched an anti-Rubio website, TruthAboutRubio.com.

• KS-Sen: Oklahoma’s Jim Inhofe endorsed Rep. Todd Tiahrt in the GOP primary in the open seat Senate race in Kansas. Inhofe seems to be the first sitting senator to endorse Tiahrt (although Rick Santorum already did); several senators (John McCain, John Thune, and Inhofe’s colleague Tom Coburn) have already endorsed the less hardline Rep. Jerry Moran.

• MA-Sen: Rep. Niki Tsongas (the only woman in the Massachusetts House delegation) endorsed AG Martha Coakley in the Dem primary for the upcoming Senate special election. It’s Coakley’s first endorsement from a House member; four other House members have gotten behind Rep. Michael Capuano.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): Franklin & Marshall has another poll of the Pennsylvania races out, and like a lot of other pollsters, they’re finding that people aren’t very enthused about Arlen Specter, and are getting even less enthusiastic, giving him a 28/46 favorable (down from 35/42 in August), and a 23/66 reading on the “deserves re-election” question. Specter currently leads ex-Rep. Pat Toomey 33-31 (down from 37-29 in August), and beats Rep. Joe Sestak in the Dem primary 30-18 (down from 37-11). Sestak loses to Toomey, 28-20. F&M also look at the gubernatorial primaries (no general matchups, though). AG Tom Corbett leads on the GOP side over Rep. Jim Gerlach, 30-8, while the Dem field plays out: 10 for Allegheny Co. Exec Dan Onorato, 9 from Auditor Jack Wagner, 6 for ex-Rep. Joe Hoeffel, 3 for Tom Knox, and 3 for Scranton mayor Chris Doherty.

• SD-Sen: Democrats may turn to an old family name for a Senate candidate against John Thune: Mark McGovern, the 37-year-old grandson of former Senator and presidential candidate George McGovern. McGovern is state director for Repower America, a clean energy advocacy group, and was state director for the 2008 Obama campaign.

• CT-Gov: The campaign for Democratic SoS Susan Bysiewicz is making references to an internal poll that has her trailing by only 6 to the once-thought-unassailable Jodi Rell in 2010, 47-41. (And that assumes Rell runs — given her fundraising, and now the possibility of a hard race, she may not be on track to do so.) The poll also finds Bysiewicz overperforming Stamford mayor Dan Malloy (who loses to Rell 52-31), and beating Malloy in the primary, 44-12.

• SC-Gov: An impeachment resolution against Mark Sanford was introduced today by Republican state Rep. Greg Dellenny during the brief special session. However, fellow Republican speaker Bobby Harrell ruled it out of order, as outside the scope of the special session. It’ll have to wait until January.

• VA-Gov (pdf): Looks like we’ll have to wait another day (and probably a lot longer than that) for signs of life in the Virginia gubernatorial race. Virginia Commonwealth issued their first poll of the race, giving Bob McDonnell a 54-36 edge over Creigh Deeds (51-33 without leaners pushed). Rasmussen chimes in with similar numbers at 54-41 for McDonnell (finding a spreading McDonnell lead like most pollsters; two weeks ago they had it at 50-43). Pollster.com‘s regression line has the overall total moving today to the exact same result: 54-41.

• TX-Gov: Maybe this falls under the category of an endorsement you don’t really want to tout, but Kay Bailey Hutchison needs every vote she can get in what looks like a tight GOP primary with incumbent Gov. Rick Perry. KBH secured the endorsement of Dick Cheney today.

• CA-19: I’m still not sure what conservative Rep. George Radanovich did to wrong the local GOP, but the hunt goes on for an even more conservative Republican to challenge him in the primary. One possible challenger is former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson, who’s looking for a new political gig. (Patterson ran for Congress in 2002 in then-new CA-21, losing the GOP primary to Devin Nunes.) Patterson may also be interested in replacing termed-out Mike Villines in the state Assembly.

• FL-08: Buried in a longer Politico piece titled, appropriately, “Rivals shy away from Alan Grayson” are three more potential Republican challengers: first-term state Rep. Eric Eisnaugle, attorney Will McBride (who lost the 2006 Senate primary to Katherine Harris), and businessman Bruce O’Donoghue. O’Donoghue, who’s close to Mel Martinez, sounds like the likeliest of those three to run.

• NY-23: Big money continues to flow into the 23rd on the pro-Bill Owens side, with another $245K from the DCCC, and $200K from the AFSCME. MoveOn.org has also started flogging this race in its fundraising e-mails, saying that it’s a chance to rebuke the Palin/teabagger wing of the GOPers. Meanwhile, Doug Hoffman continues to rack up the endorsements from people that no one in the 23rd has ever heard of: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, and even Oklahoma House candidate Kevin Calvey and California Senate candidate Chuck DeVore. RNC chair Michael Steele is still standing by Dede Scozzafava, though.

• TN-09: It looks like former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton may self-destruct before Rep. Steve Cohen even lays into him in the Dem primary in the 9th. Herenton is reportedly the target of a criminal probe by the local US Attorney’s office focusing on “personal business transactions” during his time as mayor. Herenton, naturally, is calling the investigation politically-motivated.

• VA-02: Here’s a screwup for Ben Loyola, one of the Republicans jostling to take on freshman Dem Rep. Glenn Nye and one who made a big self-funding impact last quarter. Loyola may have low-balled estimates of the value of a division of his company that he sold to a Swedish firm, at best a disclosure violation in terms of reporting his net worth, and at worst an illegal campaign contribution.

• EMILY’s List: EMILY’s List added four Democratic House members to its list of endorsees. Three are swing-district freshmen (Debbie Halvorson, Ann Kirkpatrick, and Dina Titus), and the other one is the perpetually shaky Carol Shea-Porter.

• WA-Init: A slew of polls out of Washington yesterday and today, containing good news. UW’s Washington Poll finds that R-71 (a referendum in favor of expanded domestic partnership) is passing 57-38, while I-1033 (the latest TABOR-style anti-tax initiative from initiative huckster Tim Eyman) is failing 40-49. These numbers are confirmed by SurveyUSA, which finds R-71 passing 50-43, and I-1033 going down 38-50. The Washington Poll also looks at the King County Executive race, which (though ostensibly nonpartisan) sees Democratic county councilor Dow Constantine beating Republican former news anchor Susan Hutchison 47-34 — they don’t have trendlines, and the only comparison point is SurveyUSA, who last showed Hutchison with a surprising 47-42 lead, so this one still bears watching. The Washington Poll finds Joe Mallahan leading Mike McGinn in the Seattle mayor’s race, 44-36.

• Census: An independent analysis of the effect of the proposed David Vitter legislation that would only count U.S. citizens for purposes of reapportionment finds a very different looking House. California post-2010 would lose five House seats, and Texas would gain only one House seat (instead of the projected three). The proposed change would also spare Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania the expected loss of one seat each. (The study is worth a look also because it projects which states gain and lose seats according to normal rules, and also looks at which metro areas are experiencing ‘brain drain.’)