Swing State Project

As our fellow Swingnuts are well aware, President-elect Obama’s cabinet appointments can and likely will have big reprecussions for downballot races throughout the nation in coming years. So James and I, out of a deep desire to help John Podesta and his extremely busy transition team, have put together the following list of suggestions so that Obama can, well, maximize his impact on the country:

Secretary of Interior: Mark Begich

Secretary of Defense: Ike Skelton

Secretary of Commerce: Byron Dorgan

Attorney General: Charlie Justice

Patent Office Commissioner: Jim Matheson

FCC Commissioner: Jeff Van Drew

SEC Commissioner: Walt Minnick

EPA Administrator: Kathy Dahlkemper

OMB Director: Alex Sink

White House Chaplain: Tom Perriello

Drug Czar: Paul Carmouche

What other good ideas do you guys have?

Two weeks after his ass was kicked out of office, Mr. Sununu apparently still does not get the message. Just like his father did with the State Legislature back in the 80s, John carries on the time-honored Sununununu tradition of obstructing the opposition at every turn. Case in point below.

Sen. Mikulski brings up an ammendment to the auto bailout and my Junior Senator (surprise, surprise) objects therefore cutting off any further debate to the measure. Well, the old bull is having none of that and not-so-kindly reminds he and the rest of the GOP exactly why they went down in flames on Election Day.

It gets really good about 2 minutes in. No doubt the loser left the gallery with his tail between his legs.

“Boy am I sorry that that’s the last act of John Sununu in the Senate.” …and not a moment too soon.

A key win for Mary Jo Kilroy:

A federal judge in Columbus ruled Thursday that disputed provisional ballots must be counted in one of the nation’s final undecided congressional races. …

About 1,000 ballots are in dispute in the House race because of defects such as voters failing to both print and sign their names.

Marbley’s ruling came in a lawsuit filed last week by supporters of Stivers, who argued the ballots were invalid because they were missing either a printed name or a signature, or the two were interchanged on ballot envelopes.

In his ruling, the judge said the plaintiffs never disputed that the voters who used the provisional ballots were eligible, properly registered and voted in the correct precinct, and that not counting the ballots would disenfranchise legitimate voters. His ruling sides with Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, who had said the ballots should be counted because the problems were due to poll worker error.

Punctuating his ruling with a reading of Ohio’s voter fraud statute, Marbley called unfounded the plaintiffs’ contention that allowing the disputed ballots to be counted would promote fraud. He said election officials have ways to double-check the validity of all the disputed votes.

These thousand ballots are from Franklin County, the population center of the district and Kilroy’s base. It’s especially heartening to see the judge directly eviscerate classic GOP phony fraud claims. Marbley stayed his ruling, however, so that the Republicans can appeal. Presumably the Sixth Circuit will issue a ruling soon, hopefully affirming the district court.

In other OH-15 news, rural, red Union County completed its recount and Steve Stivers’s lead moved up to 479 votes. But that hardly seems like enough – there are apparently some 27,000 ballots left to be counted in Franklin, so it’s pretty difficult to see how Stivers will hold on. (Some of those ballots are provisionals which will be rejected, though.) In a way, this race is almost the inverse of WA-08, where early returns are liable to be reversed as the tally progresses.

The Kitchens Group (11/18-19, likely voters, 11/6-7 in parens):

Paul Carmouche (D): 48 (45)

John Fleming (R): 37 (35)

Undecided: 13 (16)

(MoE: ±4.0%)

That’s a fair spot better than the last two polls we’ve seen of this race. Interestingly, Kitchens pegs the African-American vote at a conservative 22% (this district is 33% black), meaning they estimate that the ‘Mouche is doing much better with whites than either SUSA or Public Opinion Strategies say he is. This one will probably go down to the wire.

The full polling memo and details are available below the fold.

Minnesota Public Radio has some great images of contested ballots currently being contested in the MN-Sen recount. Here are a few:

Anyhow, you can click through the link to register your opinion as to how each of these ballots should be counted (if at all). Pretty fascinating stuff.

No one likes Blago, but Blago doesn’t seem to care. So who will run against him in the 2010 Democratic primary? And who should run against him?

And speaking of Blagojevich, soon he will appoint a replacement for Barack Obama in the United States Senate. A lot depends on who exactly he selects, of course, but do you see any notable Republicans taking a stab at the seat in 2010? Mark Kirk, perhaps?

Franken has just gained about 41 votes from the original margin of 215! as the Recount continues on!

By day’s end, with about 18 percent of the vote recounted, Coleman continued to lead Franken — but by only 174 votes, notably narrower than the unofficial gap of 215 votes at which the recount had begun. Franken’s gain owed much to a swing of 23 votes in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County — the result of faintly marked ballots and older optical scanners that failed to read the marks.

http://www.startribune.com/pol…

If this trend continues will have a new senator in no time!

Let’s just say that I hope Obama finds someone else:

Barack Obama’s choice for secretary of Agriculture could take one Democrat from the 20-seat pickup the party gained by way of the recent elections. (Three House races have yet to be called and two seats in Louisiana will be filled on Dec. 6.)

According to reports, Obama is considering Reps. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) for the USDA post. His transition team declined to comment on Cabinet speculation.

Should either of these seats open up, they would both be tough holds for Democrats, but Herseth’s in particular would be even harder. Obama did improve on past Democratic performances considerably in South Dakota, losing the state by 8 points (compared to Kerry’s 22-point loss here in 2004), but the Dem bench in South Dakota, by my estimation, is pretty thin. However, The Hill notes that state Senate Minority Leader Scott Heidepriem might be the Dems’ best bet in such a scenario.

Minnesota’s 7th District is also a pretty conservative area, although one with a stronger Democratic tradition. Kerry lost this CD by a 55-43 whipping in 2004, but McCain only won the district by a 50-47 margin earlier this month. If a popular state legislator with conservative creds in the mold of Peterson could be tapped, Democrats might be able to hold onto this seat, but it will undoubtedly be an expensive battle.

While I’m not automatically opposed to Obama tapping Congress for his Cabinet needs, I don’t think Obama should run the risk of giving the Republicans something to crow about with a special election victory in either of these seats. Surely another qualified candidate can be found for this job.

UPDATE (David): So I’ve done a little back-of-the-envelope math and I think the new PVI for MN-07 will be about R+8 (old PVI: R+6), while SD-AL will become R+11 (old PVI: R+10). This may seem counter-intuitive, given that Obama performed far better in both districts than Kerry & Gore did.

But given how the PVI formula works, Kerry’s 2004 performance in the district now gets compared to Obama’s 2008 nationwide results. Therefore, Obama’s strong national showing can make lagging districts – even those where we did better than in 2004 – look redder by comparison.

That said, the fact that we lost South Dakota by 8 points rather than 22 is a reason to cheer, even if the PVI now looks worse. But I still wouldn’t look forward to a special election here, no sir.

CNN is reporting the following:

Barack Obama’s top choice for secretary of homeland security is Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, multiple sources say

If Napolitano does indeed accept this job, that both removes her from contention for a 2010 Senate race, and also would move up Republican Jan Brewer, Arizona’s Secretary of State, into the Governor’s mansion. Brewer is already mentioned as a likely candidate for Governor in 2010, so this would obviously give her a big leg up for the entire field.

(Hat-tip: sulthernao)

UPDATE (David): Politico is saying it’s a done deal. This is lame.

After the Paul Carmouche campaign released a poll last week showing the Caddo Parish DA leading Republican John Fleming by 10 points in this open seat race, two new polls have been released tonight showing Fleming with a slight lead. Let’s check ’em out.

SurveyUSA for Roll Call (11/17-18, likely voters):

Paul Carmouche (D): 45

John Fleming (R): 47

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Public Opinion Strategies for John Fleming (11/17-18, likely voters):

Paul Carmouche (D): 42

John Fleming (R): 43

(MoE: ±4.9%)

There are a lot of unknowns about turnout here, particularly concerning the African-American turnout for this December 6th election. While the district is 33% black, SUSA pegs the black vote at 27% for this special election, and the POS poll split the difference at 30%. The Kitchens Group poll for Carmouche, interestingly, conservatively projected the black turnout to be 24%.

The DCCC is investing considerably in this race, having spent $448,000 on Carmouche’s behalf as of this afternoon, while the NRCC has dropped $279,000, most of which has been spent on media buys. However, the DCCC is also spending cash on field operations, which is something they employed successfully in other special elections this year (IN-07, LA-06, and MS-01). Just to give you a sense of the track record of the DCCC’s field program, they made significant independent expenditures for boots on the ground in seven races this fall (AL-02, AL-05, CT-04, LA-06, MD-01, MS-01 and NC-08) and won six of them. Of course, the one race of that batch that we did happen to lose was also in Louisiana, but other factors contributed to Don Cazayoux’s demise there that won’t be in play against Carmouche.