Tag: indiana redistricting

Senate:

• FL-Sen: Do you remember Craig Miller? I barely do. He’s the wealthy former steakhouse exec who was the Republican Plan C in the FL-24 primary last year… and in an amusing bit of synchronicity, came in third, behind now-Rep. Sandy Adams and the batshit nuts Karen Diebel. Hoping to fail upward, Miller is now looking at the Senate race and plans to decide “within the next few weeks.” I have no idea what he thinks he niche might be, and it’s not clear to me that he has the money to overwhelm the field.

• IN-Sen, IN-Gov: Former Rep. Tim Roemer says he’s stepping down as ambassador to India. Could this presage a return to Hoosier politics? I’m skeptical, as Dems already have legit candidates lining up for both marquee statewide races. (And for what it’s worth, an unnamed source told The Hill last month that Roemer wasn’t likely to run for Senate.)

• MA-Sen: This is just weird. Despite repeatedly saying he isn’t interested in running for Senate, Deval Patrick somehow keeps finding himself talking about the subject. This time, he said that he had talked with the President about other jobs, but wouldn’t say whether Obama had asked him to run against Scott Brown. Patrick again said he doesn’t want to run, and added: “I would say no to the president of the United States.”

• ND-Sen: When the Club for Growth takes aim at an otherwise top-tier Republican candidate, you know you have premium-grade cat fud ready to be served. Le Club’s target now is freshman Rep. Rick Berg, who went from a seemingly distant possibility to not-running-but-virtual-frontrunner status almost instantly a week ago. They’re accusing Berg of being insufficiently pro-dystopia, i.e., not supporting enough cuts to federal government spending. I really hope they can find a dog… er… cat for this fight.

• NV-Sen: Sometimes PPP deliberately polls for the lulz, and sometimes, the lulz find them. In this case, it’s the latter: Tom Jensen’s band of merry robodialers found Dean Heller beating Sharron Angle in a hypothetical GOP primary by a score of… LOL… 84-8. (“El Exigente, what more could you want?” “Their names.”) Meanwhile, on the Dem side, where there does appear to be an actual primary, Rep. Shelley Berkeley leads wealthy attorney Byron Georgiou by a 65-8 margin. Good times.

• PA-Sen: Apparently, there’s two things Quinnipiac won’t do: a) release sample compositions and b) test incumbents against hypothetical opponents whose names don’t start with “Generic.” Anyhow, Sen. Bob Casey has inched up to a 46-34 lead against “the Republican candidate.” He was 45-35 two months ago.

• UT-Sen: Speaking of the Club for Growth, they just put out their 2010 scorecard, and Orrin Hatch’s numbers really demonstrate the Club’s power. Despite a lifetime score of 74% (30th among Senators in office last year), Hatch managed to rack up a 97% rating last year, tying him with several other Republicans for third place. What a difference a sword of Damocles makes.

• VA-Sen: Hmm. Ultra-wingnut Del. Bob Marshall’s 2008 campaign manager just got hired by George Allen… and the dude didn’t even tell his old boss first. Marshall’s been looking at a possible Senate run, and I think he’s the best hope (albeit not a great hope) we have of knocking off Allen in the GOP primary, but it’s not clear what impact this will have on his plans. One positive tea-leaf: In response to the news, Marshall said, “You can tell who the candidates are not by where the consultants go, but where the volunteers go.”

Gubernatorial:

• PA-Gov: Uhh… did Gov. Tom Corbett just say that state universities sitting atop the Marcellus Shale should plug their budget gap by allowing exploitation of the natural gas reserves beneath them? Why yes he did. If you aren’t familiar with the deeply fraught issue of hydraulic fracturing (also known as “hydrofracking” or just “fracking”), this NYT piece is a good place to start. Fracking is a devastatingly poisonous method of extracting gas, and Pennsylvania is at the epicenter of the fracking debate. Indeed, the EPA is investigating a fracking spill that took place there just last week. UPDATE: Hah, sheez. Corbett literally lifted this idea from an episode of Saved by the Bell! NOT kidding! Click the link!

• WV-Gov: Former Republican SoS Betty Ireland is finally out with her first TV ad, which I think has a weird soundtrack, odd staccato pacing, and (at least in the version her campaign posted to YouTube) crappy audio quality. I think she could definitely lose.

House:

• AZ-06: Yesterday we noted that state House Speaker Kirk Adams was resigning his post. Later that day, he formally announced he was, as expected, running in the GOP primary in the open 6th CD. Retiring Sen. Jon Kyl immediately endorsed Adams, while Rep. Trent Franks endorsed Matt Salmon, who is also running for this post

• NV-02: Roll Call’s Kyle Trygstad does a nice job digging up some facts about a 1954 special election to replace Nevada Sen. Pat McCarran, who passed away in September of that year. (If you’ve ever flown to Vegas, that’s the guy the airport is named after.) There was some legal wrangling as to whether a special election was actually required, but once the state Supreme Court ruled yes, the parties selected their nominees by committee, not primary. That could possibly serve as precedent as SoS Ross Miller decides whether state law requires that parties choose their candidates, but Nevada’s current statutes were revised only a decade ago, so the McCarran case may not be applicable.

• NY-23: A few weeks ago, the NRCC mocked a batch of miniscule radio ad buys by the DCCC and said: “At what point does a campaign committee blush when launching a ‘paid advertising campaign?'” Apparently, that point must lie somewhere below $4,550, which is the amount the NRCC is spending on a tiny TV buy in Rep. Bill Owens’ district. (It’s some lame Pelosi-related attack.)

I’d also like to give some props to Steve Peoples of Roll Call for basically ignoring the contents of the ad and focusing on exactly what the NRCC is trying to accomplish here. I don’t know if he wrote the headline, but it can’t be what Republicans were hoping for: “NRCC Takes Turn With Small Ad Buy Targeting Earned Media.” And in referring a radio ad against Rep. Mike Ross that we noted the other day, Peoples used the kind of language you might find on SSP, saying that the NRCC “convinced a local paper to write a story about the radio buy but refused at the time to disclose the size of the investment.” (It turned out to be $2,550.) If you’re going to write up a story like this, this is how it should be written.

Other Races:

• IN-SoS: The GOP-held state legislature has backed off a bit on attempting to rewrite the law in order to get around the Charlie White mess. (If this is the first you’re hearing of the whole saga, I would suggest checking out our IN-SoS tag.) The proposed new law would give the governor the power to appoint replacement officers only on a prospective basis, so it won’t affect the White situation. However, the legislation will still prevent the GOP from losing their major-party status (which was keyed to the SoS race) if the worst happens.

• NJ-St. Sen.: The legal wrangling over Democrat Carl Lewis’s ballot eligibility has heated up quickly. Lewis has filed suits in both state and federal court, and a federal court judge has already ordered LG/SoS/Chris Christie goon Kim Guadagno to explain her decision booting Lewis from the ballot earlier this week. Lewis is still busy campaigning, and if he’s ultimately declared eligible, I think all this rigmarole might wind up helping him, given that it’s free media.

Redistricting:

• Colorado: I’m guessing that Republicans are wishing state Sen. Greg Brophy hadn’t cracked out of turn and admitted that proposed GOP maps had been deliberately “skewed to the right.” That certainly won’t help them when the entire matter winds up in court, which Republican state Rep. Don Coram acknowledged was inevitable anyway. In a bit worthy of Stephen Colbert, Lynn Bartels of the Denver Post writes: “Brophy said Republicans got nervous when they heard Democrats were pushing so-called competitive seats, which he said favor Democrats….” Ah, indeed, the facts do have a well-known liberal bias.

Connecticut: According to the Greenwich Time, Dem state House Speaker Christopher Donovan has his eye on Rep. Chris Murphy’s open 5th CD, and would very much like to have the blue stronghold of Bridgeport drawn into it. That would remove it from Rep. Jim Himes’s district, but if you look at a map, it’s rather hard to envision this happening without doing a lot of reshuffling. Of course, anything is possible, but given how minor CT’s population deviations are, a serious reconfiguration of the map would seem to be uncalled for.

• Indiana: The Hoosier State is poised to become the fourth to finalize a redistricting map. The Republican-held state legislature has given its approval to a new plan, which now goes to GOP Gov. Mitch Daniels for his signature.

• Massachusetts: A seemingly clever bit of politics by Scott Brown, but there’s a “but.” Brown sent a letter to the state legislature’s redistricting committee, advocating for a majority-minority congressional seat to be drawn in the Suffolk County region, and also to press for more maj-min districts in the state lege. Who knows whether the idiots in the legislature will listen to him, but Brown of course is simultaneously pushing for new district lines which will ultimately favor Republicans (by packing minorities) and, more importantly, he gets to look like he’s protecting minority interests, all at no cost to himself.

Here’s the “but”: Brown doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about. Rep. Mike Capuano, who would be most affected by Brown’s proposal, fired back, saying his 8th CD already is majority-minority. It’s about 54.5% “white” according to the Census, but that includes Hispanics who also identify as white, so the non-Hispanic white %age is almost certainly below 50%. (Some 19% of 8th CD residents identify as Hispanic, of any race.) Oops.

• Nevada: I’m not going to get into this one in too much detail (my brain can only hold so much redistricting-related information), but Nevada Republicans are now bitterly split over new maps that GOPers in the state Senate drew for the state Assembly. Why didn’t the Assembly draw its own maps? They did, but the morons who drew them were advised not to release them because lawyers thought they didn’t comply with the VRA. Meanwhile, Dems in both chambers worked together to release a joint set of plans. However, they still haven’t released their congressional map. Anyhow, you can find more details under the “Related Documents” sections at both links.

• Oklahoma: Unsurprisingly, the map that the state House unanimously approved appears ready to sail through the state Senate, too. Shira Toeplitz suggested in her writeup (which is a few days old) that the new plan could be signed into law this week, but it hasn’t actually been voted on by the full Senate as of this writing.

• Texas: The cat fud is ready to fly in Texas redistricting, where ruthless Republican leaders are prepared to run roughshod over their own incumbents in the aims of preserving and maximizing their advantage to the greatest extent possible. In other words, they’re staying true to the spirit of Tom DeLay. In the abstract sense, it’s a ruthlessness I admire, and I wish Dems would adopt it. In any case, I wouldn’t be surprised if the final maps pass in spite of a lot of GOP defections – though maybe a few horse heads in a few beds will solve that problem.

• Virginia: I’m glad to see that Republicans in the state Senate are as happy to act like sheep as Democrats in the state House. The Democrats’ new map passed yesterday by a 32-5 margin. Reading the linked article really makes me feel like this whole thing has been a grand kabuki, with Gov. Bob McDonnell playing everyone – even members of his own party – like puppets. McDonnell simply had to show he could extract a price from Democrats, and so he has. However, I note that the congressional map is now completely untethered from the legislative maps. If Democrats agree to an 8-3 map now, well, fuck them. Once McDonnell signs the lege plans into law, there’s no going back, and there’s no reason at all not to force the courts to draw a federal map.

A special redistricting-only afternoon edition of the digest:

• Alaska: Alaska’s redistricting board released two plans for remapping the state legislature, which you can see here.

• Arkansas: It’s official: Gov. Mike Beebe signed Arkansas’s new congressional maps into law last Thursday. Note that Arkansas is not subject to DoJ pre-clearance under the Voting Rights Act. And while citizen map-makers have shown it’s possible to draw a majority-minority district in the state, I think a suing to force the creation of such a seat would be a very difficult challenge. So I think these maps are what we’ll get.

• Colorado: Diarist larimercodem takes a detailed look at the new redistricting plans submitted by Democrats and Republicans in Colorado. There are half a dozen plans from each side, but all six from each party are pretty similar, so the diarist examines two representative plans. You can find images of all the maps here.

• Iowa: Gov. Terry Branstad said on Friday that he’ll sign Iowa’s new maps (passed by both houses of the state lege) into law. Any other decision would have been quite the shocker, though it’s not clear on exactly when he’ll make it official. Also of interest, the Des Moines Register takes a look at the legislative shuffle, where Republicans seemed to mostly get the shaft in terms of what their new districts look like (i.e., more GOPers have to face blue districts than vice versa).

• Indiana: A state Senate committee approved new congressional and Senate maps, while a House committee approved the same congressional map as well as a House map.

• Maryland: Rep. Steny Hoyer confirms that his buddies in the Maryland legislature are looking to take out freshman GOPer Andy Harris. I feel like these guys could save a lot of money on consultants just by looking at all the MD maps that people on SSP have drawn over the last year! Anyhow, the same article also mentions as an aside that Republican Roscoe Bartlett could be targeted, but it’s just newspaper speculation-there are unfortunately no quotes. It would be a real shame if Maryland Dems didn’t at least think about going for an 8-0 map.

• Missouri: It’s definitely been weird to see all these redistricting battles erupt between upper and lower houses of various state legislatures, despite both chambers being controlled by the same party. We saw this in GOP-held Louisiana, we saw it in Dem-controlled Arkansas, and now we’re seeing it in Missouri, where the lege is run entirely by Republicans. The state House and Senate are working on very similar congressional maps but apparently can’t reach agreement, with the Senate refusing to consider the House’s map and, in response, the House taking an adjournment. Republicans are eager to finish work soon, because Dem Gov. Jay Nixon may veto their work, and they want a chance to over-ride it before the current session ends on May 13th.

In any event, here’s a cool link you’ll enjoy: The Columbia Missourian has an interactive map which lets you scroll back in time all the way to 1845 to see how the state’s districts looked after each round of redistricting.

• Virginia: I’m really not sure what the next step is for Dems here. Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, as you know, cannily vetoed the legislature’s plan for remapping both the House and the Senate, decrying the supposedly outrageous Senate gerrymander which would have protected Dem incumbents. The House map was no better when it came to Republicans, but Dems in that chamber stupidly gave the GOP cover by voting for that map.

In any event, the General Assembly has returned to work, but Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, a Dem, says that his body will simply adopt the same plan again and dare McDonnell to veto it a second time. Of course, that would require House Republicans to pass the Senate plan again, which they may be unwilling to do. (For their part, the House GOP will also reconvene and plans to tweak their own map.) If no agreement can be reached, McDonnell risks forcing the courts to draw a new set of maps-something he may well desire, since it would probably give Republicans a better chance of recapturing the Senate. Further delays could also possibly cause issues with DoJ pre-clearance and potentially lead to two sets of elections: One this year with the old maps, and a new round next year with new maps.

• Victims: Aaron Blake has a roundup of what he calls the “most likely redistricting victims.” Pretty much all of these names will be familiar to regular readers, and of course, who the hell knows what will happen in California or Florida, but it’s worth a look.

Senate:

• FL-Sen: Dem Sen. Bill Nelson said he raised over $2 million in Q1 and would report somewhere between $4.5 and $5 million on hand. Republican Mike Haridopolos said he raised $2.6 million and would show $2.5 mil in the bank.

• HI-Sen: So that weird SMS poll we showed you yesterday which only pitted Ed Case vs. Mufi Hannemann in a Dem primary had another, more useful component. They also included favorables for a whole host of Hawaii politicians. Mazie Hirono was best (62% fave), while Linda Lingle was worst (44% unfave). Click the link for the rest. (And no, we still don’t know who SMS took this poll for. They’re just saying it was a private client.)

• MI-Sen: Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D) raised $1.2 million in Q1 and has $3 million on hand.

• MO-Sen: Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) raised over $1 million in Q1 and has about $1.8 million on hand.

• NM-Sen: Teabagging businessman Greg Sowards raised $150K in Q1… but it sounds like that’s all his own money. The writeup is unclear, though – it’s possible he raised $150K from outside sources and threw in an equal amount on his own.

• NV-Sen: Wealthy Dem attorney Byron Georgiou raised $1.1 million in Q1, with $500K of that coming from his own pockets.

Gubernatorial:

• ME-Gov: We previously mentioned a proposed constitutional amendment in Maine that would require gubernatorial candidates to receive 50% of the vote (a hurdle almost no one has reached in recent decades). That proposal just died in the state Senate, so it’s basically dead for this term.

• MT-Gov: Democratic state Sen. Larry Jent officially announced he is running for governor. He faces fellow state Sen. Dave Wanzenried in the primary. State AG Steve Bullock may also run.

House:

• AZ-06: Ex-Rep. Matt Salmon, who served in a similar seat in the 1990s, says he’s now thinking about running for Jeff Flake’s open seat. Salmon previously said he was considering a run for governor.

• CA-03: Dem Ami Bera, seeking a rematch against Dan Lungren, says he raised over $230K in Q1. If this haul only dates to the time of his official announcement (just two weeks before the end of the quarter), it’s nothing short of un-fucking-believable. However, he gets a demerit for emailing me a press release without putting it on his website so that I can link to it directly. Boo!

• CA-06: Activist Norman Solomon became the second Dem to file in Lynn Woolsey’s district, in the event that she retires this cycle.

• CT-05: Dem Dan Roberti, a 28-year-old public relations exec whose father Vincent was a state rep, officially announced his entrance into the race to succeed Chris Murphy. On the GOP side, businesswoman Lisa Wilson-Foley, who sought the Republican nomination for Lt. Gov. last year, also said she was getting in.

• FL-22: Lois Frankel announced she raised $250K in Q1. Previously, we mentioned that fellow Dem “no not that” Patrick Murphy said he raised $350K.

• IN-02: Dem Rep. Joe Donnelly announced he raised $363,288 in Q1, his best single quarter ever. Dude’s not going down without a fight.

• NM-01, NM-Sen: An unnamed advisor to state Auditor Hector Balderas says he won’t seek Rep. Martin Heinrich’s now-open House seat (something that insiders apparently were encouraging him to do, in the hopes of avoiding a contested primary). According to this advisor, Balderas is still considering a Senate run. Personally, I think it was a mistake for Balderas to say he was almost definitely going to run, only to be upstaged by Heinrich, who of course said he was actually going to run. I think Heinrich has the advantage in a primary, but Balderas needs a way to save face here if he doesn’t want that fight any longer.

• NY-19: Freshman GOPer Nan Hayworth announced she raised $330K in Q1 and has a similar amount on hand. Question of the day: Do you think Hayworth could get teabagged to death?

• NY-26: Dem Kathy Hochul announced she raised $350K for the special election coming up on May 24th.

• OR-01: It took a little time, but Dems are now finally drawing out the knives for Rep. David Wu in earnest. Oregon Labor Commissioner (an elected position) Brad Avakian is putting together a team of political advisors and is likely to challenge Wu in the Dem primary. Another Dem elected official, Portland Commissioner Dan Saltzman, also apparently became the first Democrat to openly call for regime change (though he says he isn’t interested in running). All eyes will certainly be on Wu’s fundraising report, due on Friday.

• PA-07: Republican frosh Pat Meehan raised $325K in Q1.

• WI-07: Former state Sen. Pat Kreitlow has formed an exploratory committee for a possible challenge to freshman GOP Rep. Sean Duffy. Kreitlow served a single term in the Senate after defeating a Republican incumbent, before losing in last year’s red tide. This could be a pretty good get for us if he goes through with it (which seems likely, just reading this article).

Other Races:

• NJ Lege: Johnny Longtorso has a good summary of the candidate filing for New Jersey’s legislative races this November. Out of 120 seats, only four total are unopposed (though there may be signature challenges).

• Suffolk Co. Exec.: Will seriously no one hire Rick Lazio? Perennially a contender for Saddest Sack of the Year, Lazio is apparently considering a run for Suffolk County Executive, now that the seat will be open in the wake of Steve Levy’s unusual plea agreement with law enforcement (which involved him not seeking re-election).

Grab Bag:

• Dark Money: Dems are finally starting to play catchup with the David Kochs of the world. Ali Lapp, a former DCCC official (and wife of one-time DCCC ED John Lapp) will head up a new “Super PAC” called the House Majority PAC. Such groups are actually not all that shadowy – they do have to disclose their donors. But they can raise and spend in unlimited amounts, and engage in direct “vote for/vote against” advocacy.

• EMILY’s List: EMILY announced four new GOP targets: Bob Dold (IL-10), Frank Guinta (NH-01), Adam Kinzinger (IL-11), and Steve Stivers (OH-15). The group only endorses women, and there are no declared Dems in any of these races yet, but I note with interest that they claim “there is major Democratic female talent waiting in the wings.” In NH-01, they could be expecting a rematch from ex-Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, and I guesss maybe Debbie Halvorson in IL-11 and Mary Jo Kilroy in OH-15, but those seem very unlikely. Any ideas?

Redistricting Roundup:

• Iowa: It looks like Iowa’s new maps will indeed pass into law very shortly. A state Senate committee approved them unanimously, and now the full body is deliberating. The state House will take the issue up today. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad hasn’t yet said whether he’ll support the new plans, but it’d be pretty explosive if he nuked the maps in the face of widespread backing among legislators. This has all been a very interesting process to watch, especially since after the initial federal map threw both Republican congressmen together, it was easy to imagine that the GOP would want to go back to the drawing board. But the fear of the unknown has pushed politicians to accept what they have before them, rather than risk something worse.

• Indiana: With the new GOP maps looking very much like reality (how Bobby Jindal must envy Mitch Daniels), the state legislator shuffle is set to begin. The AP notes that the new state House map “has three districts that put two current Republican legislators together, three districts with at least two Democrats and four districts with a Republican and a Democratic incumbent,” which doesn’t sound so bad, but Democrats point out that “five of their House members from Indianapolis were drawn into just two districts.”

• Michigan: The MI lege is about to start the redistricting process. State law says maps have to be drawn by Nov. 1st.

• Texas: Republicans in the lege have introduced a bill that would require any new maps (or voter ID bills) to get litigated before a three-judge panel in D.C., rather than go through the DoJ for pre-clearance. Rick Perry apparently is already interested in this alternative. As I’ve speculated before, he may be hoping for a more favorable hearing from potentially conservative judges. However, I’ll note that you can still sue even after the DoJ renders a pre-clearance decision, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just take the (cheaper and easier) free shot first.

Also of note, the Latino civil rights group MALDEF released two proposals for nine majority-minority districts in Texas. (They deliberately did not offer a map that covered the entire state.) MALDEF is no random organization: They were part of the LULAC v. Perry litigation in 2006, in which the Supreme Court forced Texas to redistrict yet again because Tom DeLay’s map had improperly diluted Hispanic voting strength.

• Virginia: So what’s going on with this supposed deal? In a rather public bit of horse-trading, Dems (who control the state Senate) and Republicans (who control the state House and the governor’s mansion) agreed that each body would get to gerrymander itself (that sounds kind of dirty, huh?), and would also agree to an incumbent protection map for congress, which would of course lock in the GOP’s 8-3 advantage. But now Republicans and Democrats have each produced separate federal maps, and they are quite different, with the Dems deliberately trying to create a second district likely to elect a minority.

The oddest part of this deal is that the legislative parts of the deal have already passed – the congressional map is now an entirely separate beast, which I don’t really get, since they each seemed to constitute one leg of a three-legged stool. I guess that’s why the Senate Dems felt free to reject the House’s federal plan, which suggests that the agreement has fallen apart. But Republicans don’t seem to be howling that the Dems have somehow reneged, so maybe we didn’t understand this deal properly in the first place. In any event, we’re very much at an impasse here, but sometimes these logjams break apart very abruptly (see Louisiana and Arkansas).

Senate:

• HI-Sen: Sen. Dan Inouye says in a new interview that he “will not take sides in the primary,” and Politico ads that his “top aides insist” he won’t be lending quiet, behind-the-scenes support to any candidates either. I hope that’s true, since I was concerned Ed Case might have mended things with Inouye to the point that the latter might get behind the former. But without some special help, I think Case will have a hard time. Also, SMS Research took the most useless poll imaginable, pitting Case against former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann in a primary… and absolutely no one else. Whatevs.

• ME-Sen: Olympia Snowe said she raised over $877K in Q1 and has over $2 million on hand.

• OH-Sen: Sherrod Brown said he raised $1.3 million in Q1 and has $2.5 million on hand.

• VA-Sen: George Allen said he raised $1.5 million in Q1 and has $1.25 million on hand.

Gubernatorial:

• KY-Gov: TX Gov. Rick Perry, current chair of the RGA, says his organization won’t decide how heavily it’ll get involved in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race until after the May 17th primary. He also declined to endorse frontrunner (and establishment choice) David Williams, saying he’s “got a really good feeling about all the men and women who are running.”

House:

• CO-04: Republican Rep. Corey Gardner apparently raised over $300K in Q1.

• CT-04: Dem Rep. Jim Himes estimates he took in over $300K in Q1.

• IN-06, IN-05: Luke Messer, a former official with the state GOP who nearly beat Rep. Dan Burton in a primary last year, now finds himself living just outside Burton’s 5th CD, according to new maps proposed by Republicans in charge of the state lege. Messer is now in the 6th, which is likely to be vacated by Mike Pence, who everyone thinks will run for governor. Messer says he’s buddies with Pence and will consider running to replace him if Pence makes the leap for the statehouse, but he wouldn’t rule out a rematch against Burton (though he says he wouldn’t move in order to do so).

• MN-08: This is pretty wild: Former Rep. Rick Nolan (D) says he’s thinking about staging a comeback. It’s wild because Nolan left office in 1981 and is now 68 years old. It’s also rather strange because Nolan represented what was then the 6th CD, which is accurately represented in the map Joe Bodell presents. (His reader update is incorrect.) At the time, Nolan’s district covered the southwestern and central portions of the state; today’s 8th is in the northeastern corner (though they share one county in common, Mille Lacs). And to cap it all off, Nolan was touting himself at a Dem meeting in Bemidji, which is in the 7th CD. Actually, no – the real capper is that Nolan was a practitioner of the ’60s & ’70s fad of “Transcendental Meditation” (whose practitioners claimed they could levitate) and earned a mention in Time Magazine for it.

• MO-03: Not going gently… or padding the warchest for a different race, or perhaps something else down the line? Russ Carnahan raised $333K in Q1, his best first quarter ever, and has $286K on hand. Dave Catanese notes that Lacy Clay raised just $17K (though he has $222K in the bank). Would Carnahan really go up against Clay in a primary? What do you think?

• MS-02: Greenville Mayor Heather McTeer Hudson said she plans to challenge veteran Rep. Bennie Thompson in the Democratic primary next year. She also announced she’s hiring pollster Celinda Lake. Hudson had previously said she wouldn’t seek re-election to her current post. Thompson, meanwhile, ended last year with $1.7 million on hand and has warded off primary challengers before (most recently in 2006, in the form of Chuck Espy, son of former Rep. Mike Espy).

• SD-AL: Though it seems all but certain that ex-Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin won’t seek a rematch this cycle (among other things, she just accepted a teaching position at South Dakota State University, where she once worked), she did say she’s open to the possibility of seeking office again at some point in the future. She didn’t specify what post, so you can mentally flag this item as something other than just SD-AL if you like. Speaking of SD-AL, Rep. Kristi Noem (the woman who beat Sandlin) announced she took in $396K in Q1.

Other Races:

• LA-AG: Former Rep. Joe Cao says he plans to challenge Dem-cum-Republican AG Buddy Caldwell this fall. Cao specifically cited Caldwell’s party switch (which only happened in February) and questioned his Republican bona fides – sort of an unusual move in a state where party switching has been very common. We’ll see if he Cao actually has the chops to make a race of it. (Side note: A proud moment in SSP in-the-weeds history: Live-blogging the LA-AG runoff in 2007, when control of the state House was also at stake.)

• MS-AG: A rare bright spot for Mississippi Dems: Attorney General Jim Hood leads Republican Steve Simpson by 49-32 margin in PPP’s latest poll.

• Special Elections: From Johnny L-T:

Two of the three elections last night were landslides; in South Carolina’s SD-16, Republican Greg Gregory trounced Democrat Keith Brann and Libertarian Stan Smith by a 77-18-5 margin, while in Minnesota’s SD-66, DFLer Mary Jo McGuire beat Republican Greg Copeland 80-20. In Connecticut’s HD-128, Democrat Dan Fox won with 39%, while Republican Charles Pia (not Antonacci, my mistake) came in second with 24%. Independents John Mallozzi and Monique Thomas both made strong showings, pulling in 23% and 13%, respectively, and Green Rolf Maurer brought up the rear with about 1%. Note that Mallozzi failed to win the Democratic nomination, so he petitioned his way onto the ballot.

Remainders:

• Pay-to-Play: MaryNYC, the First Lady of the Swing State Project (aka my wife), has an interesting backgrounder on the SEC’s new regulations which attempt to curtail Wall Street from engaging in “pay-to-play” with elected officials. What’s interesting about the rules is that they make it very difficult for employees of financial firms to donate to state and local officeholders who have a stake in municipal investment decisions, but generally speaking doesn’t affect donations to federal officeholders. So, in a hypothetical example, New Mexico state Auditor Hector Balderas, who is weighing a run for Senate, might find Wall Street’s doors shut, while Rep. Martin Heinrich, who is already in the race, would face no such problems.

Redistricting Roundup:

• Indiana: We’ll have a lengthier redistricting-only digest later today, but I wanted to bring you this information ASAP. A source involved in Indiana politics informs me that these are the Obama percentages for each CD in the new map proposed by Republicans in the state lege:

IN-01: 63.2

IN-02: 49.4

IN-03: 42.9

IN-04: 44.4

IN-05: 46.5

IN-06: 43.5

IN-07: 66.3

IN-08: 48.0

IN-09: 46.1

Sounds like we’re getting exactly what we expected:

Indiana lawmakers unveiled a new draft of legislative maps Monday morning that would solidify some Republican congressional seats, while making one Democratic congressional seat nearly certain to shift into Republican hands.

The maps proposed in the Senate Elections Committee this morning would make major changes to Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly’s 2nd District, in north-central Indiana.

Lawmakers are proposing to drop Howard County, which includes the Democratic-leaning city of Kokomo, as well as part of Democratic-leaning LaPorte County, and add all of Republican-leaning Elkhart County and much of strongly-GOP Kosciusko County, among other changes.

I’ll wait until the numbers get run, but it sure seems likely that this new map will inspire Donnelly to run for Senate instead. Assuming Hoosier Republicans don’t melt down the way their counterparts have just done in Louisiana, these new plans should pass easily, seeing as the GOP controls the trifecta. Anyhow, the new map is just below, and new state Senate and House maps are below the fold (and no, I don’t know why the House map appears to be suffering from gigantism).

UPDATE: Statement (via email) from Donnelly:

I am disappointed because it appears that politics played into the drawing of the congressional district lines revealed this morning by Republicans in the General Assembly.  By comparison, the Indiana Senate Democrats released a map of congressional districts a few weeks ago that respected “communities of interest,” as called for by Governor Daniels.  For example, in the Senate Democrats’ map, LaPorte County was intact in the 2nd Congressional District and Kosciusko County was intact in the 3rd Congressional District.  In the Republicans’ map, LaPorte County is divided between the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts and Kosciusko County is divided between the 2nd and 3rd Congressional Districts.

Even though it appears that politics played a role in the drawing of this map, I am confident that a Democrat can win in the new 2ndCongressional District.  Then-Senator Obama performed well in this district in 2008, earning 49% of the vote.  Also, it is not uncommon for a Democratic candidate in Indiana to outperform his or her nominee for president.  I did it in 2008, outperforming then-Senator Obama by 13 points, and I know it can be done again.

As for my future plans, my decision will ultimately be based on how I can best serve the people of this great state.  I will soon be sitting down with my wife and children and expect to make a decision in the coming weeks.

State Senate:

State House:

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: The NYT has a piece about Dems tip-toeing around the Senate race as they wait for Gabby Giffords to recover (and make a decision), but I think it adds very little to the conversation. There isn’t really any new information in the piece, so you can probably skip it.

• MA-Sen: Wow, the DSCC is doing a bang-up job on MA-Sen this week. A couple of days ago, they conned Roll Call into writing a piece which argued that the lack of a Democratic candidate was actually a good thing and all part of some devious plan. Now comes word that they’ve managed to leak a poll that shows Scott Brown with a ridiculous 73% approval rating and supposedly beating all comers by double digits. Aren’t they supposed to only leak polls when they’ve got good news to share? Sheesh. This is just so sloppy. (Also, 73% approval? Really? Might want to think about hiring a new pollster for this race.)

Anyhow, another Dem is feeling out the race: Gerry Kavanaugh, who was once Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff and is now a political consultant, says he’s “thinking about” a run. Kavanaugh has never run for office before.

• MO-Sen: This is pretty weird. Tons of documents, including a lot of emails, generated during GOPer Sarah Steelman’s tenure as state treasurer have disappeared, and the new treasurer (who is a Dem) is saying in response to freedom of information requests that they simply can’t be found. As Catanese says, this ought to give Steelman’s primary opponents some good fodder… especially if any of the missing docs ever turn up.

• NV-Sen: Rep. Shelley Berkley’s leaked a poll (taken for her by the Mellman Group) which shows her up 42-38 over Republican Rep. Dean Heller in a hypothetical Senate race. The more I think about it, the more I feel this really is Berkley’s moment and that she should definitely go for it. I think Obama’s going to run a very strong campaign here, and I just think the timing is right.

Gubernatorial:

• MI-Gov: Republican-linked pollster Marketing Research Group gives Gov. Rick Snyder the best numbers he’s seen so far, with a 42-38 job approval rating. But spiderdem shows just how implausibly favorable to Snyder the sample composition is.

• UT-Gov, UT-01: Interesting: GOP Rep. Rob Bishop refused to answer a question about whether he plans to challenge Gov. Gary Herbert, instead seeming to make some crack about ex-Gov. John Huntsman’s run for president. Herbert has raised some teabagger ire for signing an immigration reform package that would, among other things, allow for guest workers (the nutters call it “amnesty”) – basically, the opposite approach from Arizona. I’m not sure if Bishop’s expressed his views on this legislation, but he’s definitely a hard-core anti-immigrant zealot.

• WV-Gov: Treasurer John Perdue is out with his first ad – and it’s a two-minute long (!!) behemoth.

House:

• AZ-01: This is an old (May 2010) but interesting article on ex-Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick’s relationship with Apache Indians in her former district, who constitute an important voting bloc. I highlight it because, of course, she just announced her intention to seek a rematch against Republican Paul Gosar. Apache leaders, who supported her first election bid in 2008, felt betrayed over her support of a controversial copper mine on what they consider to be sacred land and walked away from her last year. However, as sacman701 points out, Kirkpatrick’s vote drop-off in Apache County in 2010 was very minimal.

• MN-08: Here’s something else interesting (okay, every bullet in the digest is an unparalleled gem and I love them all equally): Dem Lt. Gov. Yvonne Prettner Solon, who used to be a state Senator, is supposedly considering a run against freshman GOPer Chip Cravaack, according to a Politics in Minnesota source. One problem, as the piece notes, is that if she won, Republican Senate President Michelle Fischbach would become the new Lieutenant Governor. As someone who lived through the near-death experience of having Pedro Espada half-a-heartbeat away from the governor’s mansion, I wouldn’t blame Minnesota Dems if they wanted Prettner Solon to stay put!

• NY-01: I think a key reason why Dem Rep. Tim Bishop was able to hang on by the skin of his political teeth last year was because of the exceptionally nasty three-way GOP primary on the other side of the aisle – one which took place very late (September) to boot, giving eventual winner Randy Altschuler little time to recover. So it’s very heartwarming to see that another 2010 candidate, George Demos, is already slagging Altschuler for failing to win “in a year Republicans couldn’t lose.” Both men are considering rematches, and according to Dave Catanese, are meeting with the NRCC. Cat fud comin’!

• PA-03: This is also interesting (there I go again!): Ex-Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper is considering a rematch against GOP frosh Mike Kelly. I say “interesting” because I wouldn’t have considered her among the likeliest batch of people to seek a comeback, and I don’t think I’d really heard her name since last November. Anyhow, Dahlkemper says she’s spoken with the DCCC, and while she wouldn’t announce a timetable for a decision, she doesn’t want to wait until the fall (as she did in 2007 when she first ran). The same article also mentions another potential Dem candidate whose name has come up in recent days but apparently hasn’t ruled anything out: Erie Mayor Joe Sinnott.

• WI-07: Sean Duffy’s handlers seem to have a very 19th century understanding of the Internet: They’ve demanded the already-infamous video of him moaning about getting by on $174K a year get removed on copyright grounds. This is sure to make the story go away. Actually, I’ve changed my mind: They have a decidedly 21st century appreciation of the ‘net: After they sent a takedown letter to Talking Points Memo, TPM re-posted a shorter version of the video – which now, in a reverse Breitbart claim, Duffy’s people are saying was selectively edited. Of course, this is bullshit, but they’ve succeeded in getting CNN to repeat it as fact.

Other Races:

• Wisconsin Sup. Ct.: This is really interesting (wow, I just can’t help myself today): Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel points out that there are two key special elections in the state’s two biggest Democratic counties on Tuesday, which of course coincide with the Supreme Court race. One we’ve mentioned before: In Milwaukee, voters will replace their former County Exec, who was none other than Scott Walker. The Dem there, Chris Abele, has devoted his campaign to linking his Republican opponent with Walker. Meanwhile, in Dane County (home of Madison), the exec decided last year to leave in the middle of her term, prompting a new election. While Dane is reliably liberal, Milwaukee isn’t always, but given the contours of this year, Gilbert thinks the voter surge in Milwaukee is more likely to be left-leaning. But you should really read the whole piece, as there’s a lot of interesting data (and a cool chart) that I can’t convey in one short bullet.

Remainders:

• PPP: Politico has a feature-type piece about our buddies at Public Policy Polling, with some details about the deal with DK/SEIU, and a longer discussion of how PPP really has not becomes viewed as a left-leaning Rasmussen… mostly because their numbers are actually, ya know, good.

Redistricting Roundup:

• Arkansas: Despite strenuous GOP opposition, Arkansas Dems are moving ahead with their so-called “Fayetteville finger” plan that moves the city into Dem Rep. Mike Ross’s 4th CD. They did pass a new, somewhat modified plan (you can see a map at the link), but it still preserves the extension into Fayetteville. (Several Republicans plans have gotten voted down as well.)

• Indiana: State Senate Democrats have released a couple of proposed maps, including one for their own body (PDF) and one for Congress (PDF).

• Louisiana: Hah! Remember that fucker Michael Jackson, who ran as an independent in 2008 and cost Dem Rep. Don Cazayoux his hard-won seat in Congress? Well, in his role as state Rep., he’s put out a propose congressional map that would create two majority-minority districts in Louisiana. I assume they have no chance of seeing the light of day, though. You can find it here.

• Missouri: The first proposed congressional redistricting plan has emerged from the Missouri state House, and it looks pretty much exactly like what you’d expect: Russ Carnahan’s district has been flushed down the oubliette. (Map at link.) The state Senate plans to release a map soon, too.

• Mississippi: Mississippi has a serious redistricting logjam, and with the end of the legislative session fast approaching, no one seems inclined to give in. The article I’ve linked says that Gov. Haley Barbour could call a special session, but Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant (who after a big initial setback seems to have reasserted himself as the GOP’s point man on redistricting) seems almost eager for the impasse to continue. If it does, that would mean two sets of elections: one this year under the old maps, and one next year under new maps. Bryant is really starting to warm to this, because Republicans would very likely take control of the state House this November under the existing lines, which would then give them a free a hand. But if a new plan (with a Dem gerrymander in the House) goes into place this year, it gives Democrats at least something of a chance of holding the House – which is why House Speaker Billy McCoy’s over-reach was really so stupid.

• New Jersey: Things are coming to a head in the Garden State, with the final vote on a redistricting plan by the members of the state’s bipartisan commission scheduled for noon on Sunday. What the maps actually will look like is anybody’s guess, as the panel’s leader/tiebreaker, Alan Rosenthal, has ordered repeated revampings. (Chris Christie has also been seen leaning heavily on the panel members.) Leaked maps (we haven’t actually seen copies of them, but apparently everyone is willing to describe them to reporters) seem rife with intra-party intrigue, with several Dem state legislators who’ve fallen out of favor (including ex-acting Gov. Richard Codey) getting the short end of the redistricting stick. At the Congressional level, the same dynamic is playing out, with rumors that Rep. Frank Pallone of NJ-06 is the House member likeliest to get dealt the worst hand. Apparently he’s also out of favor with the currently ruling Dem power brokers, who’d like to derail him from an anticipated statewide run. (The whole story is worth a read, for a guided tour of the byzantine behind-the-scenes working of New Jersey politics.)

• Virginia: The Virginia Public Access Project has some cool interactive charts you can play around with which show how the various redistricting proposals would affect the state legislature.

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: Jeff Flake then:

That’s the difficulty of a campaign. I mean, it’s easy to just say, “Seal the border and enforce the law.” What does that really mean? What does that entail? And when you’re able to explain it, then they’re alright. And I think for those who don’t agree with my position-think that it ought to be something different-at least I think they give me a little credit for sticking with my position because I’ve always believed this is what we need and I continue to believe regardless of the political environment.

Jeff Flake now:

In the past I have supported a broad approach to immigration reform – increased border security coupled with a temporary worker program. I no longer do. I’ve been down that road, and it is a dead end. The political realities in Washington are such that a comprehensive solution is not possible, or even desirable, given the current leadership.

In other AZ news, the subscription-only Arizona Guardian says that ex-Rep. Matt Salmon may endorse Rep. Trent Franks, rather than his old buddy Flake (who succeeded him in Congress when he unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2002), something they characterize as a “snub” on their home page. Franks of course hasn’t announced a run yet, but Dave Catanese claims he’ll do so this Saturday. Just hope whoever told Dave this is more truthful than the dipshit who dissembled about Connie Mack last week. (And I still maintain that Dave had every right-if not an obligation-to burn that source.)

• FL-Sen: Adam Hasner has to be feeling pretty good about himself these days. Rep. Connie Mack inartfully bowed out of the race, and Mike Haridopolos has already scored a few own-goals. So the former state House Majority Leader took to his Facebook to declare that “this election still needs a proven limited government leader, who is solid across the board on the conservative principles.” Why golly, that sounds just like Hasner, doesn’t it?

• IN-Sen, IN-02: Rep. Joe Donnelly sure sounds like he’s interested in running for Senate. He told Robert Annis, a reporter for the Indianapolis Star, that he thinks his “experience is best served in the Senate.” Annis also characterized Donnelly as “leaning toward” a run. A different reporter at the same event characterized him as “leaning strongly toward” a Senate bid if the GOP makes his current district redder.

• MI-Sen: PPP has the remainders from their Michigan poll last week, a kitchen sink GOP primary:

Pete Hoekstra is the clear first choice of Republicans in the state for who they’d like as their nominee to take on Debbie Stabenow next year. 38% say he’d be their pick compared to 18% for Terri Lynn Land. No one else cracks double digits, with Saul Anuzis at 5%, Justin Amash, Randy Hekman, and Tim Walberg at 4%, Chad Dewey at 3%, and Tim Leuliette with the big egg at 0%.

Speaking of The Hook, he said he’ll decide whether to challenge Stabenow in two weeks. In an amusing side note, Hoekstra admitted he got all butthurt when MI GOP chair Bobby Schostak said in a recent interview that he expects a candidate to emerge who is ” head and shoulders” above the current crop of potentials-a group which obviously includes Hoekstra. Of course, Schostak also said of this mystery candidates: “I don’t know who it is. They haven’t met with me yet, if they’re out there.” We don’t know who they are either!

• NV-Sen: Rep. Dean Heller, presumably trying to scare off would-be primary opponents, raised a pretty massive $125K in a single event in Vegas on Monday night.

• OH-Sen, OH-12: This is… getting strange. Top-tier Ohio Republicans have all pretty much taken a pass on challenging Sherrod Brown, or at least seem to be leaning against a run. But one guy all of a sudden put his name into the hopper: Rep. Pat Tiberi, who sits in the very swingish 12th CD. Tiberi’s spokesman made sure to remind Dave Catanese that he’s on Ways & Means, though, so that’s a pretty tasty perch to give up. Catanese also notes that state Sen. Kevin Coughlin is preparing a run.

• RI-Sen: I guess rich guy Barry Hinckley is running against Sheldon Whitehouse? The founder of a software company called Bullhorn (“the global leader in On Demand, integrated front office software for the staffing and recruiting industry”), Hinckley is apparently trying to burnish his Republican credentials by holding some fundraisers at California yacht clubs. (Not joking about that.)

Gubernatorial:

• LA-Gov: 2010 Lt. Gov. nominee Caroline Fayard is starting to sound very much like a gubernatorial candidate… that is, if you can hear her over her foot-stuffed-in-mouth. She didn’t do much to help her cause by declaring at a recent even that she “hates Republicans” because they are “cruel” and “eat their young.” (Uh, I talk a lot of shit about the GOP, but what does “eat their young” even mean?) Fayard later tried to wiggle her way out of this by claiming “I’m against the president, but I don’t need to see his birth certificate.” So she’s managed to kill her crossover vote and her support among African Americans in one fell swoop. Well, uh, she sure is getting some free media out of this. (Hat tip: Daily Kingfish)

House:

• CT-05: I guess I thought that former state Rep. Elizabeth Esty (D) had already announced she was running for Chris Murphy’s seat, but apparently she’s only just formed an exploratory committee.

• MN-06: It’s not particularly meaningful, since the funds can be transferred to another federal account, but Michele Bachmann did just file to run for re-election yesterday.

• NY-25, VA-02: Dan Maffei apparently says he’ll decide on a rematch “in the next two months,” while Glenn Nye (I’d forgotten he was still considering) will wait until “sometime in the summer.” (That’s how The Hill phrased it in both cases.)

• RI-01: With the city of Providence’s finances imploding, freshman Rep. David Cicilline is taking a beating over his stewardship of the city he used to be mayor of. Among other things, a new Brown University poll finds him with a statewide approval rating of just 17-49. Could Cicilline be vulnerable in the general election? I doubt it, but he could underperform annoyingly and require help that could best be expended elsewhere, like a Paul Kanjorski. I think he might be more at risk in a primary.

Other Races:

• Wisconsin Recall: In just the last two months, the Wisconsin Democratic Party reports raising $1.4 million-or, a quarter million more than it did in all of 2010. In other news, a coordinator of the petition drive against Randy Hopper seems to have gone off-message with his intimation that volunteers would have “closer to 30,000 than 15,000” signatures by Tuesday (a month before the deadline). 15,269 sigs are needed for the recall to happen, but a spokesperson for the Democratic Party told the Journal Sentinel that these figures (such as they are) “are not accurate” and wouldn’t say more. Quite understandably, t’s pretty much been the policy of the party not to talk about where things stand.

• Wisconsin Sup. Ct.: JoAnne Kloppenburg is out with TV and radio ads that tout her independence.

Remainders:

• WATN?: Artur Davis, douchebag from beyond the grave. This is actually the same link as the NY-25/VA-02 item above; Davis did an event with Maffei and Nye at which he said that President Obama would bear the brunt of the blame for any government shutdown. Davis’s claim: “I think that voters always focus on the executive as the responsible officer.” That’s why Bill Clinton lost so badly in 1996, right?

In other WATN? news, I’m guessing that ex-Rep. Bart Gordon (D) is probably ruling out a run for the seat he voluntarily gave up last year (TN-06), or a Senate bid – he just took a job at the law firm of K&L Gates. (The “Gates” is Bill Gates, Sr., the Microsoft founder’s dad, who is now retired.)

Redistricting Roundup:

• Indiana: Have an idea for an Indiana state Senate map? Sen. Tim Lane (D) wants to hear from you! (Seriously!) Contact information is at the link.

• Louisiana: Even though he had said he’d stay out of it, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s been weighing in on the redistricting process-and Dems, as you might guess, aren’t happy about it. Click through the article to learn more about the exact nature of the dispute. Ultimately, though, it sounds as though Jindal will get his way, which more or less preserves the status quo.

• Funnymanders: What happens when a very careful redistricting job blows up in your face because the state Senate Majority Leader’s son being groomed for the new seat tells the media he can’t even remember being arrested for getting into a dispute over chicken fingers at Applebee’s? Well, I’m calling that a funnymander. Nathan Gonzales has the details on that story, and a few other anecdotes as well, about redistricting gone awry.

• Dark Money: On the darker side of redistricting is all the unregulated cash flooding into various coffers, which Politico takes a look at. A big reason is an FEC decision last year which allowed members of Congress to raise unlimited soft money for redistricting groups, and both Dems and Republicans are, of course, going at it full bore.

Senate:

• FL-Sen: I was pretty bored with reading the George LeMieux tea leaves even before his cuppa began brewing, but in case you’re not me, the very-short-tenured former senator has been busy attending Lincoln Day dinners and meeting with GOP activists and potential donors. In beltway land, I think this upgrades him from “Lean Run” to “Likely Run.”

• IN-Sen: Treasurer Richard Mourdock is trying to cause some trouble by saying that Gov. Mitch Daniels encouraged him to run against Dick Lugar in the GOP primary, while a Daniels spokesperson said the governor did no such thing. Daniels previously said he’d vote for Lugar, but didn’t exactly endorse him. In other news, Mourdock says he expects to show $125K raised for his race in just a month of campaigning.

Gubernatorial:

• KY-Gov: Dem Gov. Steve Beshear just punked his top opposition in this year’s gubernatorial race, state Senate President David Williams, hard. Williams had insisted on broad spending cuts (including to education) as part of a Medicaid budget bill; the Democratic-controlled House had no interest in these cuts, but Williams refused any possible compromise. So House Dems (and rebellious House Republicans) passed the Williams bill anyway… I know, hang on … but full-well expecting Beshear to use his line-item veto to strike the cuts. Then they adjourned, so that the vetoes couldn’t get over-ridden. And that’s exactly what happened, handing Williams a humiliating defeat.

• WI-Gov: I’m wondering which pollster will finally have the courage to report numbers to the THOUSANDTHS of a percent. For now, we’ll have to content ourselves with Republican-affiliated pollster We Ask America, which bravely ignores all rules about significant digits and goes all the way to hundredths. They show what other polls are showing: that Scott Walker (like other loser Midwestern Republican governors) has crappy job approval ratings, in this case 43.71 to 54.87. YES DECIMALS.

• WV-Gov: The AP has a good run-down on which groups are endorsing whom in the gubernatorial race. On the Dem side, we’ve noted several of the big union heavy hitters, most of whom are backing state House Speaker Rick Thompson. But some important labor groups are supporting other candidates, like state Sen. Jeff Kessler (Fraternal Order of Police, nurses) and Treasurer John Perdue (teamsters, state troopers). Meanwhile, EMILY’s List has endorsed SoS Natalie Tenant. The AP also tried to get candidates to cough up estimates of their fundraising figures (final reports are due Friday), but only acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin responded, saying he’d pulled in about a million bucks.

And speaking of Thompson, he’s apparently the first on TV, with an ad touting his hardscrabble upbringing. By the way, SSP Southern Correspondent Trent Thompson notes that the soundtrack you hear is a Baptist hymn, which seems to be popular among Southern Dems (Bobby Bright featured this sort of thing in his advertising). (UPDATE: Actually, it’s an actually an old Hank Williams gospel song that’s commonly sung in churches.)

House:

• CA-36: It looks like we have the final list of candidate filings for the special election. I count ten Democrats, six Republicans, five “nonpartisan,” two Libertarians (splitter!), and one “Peace and Freedom” candidate. Also, Howard Dean just endorsed Debra Bowen, which is not too surprising given that his former organization, Democracy for America (run by Howard’s brother Jim), also recently endorsed.

• CA-51: Apparently there had been vague rumors that Dem Rep. Bob Filner might run for mayor of San Diego… and now apparently Filner just went and announced he was in fact doing so in a totally off-hand remark after a screening of the film Freedom Riders. (Filner himself was one of the Mississippi Freedom Riders.) There’s been some dispute over whether Filner’s remarks were accurately conveyed, but oddly, Filner’s office has refused to either confirm or deny the statement. Note that the race is in June of next year, so I believe Filner gets a free shot while keeping his House seat.

• TX-23: Not so fast, Quico! Gary Martin of the Houston Chronicle says that Dems are looking at a few potential challengers to freshman GOPer Quico Canseco, including state Rep. Joaquin Castro and Pete Gallego, and state Sen. Carlos Uresti. Ex-Rep. Ciro Rodriguez is also apparently weighing a rematch. While the borders of the 23rd will undoubtedly shift somewhat, it probably can’t change a whole lot thanks to the VRA (it’s 66% Hispanic), so this race could heat up earlier than many others.

• WI-01: Food service company owner and Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban is apparently interested in challenging GOP Rep. Paul Ryan. Despite his leadership post and his inflexible conservatism, Ryan sits in a very swingish district that can’t really be improved in redistricting for a variety of reasons.

Other Races:

• ME-St. Sen.: The Maine SoS has set May 10th as the date for a special election to fill the seat of state Sen. Larry Bliss (D). The reason for Bliss’s resignation was certainly unusual and quite poignant: He couldn’t find a job in Maine. State legislators work part-time and are only paid $13,000 a year. Bliss said that in the absence of other work, he’d been working as a “full-time” legislator and was really enjoying his job, but he could only find employment in California, prompting his resignation. Of course, this story really isn’t that unusual at all, given how many people are still out of work and struggling terribly. Also of note: Bliss was one of only a handful of openly LGBT state legislators nationwide.

• PA-AG: Longtime Philly DA Lynne Abraham (D), who left office just last year, said she’s considering a run for state AG, despite being 70 years old. (Devoted Swingnuts will recall that ex-Rep. Patrick Murphy is also thinking about a run.) Believe it or not, no Democrat has won the AG’s office since it became an elected position in 1980.

• Wisconsin Sup. Ct.: Unnamed sources tell the National Review they’ve seen polling showing the race between incumbent Justice David Prosser and JoAnne Kloppenburg “near even.”

Remainders:

• Census: Like in NYC, pols in Atlanta are wondering why the new Census numbers for their city are so much lower than expected – 420K vs. a projected 540K. Jacob Alperin-Sherrif (better known to you as DemocraticLuntz) has an excellent post comparing Census projections with actual numbers for cities between 100K and 1 million people. You need to click through for his must-see scatterplot. There is one massive outlier: Atlanta, which is more than six standard deviations away from the mean.

Redistricting Roundup:

• Indiana: Despite total Republican control over the process, it’s starting to look like the Indiana legislature won’t finish their congressional map before the body adjourns on April 29th, largely because of a walk-out by Democrats which ground most work to a halt. But the Democrats just reached what they’re saying is a favorable a deal with the Republicans, so perhaps the process will pick up again soon.

• Iowa: The state’s independent redistricting panel will release the first draft of a new congressional map at 8:15 am local time on Thursday morning.

• Virginia: New maps for Congress, the state House and the state Senate could be released by the legislature today. Stay alert!