In case you didn’t hear, the Associated Press and the Anchorage Daily News have called the Alaska Senate race for Democrat Mark Begich. Begich is currently sitting on a lead of 3,724 votes, with only about 2,500 special absentees outstanding.
Begich is now the first Democrat since Maurice “Mike” Gravel to represent Alaska in the United States Senate.
Update: Oh, I forgot to mention: Happy birthday, Ted! Yes, Mr. Stevens turned 85 today. And what a birthday it was!
AP confirms McCain is starting up his PAC again in hopes of winning another term.
WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain, whose presidential bid was snuffed out two weeks ago by President-elect Barack Obama, is setting up a political action committee as a first step in running for a fifth term in the Senate.
A McCain spokesperson says the 72-year-old senator decided with his senior advisers Tuesday night to set up the fundraising PAC. The spokesperson spoke anonymously because the decision had not yet been made public.
http://apnews.myway.com/articl…
I was among the minority who didn’t believe he would retire in 2010. McCain is not going to go out with his debacle of a Presidential campaign as being the first thing in people’s minds when they think of him. He cares too much about his faux “maverick” repuatation and needs to rebuild that (as well as his repuation among the press) before he sails off into the sunset.
Interesting. Up until now, Republican media efforts in Georgia had yet to pound Jim Martin for his support of Barack Obama — even as Martin casts himself as a strong Obama supporter in his own ads. That changed today, as Saxby is now shaking things up by “going there”:
We saw in the special election in Mississippi’s 1st that attacking Obama led to a surge in African-American enthusiasm for Democrat Travis Childers. The difference here is that Chambliss’ ad is far less scurrilous (albeit still false) than the toxic waste that Greg Davis produced, and that Martin is running a campaign that seems entirely aimed at mobilizing Obama supporters to come out for a second time, rather than reaching out for crossover votes. We’ll just have to see which side is more ginned up.
(H/T: TPM EC)
The supposed heir apparent to Joe Biden’s Senate seat, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, has pulled his name from consideration for the soon-to-be-open seat, according to Chris Cillizza.
This actually may not come as that big a surprise, as Beau Biden will be deploying to Iraq for a year as a military lawyer and will not be available to serve in the Senate during that time. Importantly, the younger Biden did not rule out running for the seat in the 2010 special election, when he would be done with his military obligation.
So, this really doesn’t alter the conundrum that we talked about last week facing incoming governor Jack Markell (or outgoing governor Ruth Ann Minner, depending on the order in which the handovers happen): does Lt. Governor (and gubernatorial primary loser) John Carney get the nod, with the expectation of a permanent post, or does an elder statesman placeholder get the seat for two years, followed by Beau Biden (or a battle royale between Biden and Carney)?
The Alaska Department of Elections has posted an updated count of their hotly-contested Senate race, and Begich has doubled his lead:
Mark Begich (D): 146,286
Ted Stevens (R): 143,912
The Anchorage Daily News reports that more results will be posted between 4 and 5pm Alaska Time. Looks like we’ll finally put this sucker to bed today.
The Alaska election website was just updated and Begich’s lead is up to 2,374 votes. Not sure if this is it or there are more votes to count. By my very quick math this is outside of recount territory of 0.5% of the total.
First Read has the unconfirmed news that Barack Obama has selected Eric Holder, the former deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno, to take the big job:
President-elect Obama has offered Eric Holder the position of attorney general, and Holder has accepted it, according to sources involved in the process. The formal announcement has been held up while Obama transition team members ran the idea past key senators. And Obama wanted to announce members of his financial team first — Treasury Secretary and so on.
Holder is a former superior court judge and U.S. attorney in Washington and a former prosecutor in the Public Integrity section of the Justice Department. He was Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno, during which he was well regarded. At one point, he strongly considered running for mayor of Washington, D.C., but decided being the No. 2 official at Justice was too good to pass up.
An oft-mentioned possibility for AG up until now was Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, whom many Dems consider a dream candidate to run for John McCain’s (possibly open) Senate seat in 2010. It’s still possible that she could be placed elsewhere in Obama’s cabinet, but for now, she still appears to be available.
Quinnipiac has released a new poll today testing the 2010 waters in Florida, and their numbers confirm what we’ve known for a long time: GOP Sen. Mel Martinez is in rough shape as his first term expires.
Only 36% believe that Martinez deserves to be re-elected, while 38% of voters say he does not. In a match-up against “the Democratic candidate”, Martinez only pulls in 36% of the vote to the Democrat’s 40%. His favorable rating is similarly lackluster: 31-28, with a plurality (37%) saying they haven’t heard enough to form an opinion of the man. Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown calls these numbers “not awful”, but that’s only true by perhaps a hair’s width of difference. They’re certainly not numbers that provide an incumbent with a sense of comfort two years out from his first re-election.
Of course, an opportunity like this one will only pan out if Dems can recruit a solid candidate — for my money, I think I’ll take state CFO Alex Sink. Sink has the highest name recognition and favorable rating of all the potential Senate candidates tested in this poll (Reps. Allen Boyd, Kendrick Meek, and state Senator-elect Dan Gelber being the others), but there are numerous other options available on the table right now.
Stephanie Tubbs-Jones was the Representative from OH-11 (in and around Cleveland, basically)until her sudden tragic death in August. The Cuyahoga County Democrats chose her former chief of staff, Marcia Fudge, from a very crowded field, to endorse in a special primary election, which was held on Oct 14.
After the county Party endorsed Fudge, a number of contenders dropped out and Fudge easily won the primary, for the special election to fill the remaining two months of this term. Today is that special election.She is the only candidate on the ballot. Her automatic win means that she will enjoy a two month edge in seniority over the other members of the new class of Reps.
And (of course) she already easily won the General Election on Nov 4 for the new, full term starting in January. It’s an 85% Democratic District.
But there is one big question looming. After the 2010 census, Ohio is going to lose two seats in the U.S. House. And, if they can hang on, the Democrats will control the State General Assembly House of Representatives and the Governorship.
OH-11 is the only U.S. District in Ohio which has a majority of African-American and other minorities. It is also BY FAR the most Democratic in the state under the gerrymandering of the GOP.
In the other urban areas in Ohio, the GOP has tried to carefully slice the suburbs and exurbia with pieces of the inner cities to create House Districts that they can control. (Don’t even talk to me about the General Assembly, especially the Senate…)
That is until 2006 when Zack Space was able to capture an open “scandal” seat in OH-18. And now this year, we have successfully flipped OH-16 and OH-01 and will probably capture OH-15.
So back to reapportionment. The GOP has been able to hold majority control of our “purple” state by creating seats that are solidly but NOT overwhelmingly Republican. On the other hand they have created Democratic seats (OH-09,OH-10, OH-11 and OH-17) which “quarantine” very large numbers of urban Democratic voters.
Will we be able to redraw the map, with two less seats and still be able to maintain Districts with such high concentration of urban Democratic voters?
With Republican Gov. Linda Lingle of Hawaii term-limited in 2010, Democrats have a good shot at picking up the Governor’s office next cycle. Who should run for the big job? And who will the Republicans nominate to defend the seat?
Democratic Sen. Dan Inouye will also be up for re-election in 2010, and would be unbeatable if he wanted another term. But Inouye will be 86 that year, and is unsurprisingly the subject of retirement rumors. If he calls it quits, Lingle is obviously the GOP’s best bet to make this a race, but there are several Democrats on the bench who could make strong candidates. Who should run?