Tag: NM-02

Public Policy Polling (2/18-20, registered voters):

Martin Heinrich (D-inc): 45

Jon Barela (R): 36

Undecided: 19

Harry Teague (D-inc): 41

Steve Pearce (R): 43

Undecided: 16

Ben Lujan (D-inc): 40

Adam Kokesh (R): 32

Undecided: 28

Ben Lujan (D-inc): 42

Tom Mullins (R): 36

Undecided: 22

(MoE: ±4.9%)

PPP’s NM-Gov sample comes with an added bonus: results for each of the Land of Enchantment’s three House races. The big ticket item here is NM-02, where Rep. Harry Teague is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents going into November. That’s not so much because of the district’s lean (it’s R+6 and has a Hispanic plurality — Walt Minnick and Bobby Bright would kill for R+6) but because Teague is facing off against ex-Rep. Steve Pearce, who held the district for a number of years until his ill-fated 2008 Senate run, and is still well-thought-of here (as seen by his 43/31 favorables). While I’d certainly prefer to see Teague leading, all things considered, the 43-41 lead for Pearce feels not-that-bad. Like Tom Perriello in VA-05, Teague seems to have been already written off as a casualty by mainstream media pundits, not only having won a superficially-fluky victory in a reddish district but also having voted for cap-and-trade instead of cowering with the Blue Dogs. And yet (just like Perriello) PPP finds him in a dead heat.

The race in the 1st — between freshman Rep. Martin Heinrich and Jon Barela, the former head of Albuquerque’s Hispanic Chamber of Commerce — is one that, even before this poll, I’d have classified as “Likely D,” given the district’s lean (D+5) and Heinrich’s convincing 2008 victory. The Republicans will have to make a serious dent in the currently “Likely D” seats in order to retake the majority, but it’s looking like NM-01 isn’t on track to be one of those seats where they do.

In fact, the Republicans actually come a little closer in the 3rd, which is the state’s traditionally most Democratic-friendly district at D+7 (although this was briefly held by a Republican in the 1990s after a surprisingly strong Green Party performance in a special election). Part of the problem may lie with its Rep, Ben Lujan (the only one of the three to sport negative approvals, at 31/40 — Teague, by comparison, is at 41/36), but I suspect the 3rd is also a very difficult district to poll. It’s a rural, impoverished district where a sizable number of the Democratic base voters may not speak English or have landlines, which may give more weight to the district’s Republicans clustered around Farmington.

RaceTracker Wiki: NM-01 | NM-02 | NM-03

• AZ-Sen: One more endorsement for John McCain, as the GOP establishment circles the wagons around him in the face of a primary challenge from J.D. Hayworth. Today, it was former presidential rival Mitt Romney’s turn to boost McCain.

• FL-Sen: Rasmussen follows up with a look at the Senate general election in Florida, and pretty consistent with its last few polls, gives double-digit leads to both Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio over Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek. Crist leads 48-32, while Rubio leads 51-31. It’s looking dicier for Crist to make it to the general, though, and that’s reflected with an increasing number of staffers seeing the handwriting on the wall and bailing out. Political director Pablo Diaz announced his departure, and new media consultant Sean Doughtie is already out.

• IN-Sen, IN-08: Dem Rep. Baron Hill, still apparently mulling a Senate bid, says that he probably will make a decision “this week”. Meanwhile, presumptive Dem nominee Brad Ellsworth has officially removed his name from the 8th CD Democratic primary ballot, leaving state Rep. Trent Van Haaften as the consensus Democratic choice. (J)

• MA-Sen: Unless you were under a rock yesterday, you know that the Senate jobs bill cleared the cloture hurdle with the aid of five Republicans, most notably Scott Brown, who actually seems to be thinking ahead to getting re-elected and, in doing so, has royally pissed-off his nationwide base of teabagging donors. On top of that comes another revelation that ought to further take the bloom off his status as living embodiment of angry-white-guy rage: that truck that signified he was an average blue-collar guy? Turns out he owns it in order to haul his daughter’s horse.

• NV-Sen: One more data point in the Nevada Senate race, this one not looking so good for Harry Reid. Research 2000 polls the race again, this time on behalf of the PCCC, and finds Reid trailing Sue Lowden 53-39 and Danny Tarkanian 54-40. The real point of the poll, though, is to try to show him that his support would go up if he successfully got a public option into the health care reform bill, with 31% saying they’d be likelier to vote for him if so (with 15% saying less likely and 51% saying no difference). Bear in mind that this poll, unlike the interesting POS poll from yesterday, doesn’t factor in the sudden emergence of a 3rd party Tea Party option.

• CT-Gov: After some brief flirtations with the idea, ex-Rep. Chris Shays has decided not to run for Connecticut governor after all, saying he couldn’t make it work financially. Although he didn’t address the also-rumored possibility of running again in CT-04, the same logic may apply there too.

• FL-Gov: The seeming dwindling of the Alex Sink campaign continues apace, at least if you go by Rasmussen’s trendlines. Republican AG Bill McCollum is up to 13-point lead against the Democratic CFO, 48-35.

• GA-Gov: More Rasmussenny goodness in neighboring Georgia, where they take their second look at the general election in the gubernatorial race. While Democratic ex-Gov. Roy Barnes led several of the GOP contestants in the previous Rasmussen poll, trailing only Insurance Comm. John Oxendine, this time he doesn’t fare as well. Barnes loses to Oxendine 45-37, to Rep. Nathan Deal 43-37, to SoS Karen Handel 45-36, and ties state Sen. Eric Johnson 37-37.

• IL-Gov: The GOP primary contestants are still waiting for the last ballots to trickle in today, the last day for counties to submit their numbers to the state. (The state has until March 5 to announce official results.) Estimates last week were that there were fewer than 2,000 votes, mostly provisional votes, to count. State Sen. Kirk Dillard, currently trailing by a little more than 200 votes, doesn’t plan to make a decision on whether to concede or keep fighting until after the 5th. On the Democratic side, the search for a Lt. Governor goes on. Pat Quinn had publicly said that his top choice would be current Deputy VA Secretary Tammy Duckworth, but she has taken herself out of consideration today.

• MI-Gov: Looks like Genesee County Treasurer Dan Kildee is in the gubernatorial race for the Democrats; he’s skipping right over the exploratory phase and filing as a candidate for governor. He joins Lansing mayor Virg Bernero and state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, with state House speaker Andy Dillon likely to enter soon.

• PA-Gov: State Sen. Anthony Williams didn’t meet his very high $4 million fundraising bar, but he seems to feel heartened enough by the $2 million he has to officially pull the trigger on a gubernatorial run. With Chris Doherty and Tom Knox both out of the Democratic field now, it seems like there’s room for one more SE Pennsylvania candidate in the field; Williams, from Philadelphia, will be the only African-American in the race.

• WI-Gov: One more Rasmussen gubernatorial poll to look at, featuring (surprise!) the Republican in the lead. Milwaukee Co. Exec Scott Walker leads Democratic Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett 49-40, while ex-Rep. Mark Neumann has a much smaller lead over Barrett, 44-42. That’s actually a smidge better than last month’s Rasmussen poll.

• AR-03: State Sen. Cecile Bledsoe got the endorsement of one of her predecessors in the 3rd, ex-Rep. and former DEA Director Asa Hutchinson. A wide cast of characters, including Rogers mayor Steve Womack, is either already in the hunt for the GOP nod or considering it, in this dark-red district.

• AZ-05: Rep. Harry Mitchell can probably consider this to be good news: another divisive Republican primary, which helped him to a comfortable victory in 2008, is brewing this year. Former state Rep. Susan Bitter Smith jumped into the GOP field yesterday, which pits her in a rematch against former Maricopa Co. Treasurer David Schweikert (who won the 2008 primary). Businessman Jim Ward and his ability to self-fund is in the mix too, as something of a wild card.

• AZ-08: State Sen. Jonathan Paton has resigned from the state Senate, in order to focus full-time on running against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in the 8th. He leaves behind one piece of legislation underway that’s actually a pretty cool idea: instituting “question time,” a la the UK’s parliament, where the Governor has to show up for a biweekly grilling in front of the legislature. Paton becomes the third Republican state Senator to resign in the span of a few weeks, with Pam Gorman and Jim Waring both having bailed out to pursue the open seat in AZ-03.

• FL-24: Former Ruth’s Chris Steakhouses CEO Craig Miller went ahead and got into the GOP field in the 24th, despite already having taken on some damage from preemptive salvos fired by the DCCC over statements opposed to stronger drunk-driving laws. Potentially self-funding Miller has become the NRCC’s new fave in the race, after state Rep. Sandy Adams and Winter Park city councilor Karen Diebel have floundered at fundraising.

• FL-25: Joe Garcia, the Democratic 2008 candidate who almost knocked off Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, met with the DCCC’s Chris Van Hollen yesterday. This only serves to increase speculation Garcia will try again, now that the 25th is an open seat. The DCCC has also been interested in Miami-Dade Co. state’s attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle.

• KS-03: Republican State Sen. Nick Jordan, who lost in the 3rd to Democratic Rep. Dennis Moore, looks to be on track to succeed the retiring Moore. Jordan’s own internal poll from POS shows him ahead of state Rep. Kevin Yoder 27-9, with former state Rep. Patricia Lightner and Charlotte O’Hara both at 5 (leaving about half of the voters undecided). Jordan’s poll didn’t look at the general, but there’s nothing to see there yet, seeing as how the Dems haven’t, um, found an interested candidate yet.

• MA-10: In the event of a retirement by Rep. William Delahunt, state Senate majority leader Therese Murray says she won’t try to succeed him. On the GOP side, possible candidate ex-Treasurer Joe Malone may come with more liabilities than were initially apparent when he first started touting himself for the race. After Malone’s tenure ended in 1999, it was discovered that several of his top aides had stolen over $9 million from the state. Malone himself was never accused of being involved, but reminding voters about it will inevitably lead to questions about his judgment.

• NM-02: Ex-Rep. Steve Pearce has released an internal poll performed on his behalf by the Tarrance Group that gives him a small lead over Democratic Rep. Harry Teague, 48-44. The good news for Teague is that R beats D in a generic ballot test 47-37, showing that the conservative Teague overperforms the Democratic brand despite his vote in favor of cap and trade in this heavily oil-dependent district.

• NY-01: Despite the NRCC’s seeming preferences for rich guy Randy Altschuler, he’s already in a difficult primary, and now he may be facing a three-way contest with a local elected official too. State Assemblyman Michael Fitzpatrick says he’s exploring the race.

• OH-06, OH-17: Ex-Rep. Jim Traficant didn’t meet the filing deadline to file as a Democrat for any race in Ohio, but now he’s saying that he’s planning to run as an Independent instead (which would require filing by early May). He’s still not saying where he’s going to run, although neither of the two possibilities look terribly promising: either the strongly-Democratic 17th (which he used to represent), or the swingy 6th, where he’d have to introduce himself to most of the voters

• PA-06, PA-07: Here’s a big get for Manan Trivedi, as he seeks the Democratic nomination in the 6th. He got the endorsement of the Chester County Democrats. With Trivedi already strong in Berks County and Doug Pike strong in Montgomery County, suburban/exurban Chester County is somewhat the pivotal county in the district. (They also endorsed Bryan Lentz over his minor primary opposition in the 7th.)

• PA-12: This is another solid break for the Dems in special election in the 12th: Republican businessman Mark Pasquerilla, with deep pockets, seemed to be one of the few GOPers who could make this race competitive. Something of a John Murtha ally, though, he had previously said he wouldn’t run if Joyce Murtha got in. She didn’t, but Pasquerilla still didn’t bite; instead, he’s endorsing Murtha’s district director, Mark Critz, who announced his candidacy yesterday. This basically moves the GOP back to square one, with the candidates who were already in place for the regularly scheduled election: businessman Tim Burns (who doesn’t seem quite as able to self-fund), or veteran/BMW Direct frontman Bill Russell.

• WV-01, WV-03: Worries have been emanating out of West Virginia’s governor Joe Manchin about the re-election prospects of Reps. Alan Mollohan and Nick Rahall, who despite their no votes on cap-and-trade often get tagged as not being sufficiently pro-coal. The United Mine Workers have no trouble supporting the duo, though; they endorsed both of them this weekend.

• DSCC: There have been some rumblings about DSCC chair Bob Menendez’s lackluster ways, at least by comparison to his manic predecessor, Chuck Schumer. Here’s a telling quote:

“Chuck – wow – he would call all the time, three, four times a week, when he needed something, but I don’t ever hear from Menendez unless I initiate the contact,” said a Washington-based donor who has bundled tens of thousands of dollars in contributions to the committee. “You just don’t have the same level of energy from Bob; he just doesn’t push you like Chuck would,” the source added. “And that makes it a lot easier to say no.”

• DCCC: The DCCC is trying to get some mileage out of fanning the flames in some of the most divisive GOP primaries between the GOP establishment and teabagger-powered movement conservatives (which they’re cheekily calling “Palin’s primaries”). Targets include MS-01, VA-02, VA-05, NH-01, CA-11, and TN-08.

• Polltopia: Mark Blumenthal takes another look at Rasmussen, asking if they’ve been “flooding the zone” and thus shaping the overall narrative by sheer numeric dominance of the data that get released. (Sound familiar? He gives a shout-out to a diary here by our own spiderdem that first raised the point.) It’s quite true that Rasmussen has done many more Senate polls this cycle than last (45 vs. 13 at this point in the cycle), but so too have some of the other new players (especially PPP, 21 vs. 5). (He also notices what we’ve noticed, that SurveyUSA is polling less this cycle; they poll only when hired to do so, and he speculates that TV stations and newspapers have cut back their polling budgets.) Interestingly, he also points to why Rasmussen is able to do so: a “major growth capital investment” from private equity firm Noson Lawen. (Noson Lawen, and what their potential agenda might be, sounds like an interesting topic for enterprising investigative bloggers…)

Scott Eliott (ElectionProjection.com) is up with his first nationwide ’10 projections, and it isn’t so bad.

Eliott is a wingnut – but he’s as objective as they come w/r/t election data. For example, he called every Senate race correctly in ’06 and just missed 1 in ’08.

His numbers after ’10:

Senate: 56-42-2  (D -2)

House:  249-186  (D -8)

I believe would be depicted as a huge D victory, a virtual endorsement of President Obama’s agenda by a majority of the country.

Scott Elliot has his views, which I disagree with strongly. But he runs a clean site, free of the virtol associated with the typical Wingnut blog (perhaps except for the banner ads).

His record is stellar – he was right on 48 of the 50 states in the ’04 election (he switched IA and WI). He called all six of our Senate gains in ’06, with obvious pain in his words.

Eight days before election day ’08, he said

Eight days from Election Day, here is this blogger’s conclusion:  Barack Obama will win this election in a landslide.  He will capture at least 350 electoral votes and win the popular vote by 7% or more.

2010 details – w/r/t the Senate, he currently sees

D losses in DE, CO, CT

D gain in OH

w/r/t the House, the current projection shows

R gains in

AL-02, FL-08, ID-01, KS-03, LA-03, MD-01, NM-02, OH-15, PA-07, TN-06, TN-08, and VA-05

While I disagree with him w/r/t FL-08, there will be a lot of wingnut money flowing to whomever opposes Grayson this year.

Eliott also projects D gains in

DE-AL, IL-10, LA-02, PA-06

His formulas are interesting as well. http://www.electionprojection…. –

a quantitative formula based on polls and pundits.

He even uses partisan polls – but includes a 3% correction factor.

• DE-Sen: Delaware AG Beau Biden will be returning from his service in Iraq later this month, meaning it’s time for him to decide whether or not he runs for his dad’s former Senate seat. One journo (National Journal’s Erin McPike) already tweets that he’s “definitely in,” which could serve to scare off the already seemingly gun-shy Rep. Mike Castle.

• MA-Sen: There are reports that there are enough votes in both chambers of the state legislature to give Gov. Deval Patrick the power to appoint a short-term replacement Senator. Republicans can use procedural tactics to stall it for a week, but would be out of options after that, meaning a new Senator could be in place by late next week.

• MO-Sen, MO-07: Former state Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Sarah Steelman’s 2010 cycle is ending with a whimper, not a bang: after starting out looking like a strong primary challenger to Rep. Roy Blunt in the Senate race, she gradually faded from view, then re-emerged to explore a race for Blunt’s old seat in the 7th. Now she’s confirming that she won’t run for anything, at least not in 2010.

• NJ-Sen (pdf): PPP has some extra info from their sample from their gubernatorial poll. As usual, New Jerseyites don’t like anyone: not Barack Obama (45/48 approval), Robert Menendez (27/40), or Frank Lautenberg (38/44). As a bonus, they also find that even in well-educated, affluent New Jersey, there’s still a lot of birtherism (64-21, with 16% unsure) and even a new category: people who think Barack Obama is the anti-Christ. 8% are… let’s just call them anti-Christers… with another 13% not sure.

• MD-Gov: Maryland Republicans have found, well, somebody to run for Governor: businessman Lawrence Hogan, Jr. Hogan says he’ll run but he’ll get out of the race in case his friend ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich shows up, although that’s not looking likely. Hogan ran unsuccessfully against Steny Hoyer in 1992. A better-known figure, State Delegate and radio talk show host Patrick McDonough, also expressed his interest in the race in August, although he too would stand down for Ehrlich.

• MN-Gov: As expected, state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher officially announced that she’s running for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. She joins (taking in a really deep breath here first): Ramsey Co. Attorney Susan Gaertner, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, state Senators John Marty and Tom Bakk, state Reps. Tom Rukavina and Paul Thissen, and former legislators Matt Entenza and Steve Kelley, with Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman also expected to enter the field soon. Also looming on the horizon, according to the article: a possible run by Independence Party candidate Dean Barkley, who broke into double-digits in last year’s Senate race.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Yet another poll of the New York Governor’s race, this time from Marist. As always, Paterson is in disastrous condition, with an approval rating of 20/76. Paterson loses the Dem primary to Andrew Cuomo 70-23, and, if Cuomo happens to die in a bizarre gardening accident before the primary, Paterson loses to Rudy Giuliani 60-34 (although he still manages to tie Rick Lazio, 43-43). Cuomo defeats Giuliani 53-43 and Lazio 71-21.

• PA-Gov: This might pique Joe Hoeffel’s interest. The ex-Rep. and MontCo Commissioner has been considering the gubernatorial race (where there isn’t much of a progressive option in the Dem primary), and now he won a straw poll of 1,000 progressive activists done by Keystone Progress, picking up 35%. Auditor Jack Wagner was at 22, with Allegheny County Exec Dan Onorato at 14, Scranton mayor Chris Doherty at 11, and businessman Tom Knox at 7. Of course, the caveats about generalizing this sample to the larger population are obvious here; the actual Democratic electorate contains a lot of pro-life Catholic voters and ex-GOP suburban moderates.

• SC-Gov: Here’s some very good news out of the Palmetto State: Superintendent of Education Jim Rex is officially in the Governor’s race. Rex had previously expressed his interest and his candidacy started looking likely when he said last week that he wouldn’t run again for his current job. Rex is the only Dem holding statewide office in South Carolina, so despite the state’s dark-red hue may be able to get some traction here thanks to the GOP’s descent into chaos over the Mark Sanford affair (and their reluctance to get behind his Lt. Gov, Andre Bauer). Rex’s new website is here.

• VA-Gov: Creigh Deeds has to be pleased with the new poll from Clarus, an independent pollster whose first poll of the race finds a 42-37 lead for Bob McDonnell, a narrower gap than most pollsters are seeing. They also find 48/43 approvals for Obama, 47/23 for Jim Webb, and 61/21 for Mark Warner. Meanwhile, new fundraising numbers for the race are available. Deeds raised more than McDonnell for the July/August period, $3.5 million to McDonnell’s $3 million. McDonnell still has more cash on hand, $5.8 million to Deeds’ $4.3 million. Also an advantage for McDonnell: the RNC is pledging to spend up to $7 million on behalf of McDonnell (although that figure includes $2.4 million they’ve already spent).

• KY-06: Republicans seem to have a candidate ready to go up against Rep. Ben Chandler in the 6th, who hasn’t faced much in the way of opposition in this GOP-leaning district. Lexington attorney (and former Jim Talent aide)Andy Barr has formed an exploratory committee.

• NJ-07: Woodbridge mayor (and former state Treasurer) John McCormac has turned down the DCCC’s overtures to run against freshman GOP Rep. Leonard Lance in the 7th. (Woodbridge mayor may not sound like much, but it’s one of the largest municipalities in New Jersey and was Jim McGreevey’s launching pad to Governor.)

• NM-02: The race in the 2nd may turn into a clash of self-funding rich oilmen, as GOP ex-Rep. Steve Pearce says he may dip into his own cash to augment his bid to reclaim his seat from Democratic Rep. Harry Teague (who Roll Call says is the 10th richest member of Congress, and put more than a million of his own money into his 2008 bid).

• OR-04: Here’s one campaign that’s already in crash & burn mode: Springfield mayor Sid Leiken’s bid against Rep. Peter DeFazio. Remember Leiken’s tearful apology over the undocumented $2,000 that went to his mother’s real estate company, ostensibly to paying for polling? Now the state elections board is opening an investigation to see if any poll ever actually got taken, after widespread skepticism by polling experts about the poll’s conclusions (most notably that they got 200 respondents out of 268 calls).

• PA-06: The arrival of physician Manan Trivedi to the Dem field in the 6th, where Doug Pike seemed to have everything nailed down, has scrambled things a bit. Trivedi has already announced the endorsement of 2008 candidate Bob Roggio, and a more prominent insider, Berks County Recorder of Deeds Frederick Sheeler, switched to neutral from a Pike endorsement.

• VA-05: It looks like the Republicans have landed their first “real” candidate to go against Rep. Tom Perriello in the 5th: Albemarle County Commissioner Kenneth Boyd. Boyd is the only Republican on the board that runs the county that surrounds Charlottesville, home of UVA and the district’s liberal anchor; this may help Boyd eat a little into Perriello’s Charlottesville base, but he’s unknown in the rest of the district and may not make it out of the primary against state Sen. Rob Hurt, if Hurt gets off the fence and runs.

• Mayors: Amidst all the hullabaloo in New York City last night, there was also a big mayoral contest in Buffalo. Incumbent Dem Byron Brown has essentially been re-elected, beating Michael Kearns 63-37 in the Democratic primary. There is no Republican challenger on the November ballot and Brown controls the minor party lines.

• Votes: There seems to be absolutely no pattern behind who did and didn’t vote to reprimand Joe Wilson in the House. Although (sadly) the vote was mostly along party lines, 12 Dems and 7 GOPers broke ranks. Among Dems, the “no” votes were a mix of Blue Dogs and some of the most outspoken liberals: Arcuri, Delahunt, Giffords, Hinchey, Hodes, Kucinich, Maffei, Massa, McDermott, Gwen Moore, Gene Taylor, and Teague. Among the GOP, it was a few moderates and some of the more mavericky hard-liners: Cao, Emerson, Flake, Walter Jones, Petri, Rohrabacher, and maybe most notably, Bob Inglis, already facing the wrath of the teabagging wing of the party. Five Dems also voted “present,” the best you can do when you can’t vote “meh:” Engel, Foster, Frank, Shea-Porter, and Skelton.

The NRCC made a splash earlier today by releasing a target list of 70 Dem-held House districts that they hope to put into play next year. Let’s take a closer look at all 70 — including their PVIs, the closeness of each race in 2008, and whether or not the GOP has recruited a “legitimate” challenger this time (this is a bit of a subjective assessment, but we’ll get to that later):

That’s a big fat, honkin’ list of incumbents, including several that haven’t seen a competitive race in years — or ever (Boren, Skelton, the Arkansas delegation, Matheson, Pomeroy, Kind, and Boucher, to name just a few). Many of these races probably won’t produce competitive contests, but there’s absolutely no downside for the NRCC to be putting these incumbents on notice — not only will the targets being painted on these members’ backs have the potential to affect legislative votes, it helps to promote the idea that the NRCC is preparing for a big wave in their favor in 2010. (One thing’s for sure, if we have to worry about David Effin’ Wu next year, we’ll be preparing for life in the minority again.)

Now, what makes a challenger “legitimate”, you ask? That’s a good question. I define legitimacy as something that must be earned — whether it’s through an electoral track record or a demonstrated ability to fundraise (or self-fund), or some combination of both. In other words, just because the NRCC has met with some random businessman and asked him to challenge his local congressman, it doesn’t mean that the challenger has established himself as legitimate until he’s coughed up a quarterly filing with the FEC. Let me put it this way: for every Richard Hanna (the guy who nearly beat Mike Arcuri last year), there are a dozen or more Luke Pucketts or Carl Mumpowers. It’s just a lot harder at this point in the game to separate the wheat from the chaff, so our methodology is not to list a challenger without a record of electoral success as “legitimate” until they have demonstrated their ability to raise the dough. (And no, raising phat loads of cash through BMW Direct, like Bill Russell does in PA-12 does not count as a legitimate means of fundraising in our book.) The NRCC would no doubt disagree pretty strongly with my chart in some places, but I already feel that I’m being overly generous by granting OR-04 candidate Sid Leiken, who has had some pretty severe fundraising difficulties, “legit” status.

So, many of these districts marked with an “N” have challengers that have yet to prove the merit and mettle of their respective candidacies. There’s no doubt that many of these Ns will turn into Ys by the time the year’s over, but the GOP still has a lot of work to do. The GOP also has a stock of credible candidates considering bids in many of these “unchallenged” districts (FL-08, LA-03, and VA-05, in particular), so some of these holes will be easier to fill than others.

Also interesting is who is not listed on such an expansive list as this — guys whom the NRCC spent a lot of time targeting last cycle like Joe Donnelly (IN-02), Jim Marshall (GA-08) and Ciro Rodriguez (TX-23) stand out as conspicuous absences, especially considering the number of extreme longshots thrown into the mix.

Ex-Rep. Steve Pearce was last seen playing Wile E. Coyote to Tom Udall’s Roadrunner on some New Mexico backroad last year. Today, he announced that he’ll be back in 2010, to try and reclaim NM-02 from Democratic Rep. Harry Teague, who picked up the open seat in 2008. This comes as a bit of a surprise, as Pearce was considered a top contender for the GOP nomination for New Mexico’s open gubernatorial race in 2010. Pearce framed his decision in terms of Teague’s recent vote in favor of cap-and-trade in this oil-and-gas dependent district:

Former New Mexico congressman Steve Pearce told POLITICO today that he is running for his old House seat – primarily because of Teague’s vote on the energy bill. Pearce had been preparing to run for governor, but said Teague’s vote forced him to rethink his priorities.

“The cap-and-trade vote [from Teague] is the thing that put my decision over the hump,” Pearce said in an interview with POLITICO. “I was absolutely stunned over his vote. When he made the cap-and-trade vote, the hostility in the district was reflected in the way we feel out here. There are 23,000 statewide jobs in the oil and gas industry – and if this bill is passed, this will kill many of those jobs.”

NM-02 may also be a more fruitful target for Pearce than running statewide, as it’s an R+6 district that barely went for John McCain, 50-49, compared with Obama’s 57-42 win statewide… and also considering the one poll of NM-Gov (for the DGA) showed him getting squashed. Plus, this way he doesn’t have to introduce himself to the other two-thirds of the state (since clearly whatever he was doing in 2008 didn’t take). Unfortunately for the Republicans, however, this leaves a field of nobodies in the hunt for the GOP nod for NM-Gov, led by National Guard Brig. Gen. Greg Zanetti. Ex-Rep. Heather Wilson is the only heavy hitter who hasn’t said “no” yet.

• CT-Sen: Gov. Jodi Rell just signed into law an important piece of legislation (and, in doing so, reduced her own power): from now on, in the event of a Senatorial vacancy, the void will be filled by a fast special election instead of a gubernatorial appointment. The farcical Rod Blagojevich affair in Illinois was apparently the genesis for this new law.

• KS-Sen: Rep. Todd Tiahrt, facing a big primary fight for the GOP nomination against fellow Rep. Jerry Moran, got a key endorsement that will help him out-conservative his red-state colleague, from prominent anti-abortion group Kansans for Life. Moran, meanwhile, got another establishment endorsement of questionable utility to the Kansas electorate, from South Dakota Sen. John Thune.

• NC-Sen: Insider Advantage polled Richard Burr’s approvals, and like many other pollsters (including PPP, the messenger that the Burr campaign has chosen to attack), found that Burr’s approvals are low and his unknowns are possibly catastrophically high. Burr clocked in at 39/31 approval, with 30% with no opinion.

• NH-Sen: John Sununu Sr. now says that John Sununu Jr. will make a decision (or will have his daddy make a decision for him, more likely) “within a week or so” as to whether or not he’ll run for Senate next year. Sr. also says that AG Kelly Ayotte will step aside if Jr. runs, which may be news to Ayotte. GOP insiders seem to think that odds are against Sununu running.

• OH-Sen: Rob Portman, G.W. Bush’s former trade rep and OMB Director, has taken on a strange approach to selling himself to voters: that he’s a consummate Washington insider, going so far as to say that he knows “where the bodies are buried” (way to write the opposition’s advertisements word-for-word for them!). In a state where there’s a lot of populist indignation over job losses and outsourcing, emphasizing your technocratic elitism is somewhere past tone-deaf and out in the realm of political malpractice.

• PA-Sen: More signs that the party is finally coalescing around Pat Toomey as nominee: another endorsement from one its sitting Reps., Joe Pitts. (Pitts is probably the most conservative GOPer left in the PA delegation, so no surprise here.)

• WV-Sen: With 91-year-old Robert Byrd still in the hospital, Gov. Joe Manchin sought to tamp down speculation that he was looking into potential replacement Senators (such as ex-Gov. Gaston Caperton).

• IL-Gov: Bob Schillerstrom became the third Republican this week to announce his gubernatorial candidacy. The DuPage County Board chairman had had an exploratory committee open for several months, so this was expected. A 4th entrant, State Sen. Kirk Dillard, also from Chicago’s western suburbs, says he’ll announce his candidacy on July 8.

• MI-Gov: A third Democratic candidate got into the governor’s race today: state Rep. (and former state Senator) Alma Wheeler Smith. Smith, who’s the only African-American in the field, also ran in the gubernatorial primary in 2002.

• NJ-Gov: Strategic Vision polled the New Jersey governor’s race; no surprises here, as they found Chris Christie beating Jon Corzine 51-39. Christie was also busy yesterday in Washington testifying before the House on the no-bid monitoring contracts that Christie awarded while US Attorney (including to his former boss, John Ashcroft); look for this to become a prime issue in the race (if Corzine has even half-a-clue how to campaign).

• NM-Gov, NM-02: Ex-Rep. Steve Pearce, last seen getting annihilated in last year’s Senate race, says he’s pushing back his announcement on whether he’ll run for governor, for his old House seat, or something else to somewhere between July 20 and July 27.

• PA-Gov: Here’s one state where the gubernatorial field is actually managing to get smaller: Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham opted out of the Democratic primary race (and said that he isn’t interested in the Lt. Gov. slot). This may give a small boost to Philly-area businessman Tom Knox, as the Dem side’s two biggest-names, Allegheny Co. Exec Dan Onorato and state Auditor Jack Wagner are both from the Pittsburgh area.

• CA-10: Rep. Ellen Tauscher was finally confirmed as Undersecretary of State last night, after Sen. Jon Kyl dropped his hold on her. (She’s also getting married on Saturday, so it’s a big week.) Tauscher’s last day in the House is today, so this means the wheels are now officially in motion for the CA-10 special election.

• FL-12: Looks like the GOP will have a primary in the race to replace Rep. Adam Putnam, depsite their efforts to grease the skids for former state Rep. Dennis Ross. Polk Co. Commissioner Randy Wilkinson has been taking steps to enter the race as well.

• LA-03: Here’s a potential Dem contender for the potentially open seat currently occupied by Rep. Charlie Melancon, who hadn’t been mentioned in previous discussions (either from SSP or Roll Call or The Hill): Steve Angelle, who heads the state Natural Resources Department and used to be President of St. Martin Parish.

• SC-04: Rep. Bob Inglis is taking an unusual approach to a potentially bruising primary fight in 2010: instead of trying to out-conservative his opponents, he’s saying the GOP needs to “lose the stinking rot of self-righteousness.” In a Washington Wire interview, he said that the Mark Sanford Experience shows that “This may be an opportunity to extend a little grace to other people, to realize that maybe it’s not 100% this way or that way,” and referred to the Bob Inglis who was a zealous Clinton impeachment manager in 1998 as “Bob Inglis 1.0,” who was a “‘self-righteous’ expletive.”

• TN-09: Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton announced that he’ll be resigning his job on July 10 in order to campaign full-time in his primary challenge against Rep. Steve Cohen. Since Herenton has tried to resign (and changed his mind) at least once before, after five increasingly rocky terms in office, this sounds more like a relief to Herenton instead of giving something up.

• DCCC: The DCCC is running radio spots over the July 4 weekend against seven vulnerable House GOPers: Ken Calvert, Charlie Dent, Jim Gerlach, Dan Lungren, Mike McCaul, Lee Terry, and Joe Wilson. They’re getting attacked for voting for war supplementals during the Bush administration and now happening to vote against them now that a Demmycrat is in charge.

• The Tubes: Hotline On Call compares and contrasts the mellifluous email stylings of Gov. Sanford with the SMS billet-doux of Detroit ex-Mayor Kilpatrick. This outlines the foundational divide between email and texting: in SMS you automatically sound crazier, but it also prevents you from banging out divinity school dropout diatribes about First Corinthians. (Ben)

Research & Polling Inc for the Albuquerque Journal (10/28-30, likely voters, 9/29-10/2 in parens):

Martin Heinrich (D): 47 (43)

Darren White (R): 43 (41)

Undecided: 10 (16)

(MoE: ±5%)

The undecideds are breaking for Heinrich, and I’d expect that they will continue to do so on election day in this D+2.4 district. NRCC Chair Tom Cole may have promised Darren White the moon last fall, but his candidacy was a mistake.

And over in the 2nd District…

Research & Polling Inc for the Albuquerque Journal (10/28-30, likely voters):

Harry Teague (D): 45

Ed Tinsley (R): 41

Undecided: 14

(MoE: ±5%)

Lots of undecideds still on the table here, but it’s pretty troubling for Republicans that Tinsley hasn’t locked more of the vote down, especially with the news that Tinsley canceled his last week of broadcast television advertising. Harry Teague may just be on track for a narrow win here on Tuesday.

(Hat-tip: New Mexico FBIHOP)

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (9/30-10/1, likely voters):

Harry Teague (D): 47

Ed Tinsley (R): 43

(MoE: ±5%)

In the wake of the recently-released (though slightly stale) Dem internal from New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional District that gave Harry Teague a five-point lead, here’s a new poll from R2K that almost matches that.

The poll gives McCain a 49-42 edge over Obama, but this is by far New Mexico’s most Republican-leaning district (at R+5.7), one where Kerry lost 58-42. Teague (an oilman and a County Commissioner in dark-red Lea County in New Mexico’s oil patch) maintains a conservative profile, which seems apt for this district, as seen by how far he’s beating the district’s lean.

Swing State Project upgraded this race to Tossup yesterday.

Update (James): Also of note is Teague is just plain better liked than Tinsley: his favorables are at 46-33, a much better spread than Tinsley has (40-37).

Earlier in the day, the Swing State Project changed its ratings for four House races. Here’s a round-up of what we did:

MI-09 (Knollenberg): Lean Republican to Tossup

GOP Rep. Joe Knollenberg identified himself as an early target of the 2008 election cycle after his surprisingly tepid 2006 electoral performance against underfunded Democrat Nancy Skinner. He won that race by a mere 52-46 margin, but now faces a stiffer challenge from former state Senator Gary Peters.

A number of factors have contributed to our decision to shift this race over to the Tossup column, most notably being the district’s Democratic trend. Al Gore lost the 9th District by 47-51 in 2000, but John Kerry made it a two-point race four years later, and it looks like this trend is set to continue at the Presidential level. Public and internal polls by EPIC-MRA and the DCCC have both shown Barack Obama leading John McCain in this district by varying margins, and private polling confirms this. Furthermore, both of the released polls of this race show a tight contest, with Knollenberg hovering around the 40% mark. That’s a precarious position for any incumbent to occupy.

This race was already a Tossup before the news that John McCain will be pulling out of Michigan, but that just makes the race even tougher for Knollenberg.

NC-08 (Hayes): Lean Republican to Tossup

We’ve been admittedly slow to come around to this race, but that’s only because we’ve been less than impressed with Kissell’s extremely sluggish fundraising efforts and questionable spending. But the DCCC has been spending heavily to make up Kissell’s gaps (including, we should note, recent expenditures on field organizing). Moreover, recent polling shows Dems surging in the Presidential and Senate races throughout the state, with noticeable results in the 8th CD — an R+3 district with a sizable African-American population and plenty of down-home Democrats.

Recent internal polling from the DCCC shows Kissell with an 11-point lead, and while that may be a temporary financial crisis bounce (especially with the banking and finance industry being so prominent in Charlotte), Hayes is plummeting in his own internals, as well. We could see Hayes ending up on the wrong side of the Democratic tide in North Carolina.

NM-02 (Open): Lean Republican to Tossup

It’s beginning to become very clear why the NRCC was so desperate to keep Steve Pearce out of the Senate race in New Mexico — they knew that they could face some major problems in an open seat race in Southern New Mexico, even though the district has an R+6 tilt.

Democrats nominated Harry Teague, a former Lea County commissioner and oilman, who cuts a conservative profile that appeals to many of the district’s conservative Democrats. The Republican nominee, Ed Tinsley, is saddled by his past as a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association — a record that the DCCC is beginning to attack in recent TV ads. Teague, who like Tinsley is partially self-funding his race, has been working the retail side of the race heavily, visiting many of the district’s far-flung towns and scoring impressive reviews in such encounters. A recent Teague internal poll shows the Democrat leading this contest by five points, and an upcoming Research 2000 poll will apparently show a similar margin. This race is wide open for the taking.

PA-03 (English): Lean Republican to Tossup

Of all the top tier races this year, this contest appears to be the most unusual. Democrats originally recruited Erie city Councilman Kyle Foust to take on GOP Rep. Phil “the Hutt” English last year. However, when his candidacy quickly fizzled out in mediocrity, the race didn’t look so promising. But Erie Arboretum director and businesswoman Kathy Dahlkemper has come on strong — or, perhaps we should say, English has been fading fast. A Dahlkemper internal poll from July indicated that the race was a dead heat, and the NRCC’s decision to reserve $820,000 in ad time to protect him was the first big tell here. The next indication of this race’s competitiveness was the DCCC’s decision to go up on the air against English in early September, followed by English’s very public displays of flop sweat. Indeed, the NRCC has followed through and earlier this week spent its first paid media dollars of the fall in this race.

With a recent SUSA poll giving Dahlkemper a four-point lead over English, there is no longer any doubt. This race is a tossup.