Swing State Project

As you know, the Swing State Project is becoming a part of Daily Kos and will become “Daily Kos Elections.” This move will happen on Tuesday, May 3. I wanted to fully detail the transition in one place, to help folks understand what’s happening and to ease the process. (I previously explained the move in this post and also responded to many comments.) I also want to offer everyone another chance to ask any questions. This is a long post, but I’d encourage you to read the entire thing before hitting the comment boards. Alright – let’s start!

1) SSP is becoming part of Daily Kos? What does that mean?

In the simplest terms, all you have to do is bookmark this link:

http://elections.dailykos.com/

All the content you are accustomed to seeing here at SSP will now appear on its own sub-site at Daily Kos, called “Daily Kos Elections,” or “DKE” for short, starting May 3. So just visit DKE and you’ll be able to read the same great stuff you’ve always read at SSP, each and every day.

If you follow us on Twitter or Facebook, you don’t need to change a thing (though our account names will change, but that should be seamless for you). If you follow us via RSS, you’ll use this new link:

http://www.dailykos.com/user/Elections/rss/index.xml

If you’ve signed up for our daily email summary, there may be a short interruption as we migrate to the DK system, but I expect any disruption will be minimal.

2) What’s going to happen to swingstateproject.com?

The archives at swingstateproject.com will remain available. New user sign-ups, comment posting, and diary posting will be disabled. However, you’ll still be able to log in to your old account to find your old comments and diaries more easily. At some point, we’re likely to port our archives over to Daily Kos as well, but that’s something for further down the line.

3) Alright, you told me how I can read your stuff at DKE. But how can I comment? Will my SSP account still work?

Your SSP account will not work over at DKE. You’ll need to create a new account. I strongly urge you to do this right away if you haven’t yet already because there’s a one-day waiting period for new accounts at Daily Kos to post comments, and a one-week waiting period to post diaries. You can sign up for a new account by going here:

http://www.dailykos.com/newuser

One suggestion I’ve seen in comments that I like: If you choose to use a different username at DKE (or your SSP name is taken by someone else and you need to pick something different), you can edit your sig line to tell people what your new name is. (Or, on DKE, what your old name was.) To do this on SSP, click on your username anywhere you see it (or on “[Username]’s Page” in the right-hand sidebar), then click on the “Profile” tab. You can then edit your Account Info page as you see fit.

On Daily Kos, log in, then click the prominent “My Page” link that’s just below the site’s logo in the top-left area of the screen, then click on “Edit Profile” in the “Welcome Back” box in the top-right corner. Scroll down to the middle of the page until you reach the “Comment Preferences” section. There you’ll see a box for your signature line. After you’re done, just make sure to scroll all the way to the bottom and hit the orange “Save” button.

4) Yipes! I was once banned at Daily Kos. What do I do?

Send me an email: davidnyc [at] dailykos [dot] com. It’s easiest if we work things out privately, on an individual basis.

5) Okay, how about diaries? How do I post those?

Alright, this part is important. The site software works somewhat differently at Daily Kos, and there’s also one big huge thing you have to remember if you want your diaries to appear at DKE. So here goes:

In the “Welcome Back” box (which I mentioned above in #3), click on the word “New” next to where you see “Diaries.” You’ll be brought to a page which is very similar to the new diary entry form at SSP. You’ve got your title, of course, and then your “Intro” box, which is where the main text of your diary goes. If you’re writing something particularly long and want to put part of it below the fold, that goes in the box labeled “Extended.”

Then scroll down past the Extended box. You’ll see an area called “Tags.” You have to enter at least one tag. This is different from SSP, which lets you post diaries without any tags.

Now here’s the really important part: If you want your diary to appear on the right-hand sidebar of DKE, YOU MUST INCLUDE THE TAG “DK Elections” IN YOUR POST. If you include this tag, that tells the system to post it in the “Related Diaries” box in the right-hand sidebar on DKE. Here’s a screenshot to show you exactly where it will appear:

As you can see, I posted a test diary (since deleted) titled “This is a test” in that box. (Can you hear me in the back?) That’s where your diaries will appear, very similar to how they appear on SSP.

But again, how they get there is different. The “DK Elections” tag is crucial. If you include it, your diary will appear in the right place. If you don’t, it will not appear there.

When you are ready to post your diary, click on the “Save & Preview” button. If you are content, then click the “Publication Manager” button. Here’s where things are a little different. You will see either two or three options pop up. The first is “Publish Now.” That’s equivalent to hitting “Save” on an SSP diary – it’ll go live right away. In addition to appearing in the DKE sidebar if you remember to use the right tag, it will also appear on your personal blog by clicking the “Diaries” link in the “Welcome Back” box. (You have your own personal Daily Kos blog now!) If you hit “Publish Later,” you can set your diary to appear at a particular time and day of your choosing. (If you see a third option, “Queue to a Group Blog,” that means you’re probably already a DK power-user, so I don’t think I need to explain that feature.)

So once more, just remember: Include the “DK Elections” tag in all your election-related diaries!

(One side-note: If you include the “DK Elections” tag at the time you first publish your diary, it should appear in the “Related Diaries” sidebar at DKE right away. If you forget the tag but go back and add it later, that will work, too – but be aware that there will be a delay in your diary appearing in the “Related Diaries” box.)

6) Let’s go back to comments for a minute. What’s the deal with these “Recommend” and “Hide” buttons?

“Recommend” means you like a comment and want to give it an attaboy. It’s a nice way of showing that you think a comment is particularly smart, useful, funny, etc. I sometimes like to give recommends even to comments I disagree with, if I think the person has made a thoughtful point (even if I don’t share their views). I also think they can be helpful defusers – if a discussion gets a little more heated than I’d like, I might give someone a recommend just to show, “Hey, we’re cool.” It’s sort of a technological way of indicating that we can all “leave it on the court” (as they say in the NBA).

“Hide” means you think a comment is so offensive that it should literally be hidden from view. It’s not to be used for mere disagreement, or even sharp displeasure – a “hide” rating is a very serious sanction, and if a comment gets enough of them, it will in fact disappear from view (though it won’t be deleted). Use these sparingly, only for spammers, true trolls, or genuinely offensive rhetoric.

(Note that you may not see the “hide” rating button if you have a very new account. Only “Trusted Users” have access to “hide” ratings, and you need to build up what the site calls “mojo” in order to become a TU. Don’t worry – you can and likely will become a TU before long, if you aren’t already. The traditional way to gain mojo is by having your comments get recommended, but there are many others. If you’re interested in learning more about how mojo works, you can check out this post and this post from Markos.)

7) Looks like there are a lot of other new features at Daily Kos as well. What’s up with all of those?

Indeed there are, but I don’t want to make this post any longer than it is. However, if you are interested in a good primer about the site, Joan McCarter (one of the site’s senior editors) has written a great series of introductory posts:

• Getting started at Daily Kos 4.0

• How to read, write, and comment in Daily Kos 4.0

• What’s new and/or improved in Daily Kos 4.0

8) Why are you making this change?

There are several key reasons. First, I think our coverage last cycle was absolutely top-notch – but we were operating at and in fact past capacity. I had a day job as an attorney which meant I couldn’t blog at all while at work. So those morning edition digests you saw were written by me late at night, after I came home from work, and keeping it up was incredibly exhausting. The other writers here all felt the same way about their workloads. So for us to maintain our existing level of coverage and in fact continue to grow, we had to make a big change. I’m not sure SSP would otherwise have been sustainable in the long run.

The second reason ties into the first. I’ve been hired to work full-time for Daily Kos. This means we get to produce more great content for you on a daily basis. It’s also a dream job for me – I’m getting paid to do what I’ve otherwise done as a hobby for almost a decade. Markos has been trying to bring me aboard for years, and the stars finally aligned. It was an offer I couldn’t turn down, and I’m very glad I didn’t.

And a third important reason is server uptime and general technology issues. As you know, SoapBlox often struggles during high traffic loads and has even gone down more than once. Daily Kos is infinitely more robust – Markos has made uptime one of his most important priorities. To give you an example, on election night in 2008, Daily Kos had nine million pageviews but didn’t so much as hiccup. That’s as many pageviews as SSP gets in three years! (Indeed, this performance was so impressive that the site’s tech guru, Jeremy Bingham, was invited to do a presentation about it at the prestigious O’Reilly Velocity conference.) And more generally speaking, SoapBlox has certainly been showing its age, while DK just underwent a major upgrade and continues to be actively developed. It’s just a much more modern, robust system that will simply never go down on election nights.

There are some other nice benefits for the community as well. We get access to greater resources through Daily Kos, and in my role as Political Director, I’m responsible for all polling that we undertake. I plan on involving you guys in those decisions – expect to see some PPP-style “vote on where we poll next” posts as the campaign season gets further underway.

9) So who’s going to be writing at DKE?

The staff will be (in alphabetical order by first name):

Arjun Jaikumar

David Jarman (Crisitunity)

David Nir (DavidNYC)

James L.

Jeffmd

Steve Singiser

And, of course, you’ll all still be writing diaries.

10) What’s going to happen to the community? To SSP’s policies?

DKE will remain an “elections-only” zone. Our focus will, as always, be on pure electoral horserace politics, not policy. There is no editorial direction from up on high at Daily Kos (and never has been) – DKE will retain complete editorial independence. I’m as free to disagree with Markos (or any other Daily Kos staffer) as you are – and I can (and do) exercise that freedom.

As far as community goes, we will do everything possible to maintain what we’ve built here. We will, as always, try to steer conversations in helpful ways and avoid derails and off-topic discussions. While I personally will not have the power to ban users, this is actually something we do quite seldom here at SSP – and if someone is truly disruptive, I can make it known to Meteor Blades, the Daily Kos Director of Community. If you also have concerns about a user, you can reach out to one of the staff members (see above).

Most importantly, though, is the role all of you will play. We are trying something new, by creating this site-within-a-site at Daily Kos, and some people who encounter us will simply not be familiar with our customs and our focus. I know it’s not always easy, but I ask that you be patient with people like that – try to explain to them, calmly and politely, what we’re all about. If someone says something that would be out of place at SSP, try not to get angry or frustrated but instead view it as a teaching opportunity. I’ve done this myself many times over at DK, and it’s proven surprisingly rewarding. Many people are genuinely grateful when you take the time to explain things. I know it may seem ridiculous when someone asks something like, “What’s the DSCC?” but if you tell them without condescension, they’ll appreciate it – and they’ll learn. (In fact, here’s a great example of me doing just that, and getting rewarded for it.) Remember, some folks simply don’t know a lot about the horserace and about how SSP/DKE works. Our mission is to spread the light!

One aspect of DKE that’s appropriate to explain here is how our work will be featured on the main page of Daily Kos – that is, if you go to www.dailykos.com. All of our posts will originate at DKE (elections.dailykos.com), so if you go there, you’ll never miss a thing. But some of our posts will also get published on front page (or “FP”) of Daily Kos itself. This mostly applies to our more general interest stuff: daily digests, stand-alone poll posts, and breaking news (like candidate announcements). Wonkier stuff (like the kind of data crunching that Jeff and Crisitunity are known for) will generally not get cross-posted to the FP.

So what this means is that some folks will “wander in off the street,” so to speak, and find DKE posts not because they first visited elections.dailykos.com, but because they went to www.dailykos.com. These sorts of people are apt to be less familiar with our customs, so they may require some more hand-holding. But I’ll tell you: We’ve cross-posted a bunch of content over the past couple of months, and in the horserace-specific posts, you tend to get a type of commenter who would fit in quite well at SSP. In fact, I’m quite eager to unite these folks with us under one banner. (Believe it or not, not every horserace geek has heard of SSP!)

Indeed, this might seem like a somewhat strange thing to say, but most of the stuff we’ve cross-posted to the DK FP has not gotten a lot of comments… and that’s a good thing! Part of that is because the flow of new posts on the FP is very high, usually one every 40 minutes or so. (The flow at DKE will be what you’re accustomed to here at SSP.) But another key reason is that horserace geeks like ourselves are generally a pretty self-selected bunch, and horserace geekery is only one of many reasons why people visit DK – whereas at SSP, it’s really the only reason. So a lot of the, shall we say, noisier folks that people have expressed concern about at DK aren’t really attracted to horserace diaries in the first place.

And there’s an additional point which is really worth making here: I know a lot of you have concerns about the integration of our two sites. There definitely are some commenters at DK who would not fit in well here (even if they mostly stay out of the horserace stuff) – I won’t disagree with that. But there’s no reason, absolutely no reason, why a few bad apples at Daily Kos should “take over” SSP culture and not the other way around.

You people are some of the smartest, most thoughtful election analysts around. Honestly, the combined brainpower of this place kicks the ass of any other election shop anywhere. (Are you telling me we couldn’t out-hustle the NRCC? Hell no you’re not. I would definitely take that Pepsi challenge.) But you’re also a really polite, friendly bunch who’ve shown how to make a great community work. Yeah, we step in to moderate sometimes, but really the vast majority of the time, this community knows what it’s doing.

So I think we have a lot of ability to make Daily Kos more like SSP rather than the reverse. We’ll have our own sub-site, of course, but even for the posts that also appear on the FP, we can make those comment boards our own, too. The current Daily Digest posts at DK seldom get more than a couple dozen comments. Here they get hundreds! How can a few irksome Kossacks change us, when we outnumber them by a huge margin? Indeed, SSP’s traffic is at record highs. To put it in terms we can all appreciate, our base is huge! Even though it’s a much bigger site overall, the DK horserace base is small, and mostly very much like us. Or put another way: When liberals from the northeast migrate southward for warmer climes, do they become more conservative? Of course not – quite the opposite: they make their new states bluer. There’s no reason why it won’t be the same for us.

I am sure it will be imperfect. I may occasionally post on a topic which unexpectedly brings out the crazy brigade in a way that even I can’t keep a lid on. It’ll happen, it’ll be annoying, and maybe I won’t be able to re-rail it… but you know what? These moments, I expect, will be few and far between, but if they happen, we’ll just move on to the next thread. SSP probably has to be about the least inflammatory progressive blog there is, so if a freak-out does occur, odds are the next post will be pretty chill, especially if it’s a Daily Digest.

And yeah, maybe there will be one or two people who keep wanting Alan Grayson to primary Bill Nelson, and maybe they won’t give up no matter how many times you patiently explain what a bad idea that would be. I don’t expect this see much of this, but if it ever winds up happening, just ignore `em. Or like I said, wait for the next thread. Or if you don’t feel like waiting, then post a new diary of your own.

Many of you have known me for a long time. You know I’ve always been honest with you, and you know I’ve worked hard almost every day for many years to make this site the best it can be. I don’t think anyone owes me anything, but I hope I’ve earned a measure of credibility with you – enough, at least, that you’ll give DKE a shot, that you’ll help export SSP’s brand of community to the new mothership, and that you’ll put up with occasional frustrations and growing pains so that we can continue to succeed in our new home.

I’m incredibly grateful for all the support you’ve shown me, my fellow writers, and this site over the years, and I’ll be even more grateful if you’ll join me in helping to make this transition work. Thank you.

Senate:

• ME-Sen: It’s stuff like this which have me convinced that Olympia Snowe is definitely not out of the woods. Her fellow Maine senator, Susan Collins, said she won’t support Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget plan, which seems to put the screws to Snowe. It’s a pretty classic problem: If she sides with Ryan, she damages her standing with normal people, and if she sides with Collins, she’ll enrage the teabaggers. It may not matter in the end, but it doesn’t help – and with Collins speaking out, that makes it a lot harder for Snowe to simply avoid the question.

• NV-Sen: Gov. Brian Sandoval says he’ll tap a replacement for John Ensign by the time Ensign resigns in early May, though apparently some Republicans would prefer he name someone other than Dean Heller. That would let the GOP avoid a potential gong-show in NV-02, but Jon Ralston says that a Heller appointment is already a “done deal.”

• OH-Sen: It sounds like Ken Blackwell wants to decide whether he’ll seek the GOP nomination some time in May, after his new book comes out.

• TX-Sen: Robert Paul, son of Ron and brother of Rand (son of Byford, brother of Al!), says he won’t run for Senate this cycle, but says he could possibly run for office at some point in the future.

Gubernatorial:

• IN-Gov: Rep. Mike Pence, whom everyone seems convinced will run for governor, raised a pretty meh $283K in Q1. And yes, he can transfer that money over for a gubernatorial race, so it’s not unimportant. I can’t really imagine Pence declining this chance to seek the statehouse – he won’t have an open-seat opportunity again for quite some time. However, he is in the top rung of GOP leadership in Congress, so maybe he’s just feeling ambivalent. UPDATE: Can’t believe I forgot this, but staypositive reminds me that Pence is no longer a member of the GOP leadership… which makes his sucky fundraising stand out all the more.

• LA-Gov: Uh, well, this certainly takes the cake for first quarter fundraising. Wealthy businessman John Georges wrote his campaign committee a ten million dollar check (in the form of a loan), to be used for an unspecified statewide office. I’m filing this under “LA-Gov” because he ran as an indie for that job in 2007. No word yet if he’ll run again, or if he’ll do so as a Dem, but if he does, at least his cash would give Bobby Jindal a little heartburn.

• NH-Gov: Dem state Rep. Jim Splaine, writing over at Blue Hampshire, takes a broad look at the playing field for next year’s gubernatorial race. He wants Gov. John Lynch to run again, but if he doesn’t, Splaine offers a ton of other possibilities. One name that stands out is former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand, who ran for NH-Sen in 2008 before stepping aside for Jeanne Shaheen. Marchand’s been talked about as a possible challenger to 1st CD Rep. Frank Guinta, but he’s talked with Splaine about his ambitions, and it sounds like he’s more interesting in a gubernatorial bid.

Also, if you want to keep your finger on the progressive pulse in the Granite State, BH has started running straw polls for next year’s key races. Marchand wasn’t included in their gov test, but Mark Connolly (whom we mentioned here the other day) led the way with 31% of the vote.

House:

• AZ-08, AZ-Sen: The Arizona Republic has a lengthy profile on Gabrielle Giffords and her recovery and rehabilitation, which is worth reading in full. Also, her husband, astronaut Mark Kelley, said that Giffords has been cleared to attend the launch of the space shuttle Endeavour this Friday. Kelly will command this mission, Endeavour’s last.

• NY-13: According to the New York Observer, a new potential Dem name to take on Rep. Mike Grimm has emerged: Robert Diamond, a Navy veteran and investment banker. Diamond has roots on Staten Island, but Brooklyn-based blogger Colin Campbell dug up a donation to the DNC which shows that Diamond lived on the Upper East Side as recently as last year. Not sure how great a fit that is culturally… but in any case, Diamond didn’t return a call to the Observer seeking comment, so who knows how real this is.

• NY-22: Our thoughts go out to upstate Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who was just diagnosed with colon cancer. Fortunately, his doctors say that his cancer is curable and they expect a full recovery. Hinchey is 72.

• NY-26: Dem Kathy Hochul was just endorsed by EMILY’s List. The special election is just a month away, May 24th.

• OR-01: State Rep. Brad Witt has been upgraded from “rumor level” to “considering level.” Blue Oregon mentioned the other day that he was a possible contender to challenge Rep. David Wu in the Dem primary; now, according to Jeff Mapes in the Oregonian, some of his advisors are saying he’s definitely interested. He’d be the second Democrat (well, other than Wu himself) to get into the race – Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian is already running, setting up a battle of the Brads. There are also still several other people in the more nebulous stages of candidacy, so I hope that we don’t (as some have suggested in comments) wind up with David Wu turning into the Dem version of Dan Burton and winning the primary with a bare plurality.

Other Races:

• KY-St. House: It’s not the biggest news in the world, but it’s unusual enough to merit a quick note: Kentucky state Rep. Wade Hurt is switching parties… from Republican to Democrat. Hurt won office last year under unusual circumstances when his Democratic opponent was declared ineligible to run because he filed improper paperwork. (Believe it or not, Dem Jeffrey Donohue needed all of two signatures on his nominating petition, but managed to screw up one of them.) Dems were not permitted to replace Donohue, so Hurt won the ancestrally Democratic 37th district by default. Hurt claimed he wasn’t switching out of self-preservation and says he received no inducements, but the district is 62 D, 29 R by registration, and even in Dixiecrat territory, that still means something. (UPDATE: Johnny L-T reminds me that the district is in Louisville, so not really Dixiecrat territory – which makes these registration numbers all the more dangerous for a Republican.)

• WI Recall, WI-Gov: I’m usually not a big fan of polls from colleges with short track records, but YMMV with this St. Norbert poll testing recall numbers. They find Scott Walker at 48% “keep” and 47% “remove.” They also tested state Senate Republicans and Democrats, with Wisconsinites saying “keep” for the GOP by a 53-35 margin and “keep” for the Dems, 57-33. Mind you, this was a statewide poll, and it also had a super-long field date, April 5 through April 18.

Grab Bag:

• House Majority PAC: Greg Giroux breaks down the independent expenditure reports from the House Majority PAC’s Medicare-related attack on ten House Republicans. Turns out that unlike the DCCC’s “tuppence a bag” efforts, it’s a legit buy, ringing up at $116K. Click the link for the full breakdowns.

• Americans United: Speaking of which, the progressive group Americans United for Change is targeting four GOPers over the Ryan vote: Ryan himself, as well as Sean Duffy and Chip Cravaack (both also on the HMP’s list – see item just above), and, most interestingly, Steve King. TPM calls the buy “significant,” but also notes that it’s for five figures… so we could be taking anywhere from $10K to $99K here. Americans United is also doing robocalls in a bunch of districts.

Redistricting Roundup:

• Colorado: It sounds like attempts to go back to the drawing board and produce a compromise map in Colorado have failed (why am I not surprised?). Democrats say they’ll introduce a new map of their own next week, but I can’t possibly imagine it will be appealing to Republicans (and vice-versa for anything the GOP might do). Unless the GOP decides it’s more scared of what a court might draw, then we’ll stay locked in a stalemate. And I say the GOP because they’re the ones who have the most to lose – Colorado is already pretty close to a Republican gerrymander by accident (the last map was court-drawn, too), which you can see because the new GOP proposals seek to change it only minimally. (Ironically, Republicans originally hated the map, and tried to pull off a mid-decade re-redistricting that got tossed by the courts.) In any event, the writeup at the link is quite detailed and worth a read if you’re interested in drilling down on this one some more.

• Missouri: Things have really fallen apart in Missouri, with the state House Speaker openly lambasting his counterparts in the Senate for a lack of “leadership.” The Senate adjourned on Friday without reaching any kind of agreement with the House, which means lawmakers have all but missed a deadline which would allow them to send a map to Gov. Jay Nixon before the end of the legislative session. Now, even if they do finish a map soon, if Nixon vetoes, any chance at an over-ride won’t take place until the fall.

• Mississippi: Oral arguments were heard in the lawsuit over Mississippi’s redistricting impasse, with Dem AG Jim Hood making the interesting argument that elections should be held this fall using maps that passed by each body of the state lege but weren’t voted on by the other (nor, of course, signed into law). Hood also argued against the judges drawing their own maps, and against the idea of holding elections this fall under the old lines and new ones next year with new maps (as happened in 1991/92). Republicans, predictably, took the opposite view.

• Timelines: Ballotpedia has a good list of timetables for each state to start and complete its redistricting process (though many are pretty flexible and some states have no specific deadlines).

For the first time in ages, there may be a relatively competitive election. I’m going to discuss it here.

Parliament of Singapore

Singapore operates under the Westminister system, with a unicameral legislature comprising of 84 MPs. Additionally, there are provisions for NCMPs (Non-Constituency MPs), who are selected from the best-performing losers, and NMPs (Nominated MPs), who are nominated to represent independent views. The former was introduced to provide greater opposition representation in Parliament, but both are not able to vote on constitutional amendments or matters of confidence. A 2/3rds majority of MPs is required to amend the Constitution, but the PAP has always held this majority since the 60s.

Currently, 82 MPs are from the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party), 1 MP is from the WP (Workers’ Party), and 1 is from the Singapore People’s Party (SPP). Interestingly enough, one minister has argued that this situation is normal in small jurisdictions, citing the dominance of Democrats in cities such as NYC and Chicago.

Electoral System

Singapore operates under the first-past-the-post system. However, constituencies are either GRCs (Group Representation Constituencies) or SMCs (Single Member Constituencies).

The former, comprising 4 to 6 members, were introduced, officially, to promote minority representation in Parliament, but has the effect of raising the barriers to entry for opposition groups. (To digress, the implementation of VRA-style minority districts is not viewed as a viable solution as the PAP’s objective has been to prevent the creation of minority enclaves). The NCMP scheme mentioned above has also been criticized as a means of diluting the voter desire for a stronger opposition voice in Parliament.

Political parties

The dominant political party here is the PAP, which has been ruling Singapore ever since 1959. The most credible opposition parties are usually the WP and the SPP. Additionally, there are various other parties such as the SDP (Singapore Democratic Party) and the NSP (National Solidarity Party). In public discourse, all opposition parties are generally grouped under the “opposition”.

State of Play

SMCs are generally considered to be more lucrative opposition targets, as assembling a well-qualified group to take on the PAP in a GRC is considered more difficult. Both opposition-held seats are SMCs. The GRC where the opposition had its best showing in 2006 (the last election) was won the PAP with 56.1% of the vote against the WP, well illustrating the difficulty of the opposition winning a GRC.

This year, however, a larger and better-qualified group of candidates (Singapore is very conscious of educational qualifications) has joined the opposition, so this election is likely to be more competitive. Further, while the traditional media is generally considered a PAP stronghold, as it were, the advent of “new media” is much more critical of the PAP and is viewed with hope by the opposition.



Issues

The current debate is mainly about economic policy, with income inequality, increasing competition from immigrants, and cost of living issues (especially housing and car prices)being the issues on which the opposition hopes to capitalize. Immigration, as usual, is a particularly emotive issue, especially since the immigrant population in Singapore has increased rapidly in the last decade.

The PAP tends to advocate an open-door immigration policy, and has traditionally been reluctant to provide unemployment benefits and to legislate a minimum wage (both are seen as being harmful to economic growth). In recent times, however, there has been a move towards somewhat greater income redistribution. Seeing as 80% of Singaporeans live in public housing, the cost of public housing is also a major issue. Related to this is the PAP’s use of the “carrot” of upgrading of housing estates as an electoral tool (estates in opposition-held constituencies are denied upgrading priority).

There has been no major discussion on social issues, given that Singapore remains an overwhelmingly conservative society. Abortion, for instance, was only legalized as a means of reducing the birth rate back in the 70s, and homosexual activity remains illegal.

Given that Singapore is a city-state, issues under the remit of local government in the US are also potentially potent electoral issues.

The lack of opposition voices in Parliament is also an issue on which opposition parties hope to make gains.

Election Day

It’s May 7! I can’t think of anything else to say at the moment, discussion is welcome.

This diary attempts to somewhat futilely mash together recent Pennsylvanian federal election data with the d’Hondt method of proportional representation, just for kicks.

Lately Pennsylvanians have been a swingin’ crowd. The House delegation went from a Democratic disadvantage of 7-12 in the 109th to a majority of 11-8 in the 110th, which then hit 12-7 in the 111th before snapping back to 7-12 in the 112th. In the Senate, the same four congresses brought two Republican Senators, a Republican and a Democrat, two Democrats (sort of), and now a Democrat and a Republican again. It’s emotionally exhausting. And now I’m stuck with Tom Marino and Pat Toomey.

After reading about the recent Finnish parliamentary elections, I wondered how their Nordic variety of open party list, highest averages seat allocation would work if applied to a bothersome dummymandered state like Pennsylvania. Thus inspired, I applied the d’Hondt method, which they use in Finland, to the 2008 and 2010 election results. The d’Hondt method metes out seats according to party vote totals across a large jurisdiction — a state, in the US.  There would be no general election districts and no first past the post (FPTP) competitions.

Without districts, Pennsylvania’s parties would nominate a list of 19 candidates. In an open party list system like Finland, the party’s full list is shown on every ballot, and the electorate votes for a specific candidate on the list. That vote counts toward the party as a whole but also the candidate’s ranking on the party list. For this exercise, both parties have conveniently decided to select their list of 19 candidates through regional primaries in jurisdictions that just happen to match up with with the 19 current House districts. Thanks, imaginary parties. An alternative might be statewide primaries with the first-19-past-the post making the list. Of course, the primary campaigns would have been different under such circumstances, but let’s not worry about that just yet.

The 2008 election

In 2008 Democrats won a new seat, with Kathy Dahlkemper taking PA-03. Does the Obama wave wash another seat up on the shore with proportional representation? For now let’s imagine that voters were given a ballot with all of the Democratic and GOP candidates and chose the exact same candidate that they did on actual election day 2008.

Here’s the Democratic party list:

List rank	Primary district	Total votes	Candidate
1	PA-02	276,870	FATTAH, Chaka
2	PA-01	242,799	BRADY, Bob
3	PA-14	242,326	DOYLE, Mike
4	PA-07	209,955	SESTAK, Joe
5	PA-08	197,869	MURPHY, Patrick
6	PA-13	196,868	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
7	PA-17	192,699	HOLDEN, Tim
8	PA-04	186,536	ALTMIRE, Jason
9	PA-06	164,952	ROGGIO, Bob
10	PA-10	160,837	CARNEY, Chris
11	PA-12	155,268	MURTHA, Jack
12	PA-03	146,846	DAHLKEMPER, Kathy
13	PA-11	146,379	KANJORSKI, Paul
14	PA-15	128,333	BENNETT, Sam
15	PA-16	120,193	SLATER, Bruce
16	PA-18	119,661	O’DONNELL, Steve
17	PA-05	112,509	MCCRAKEN, Mark
18	PA-19	109,533	AVILLO, Philip
19	PA-09	98,735	BARR, Tony

Notably, FPTP losing candidate Bob Roggio (who challenged Jim Gerlach) received more votes than FPTP winning candidates Chris Carney, Jack Murtha, Kathy Dahlkemper and Paul Kanjorski. There were quite a few wasted Democrat votes in eastern Pennsylvania. In western Pennsylvania, Murtha won convincingly with 57.9% in his FPTP race but received an underwhelming number of actual votes in his underpopulated district.

Now the Republican party list:

List rank	Primary district	Vote total	Candidate
1	PA-19	218,862	PLATTS, Todd
2	PA-18	213,349	MURPHY, Tim
3	PA-15	181,433	DENT, Charlie
4	PA-06	179,423	GERLACH, Jim
5	PA-09	174,951	SHUSTER, Bill
6	PA-16	170,329	PITTS, Joe
7	PA-05	155,513	THOMPSON, Glenn
8	PA-04	147,411	HART, Melissa
9	PA-08	145,103	MANION, Tom
10	PA-07	142,362	WILLIAMS, Craig
11	PA-03	139,757	ENGLISH, Phil
12	PA-11	137,151	BARLETTA, Lou
13	PA-10	124,681	HACKETT, Chris
14	PA-12	113,120	RUSSELL, William
15	PA-17	109,909	GILHOOLEY, Toni
16	PA-13	108,271	KATS, Marina
17	PA-02	34,466	LANG, Adam
18	PA-01	24,714	MUHAMMAD, Mike
19	PA-14	0	None

In 2008 Republicans didn’t oppose Mike Doyle, which is a bit inconvenient for this exercise, so there are only 18 candidates on their list. The seven Republicans who won their FPTP races in 2008 hold the top seven party list spots. But Melissa Hart, who lost her FPTP contest with 44.1%, is not too far behind Glenn Thompson, who won his with 56.7%. Coincidentally, FPTP opponents Jason Altmire and Melissa Hart both hold the eighth slot on their party lists.

In total, Democratic candidates won 3,209,168 votes, and Republicans received 2,520,805 votes. Third party candidates did not receive enough votes to matter. The seats would be distributed thus:

House seat	Allocation value	Party	Party seat	Candidate elected
1	3,209,168	Dem	1	FATTAH, Chaka
2	2,520,805	GOP	1	PLATTS, Todd
3	1,604,584	Dem	2	BRADY, Bob
4	1,260,403	GOP	2	MURPHY, Tim
5	1,069,723	Dem	3	DOYLE, Mike
6	840,268	GOP	3	DENT, Charlie
7	802,292	Dem	4	SESTAK, Joe
8	641,834	Dem	5	MURPHY, Patrick
9	630,201	GOP	4	GERLACH, Jim
10	534,861	Dem	6	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
11	504,161	GOP	5	SHUSTER, Bill
12	458,452	Dem	7	HOLDEN, Tim
13	420,134	GOP	6	PITTS, Joe
14	401,146	Dem	8	ALTMIRE, Jason
15	360,115	GOP	7	THOMPSON, Glenn
16	356,574	Dem	9	ROGGIO, Bob
17	320,917	Dem	10	CARNEY, Chris
18	315,101	GOP	8	HART, Melissa
19	291,742	Dem	11	MURTHA, Jack
20	280,089	GOP	9	None (MANION, Tom)
21	267,431	Dem	12	None (DAHLKEMPER, Kathy)
22	252,081	GOP	10	None (WILLIAMS, Craig)

Democrats win 11-8 rather than 12-7 under FPTP. The Obama wave fails to bring in new seats, and d’Hondt limits Republican losses. Democrats Kathy Dahlkemper and Paul Kanjorski miss out on the seats they won in FPTP, and Democrat Bob Roggio and Republican Melissa Hart take their spots.

As a result, there are no representatives from PA-03 and PA-11, the northwest and the northeast, while there are two each from PA-04 and PA-06, in the Pittsburgh and  Philadelphia suburbs. The FPTP data favor districts with high turnout and close races over modest winning candidates in low turnout and low population districts.

But

Of course, there are several huge and massive and very large flaws with this exercise.

For one, Republicans certainly would have fielded a full party list of 19 candidates, since every vote helps the party. But the Republican list would have needed an additional 104,882 votes for Tom Manion to pass Jack Murtha. The missing Republican in Doyle’s Pittsburgh district was succeeded by a candidate in 2010 who failed to clear 50,000. Even with the increased 2008 presidential turnout, it seems unlikely that a Republican would have won 100,000 votes in central Pittsburgh. (PA-14 representatives went unchallenged in 2000 and 2004, so there’s no good reference.)

It is also unlikely that parties would use geographic primary districts in the first place, at least not in the same configuration as current congressional districts.

But the more glaring issue is that candidates would campaign differently under a proportional system, and many voters would have selected different candidates on their party list or a more palatable candidate from the other list.

Campaigns would probably be centered on media markets. The candidates in PA-01, PA-02, PA-06, PA-07, PA-08 and PA-13 would campaign in “greater Philadelphia” and compete for many of the same votes, while candidates in PA-10 and PA-11 would campaign in “northeast Pennsylvania.” A cursory scan suggests that the only big media market base splits are for the PA-03 and PA-12 candidates. The discrete media market of the Lehigh Valley would be virtually guaranteed a representative.

Without head to head competitions, voters would be free to find their best ideological fit in what might otherwise be a “lesser of two evils” situation. I’m not sure how this would pan out for the Blue Dogs or “moderate” Republicans. Independent voters in PA-11 who supported Lou Barletta over unpopular incumbent Paul Kanjorski would have had other Democratic options like Chris Carney.  

Also, candidates with demographic advantages or clear ideological differentiation could perform better within party lists by grabbing same-party votes from other parts of the state. Schwartz, Dahlkemper and Hart might benefit from the dearth of women on the ballot. Doyle would likely earn progressive votes from Altmire’s district, while Altmire could win more conservative Democrats from Doyle’s district. Similarly, Republicans turned off by Pitts could have switched their votes to a more palatable option like Platts or Gerlach.

There would also be the question of ordering the party list. In the Democratic party, the urban politicians would probably be ranked first, regardless of whether the metric is seniority, primary vote totals or power broker decision-making. On the Republican side I’m less clear who would benefit. But high ballot position would be an advantage.

So, yes, there are huge problems with applying data collected from one type of election to a completely different system. If this method were actually implemented in the 2008 election, I imagine the primaries would have produced a Democratic party list with an eastern urban/suburban bias and a Republican list with at least a couple strong urban candidates — the wealthy businessmen and lawyers who live in cities but aren’t stupid enough to run in Democratic strongholds under FPTP.

An 11-8 party split sounds reasonable in 2008, but the big city/suburban to small city/rural split could approach something like 14-5.

The 2010 election

In 2010 four Democratic incumbents lost and Republicans flipped a Democratic-held open seat. Proportional representation buffered the 2008 Obama wave — what about the 2010 tea tsunami?

Here is the Democratic party list:

List rank	Primary district	Vote total	Candidate
1	PA-02	182,800	FATTAH, Chaka
2	PA-01	149,944	BRADY, Bob
3	PA-14	122,073	DOYLE, Mike
4	PA-07	118,710	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
5	PA-17	118,486	HOLDEN, Tim
6	PA-08	113,547	MURPHY, Patrick
7	PA-04	110,631	ALTMIRE, Jason
8	PA-07	106,536	LENTZ, Bryan
9	PA-06	100,493	TRIVEDI, Manan
10	PA-12	94,056	CRITZ, Mark
11	PA-10	89,846	CARNEY, Chris
12	PA-11	84,618	KANJORSKI, Paul
13	PA-15	79,766	CALLAHAN, John
14	PA-18	78,558	CONNOLLY, John
15	PA-03	77,562	DAHLKEMPER, Kathy
16	PA-16	70,994	HERR, Lois
17	PA-19	53,549	SANDERS, Ryan
18	PA-05	52,375	PIPE, Michael
19	PA-09	52,322	CONNERS, Tom

The Democratic list doesn’t change too much from 2008 to 2010. But FPTP winner Mark Critz brought in fewer votes than the three Philly area candidates who lost their FPTP races, and Kathy Dahlkemper drops down close to “some dude” territory. It’s clear that the Democratic list is powered by the east, where blue votes are squandered in relatively close FPTP losses and massive FPTP wins.

Now for the Republican list:

Seat rank	Primary district	Votes	Candidate
1	PA-19	165,219	PLATTS, Todd
2	PA-18	161,888	MURPHY, Tim
3	PA-09	141,904	SHUSTER, Bill
4	PA-07	137,825	MEEHAN, Patrick
5	PA-16	134,113	PITTS, Joe
6	PA-06	133,770	GERLACH, Jim
7	PA-08	130,759	FITZPATRICK, Mike
8	PA-05	127,427	THOMPSON, Glenn
9	PA-10	110,599	MARINO, Tom
10	PA-15	109,534	DENT, Charlie
11	PA-11	102,179	BARLETTA, Lou
12	PA-04	99,867	ROTHFUS, Ketih
13	PA-17	95,000	ARGALL, Dave
14	PA-13	91,987	ADCOCK, Dee
15	PA-12	91,170	BURNS, Tim
16	PA-03	85,384	KELLY, Mike
17	PA-14	49,997	HALUSZCZAK, Melissa
18	PA-02	21,907	HELLBERG, Rick
19	PA-01	0	None

In 2010 Republicans again fielded only 18 candidates, with Bob Brady getting a free ride. Charlie Dent drops from 3rd on the party list in 2008 to 10th in 2010. I guess he benefited from Obama surge ticket splitters in the Lehigh Valley? Or just less tea fuel in 2010. Patrick Meehan does very well, besting Philly suburb veterans Jim Gerlach and Mike Fitzpatrick.  Mike Kelly, who won a seat in FPTP, occupies the 16th spot on the list, below four FPTP losers. Somehow he got fewer votes than Allyson Schwartz’s opponent. PA-03 really got wiped out in this election.

In total, Democrats won 1,860,644 votes and Republicans won 1,990,529. The third party vote was again not big enough to matter. The seats are allocated thus:

House seat	Allocation value	Party	Party seat	Candidate elected
1	1,990,529	GOP	1	PLATTS, Todd
2	1,860,644	Dem	1	FATTAH, Chaka
3	995,265	GOP	2	MURPHY, Tim
4	930,322	Dem	2	BRADY, Bob
5	663,509	GOP	3	SHUSTER, Bill
6	620,214	Dem	3	DOYLE, Mike
7	497,632	GOP	4	MEEHAN, Patrick
8	465,161	Dem	4	SCHWARTZ, Allyson
9	398,105	GOP	5	PITTS, Joe
10	372,128	Dem	5	HOLDEN, Tim
11	331,754	GOP	6	GERLACH, Jim
12	310,107	Dem	6	MURPHY, Patrick
13	284,361	GOP	7	FITZPATRICK, Mike
14	265,806	Dem	7	ALTMIRE, Jason
15	248,361	GOP	8	THOMPSON, Glenn
16	232,581	Dem	8	LENTZ, Bryan
17	221,169	GOP	9	MARINO, Tom
18	206,738	Dem	9	TRIVEDI, Manan
19	199,052	GOP	10	DENT, Charlie
20	186,064	Dem	10	None (CRITZ, Mark)
21	180,957	GOP	11	None (BARLETTA, Lou)
22	169,149	Dem	11	None (CARNEY, Chris)

Republicans win the first seat and alternate with Democrats afterwards, for a close split of 9-10 in favor of the GOP. Proportional representation helps keep down Democratic losses; although four FPTP incumbent Democrats still lose, the party overall does two seats better than under FPTP.  Carney, Kanjorski and Dahlkemper still don’t make the cut, but the fourth candidate out is Critz rather than Patrick Murphy. In fact, Patrick Murphy wins the 12th seat just ahead of the Republican who beat him under FPTP. Lentz and Trivedi, also FPTP losers, win seats as well.

The unlucky Republicans are Lou Barletta and Mike Kelly, while Charlie Dent, who got the 6th seat in 2008, just squeaks by with the 19th seat.

Manan Trivedi wins the 18th seat despite having fewer votes than Charlie Dent or Lou Barletta, the two Republicans immediately below him; the padding provided by competitive lower candidates like Critz, Carney, Kanjorski, Callahan et al was enough to compensate for his  modest vote count. Although Brady lacked an opponent in this election, the Republicans were very far from winning their 11th seat at the expense of the Democrat’s 9th seat.

Following the election of this group of candidates, there are no representatives from PA-03, PA-11, and PA-12 while there are two representatives each from PA-06, PA-07 and PA-08. The west and the northeast seats migrate to the Philly suburbs, basically. It’s worth noting that the threshold for Seat 19 is only 199,053. Several strong Libertarian (or other third party) candidates could plausibly round up enough votes (~10,000 per primary district) to seat one of their own in congress.

—

Given the flawed data, this system appears to effectively moderate swings and realign geographic representation in Pennsylvania, which is probably what would happen in similar states like Illinois, Ohio and Michigan. Bye bye, Joe Walsh? But then Massachusetts, for example, would have Republican representation, and Democrats could probably win additional seats in South Carolina and Louisiana. Third parties would also have a decent shot at a seat in big states like California and Texas. One unattractive feature for mappers: decennial reapportionment would be as simple as cutting one slot off the list in Pennsylvania. But otherwise it seems like it could be fun.

It’s based on a novel by a man named Nir:

Happy birthday, DavidNYC!

UPDATE (David): Thanks for all the birthday wishes! Also, please wish a happy birthday to several other 4/22 SSPers: RTHK, swamisurfer14, and TheGradyDem!

House:

• CA-26: More eliminationist rhetoric from the right (not that they’ll ever cease): Anthony Portantino, the Democratic Assemblyman running against Rep. David Dreier, is featured on some second amendment-related Old West-style “WANTED” poster.

• LA-02: Daily Kingfish says that Public Service Commissioner Lambert Boissiere III (son of a former state senator of the same name) is rumored to be interested in a primary challenge to Rep. Cedric Richmond in the newly-redrawn 2nd CD. The post points out that Bossiere’s PSC district has a lot of overlap with the new borders of the 2nd, including a dog-leg up to the Baton Rouge area. (Bossiere, like Richmond, is also African-American.)

• NH-02: It’s nothing like the town hall craziness of 2009, but it’s nice to see idiots like Charlie Bass take heat in public forums for voting for Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget. Pretty pathetic political instincts on the Bassmaster’s part. This vote will haunt him – and it’s already haunting several other colleagues, like Bob Dold!, Lou Barletta, and Paul Ryan himself.

• NM-01: Oh no. I really had hoped we were done with Marty Chavez, but the maddening former Albuquerque mayor is apparently considering a run to replace Martin Heinrich, and is even supposedly meeting with the DCCC. The good news, though, is that ex-LG (and 2010 gubernatorial nominee) Diane Denish is also thinking about entering the race. This could be a very crowded primary.

• NV-02: You know Jon Ralston is enjoying this one. After a report came out in the Las Vegas Review-Journal (which Ralston not-so-affectionately refers to as a “newspaper,” in scare quotes every time) that state GOP chair Mark Amodei was planning to seek the 2nd CD seat being vacated by Dean Heller, Ralston spoke with Amodei who says he didn’t announce anything. In the LVRJ piece (which oddly quotes Amodei himself, so I don’t know how they got the story wrong), Amodei also said that Republican state Sen. Greg Brower told him he also planned to join the race (and Ralston confirms via Twitter.)

Of course, who knows what’s going to happen with this seat, given the unsettled legal questions about how a special election should be conducted if Gov. Brian Sandoval taps Heller for John Ensign’s soon-to-be-vacant Senate seat.

• TN-06: I wonder what’s up with Diane Black. The GOP frosh gave her own campaign two-thirds of a million bucks in Q1 – not a loan, an outright donation. I’m guessing that she’s trying to ward off a potential primary challenge, given that she won the open-seat Republican primary last year with just 31% of the vote (her two nearest competitors both got 30%, so there must have been much gnashing of teeth).

Other Races:

• NJ-St. Sen.: An administrative law judge ruled that Olympian Carl Lewis, who is running as a Democrat, does indeed meet state residency requirements. However, it sounds like Republicans plan to appeal this ruling.

• WI Recall: All sorts of recall news. First up, Dem state Rep. Fred Clark says he’ll challenge Luther Olsen in the expected recall election, another strong get for Team Blue. Democrats also filed a huge 30,000 signatures against their fifth recall target, Alberta Darling. That leaves just three eligible Republicans left: Rob Cowles, Glenn Grothman, and Mary Lazich, the latter two of whom are in very red districts (so I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t get hit with a recall).

Republicans also finally filed signatures against three Democrats: Dave Hansen, Jim Holperin, and Robert Wirch. Democrats, though, charged that the GOP’s petition-gathering efforts were sloppy and flawed, and vowed to challenge the signatures.

Redistricting Roundup:

• California: California’s new independent redistricting commission is set to release a draft set of maps by June 10th, with final maps due on August 15th (after a period of public comment).

• Colorado: Things don’t seem to be going so swimmingly in Colorado’s attempt to go back to the redistricting drawing board, with a special committee begging for more time to finish a new set of maps. The Republican co-chair says he thinks they can produce new plans in 10 days, but as Al Swearengen says, announcing your plans is a good way to hear god laugh.

Meanwhile, Gov. John Hickenlooper sounds like he has no intention of vetoing any map that the legislature sends him. Since Dems control one body and Republicans the other, this means they’ll have to produce a compromise map – or no map at all, and kick it to the courts. I think Hick’s hands-off approach (which is totally in-character for him) increases the likelihood of the latter, because it eliminates a key piece of Dem leverage which could be used to force an agreement.

• Missouri: Utterly embarrassing: Barely more than a day after finally agreeing to a conference committee to resolve differences between Republicans in the state House and Senate, work has ground to a halt, and nothing more will happen until Tuesday. One state Rep. offered this hilariously nonsensical assessment: “I think we’re close, but obviously we’re far.” Meanwhile, the House passed a new map this morning that supposedly tries to address some Senate concerns, but given that there is no actual agreement, I’m guessing this is just a negotiating tactic.

• New Jersey: Teabaggers are suing to block implementation of NJ’s new legislative map. It’s not quite clear what the grounds are, but WNYC summarizes: “The suit alleges that the commission over-packed the southern half of the state and ‘illegally split Newark and Jersey City from three districts each to two.'”

• Louisiana: The state House submitted its own map to the DoJ for pre-clearance, which I believe makes it the first such plan to go before Justice this cycle. The hotly-contested congressional map, though, has yet to be sent in.

• Victims: Dave Wasserman and Julia Edwards try their hand at the most likely redistricting victims this cycle, with separate lists for the 10 most endangered Democrats and Republicans.

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: I keep saying that there’s no way Jeff Flake waltzes to the GOP nomination, but the Republican party has yet to prove me right. Fortunately, my deliverance may come in the form of rich guy Wil Cardon, who is supposedly giving the race a “very strong look” – and can self-fund.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov, etc.: Like another failed Republican gubernatorial candidate before her, it looks like we won’t have Meg Whitman to kick around anymore. Actually, that’s kind of confusing, because of course we did get to kick Dick Nixon around quite a bit more… but not until he kicked all of us around first. Anyhow, uh, where was I? Oh yeah, the former eBay chief says she “doubts” whether she’ll run for office again. Let’s hope she means it.

• MA-Sen: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead, and Deval Patrick still won’t run for Senate.

• MT-Sen: For once, I’m hoping a Republican schedules more fundraisers – at least, fundraisers like this. Denny Rehberg just did an event in Denver that was co-hosted by BP’s “director of government and public affairs” (i.e., their chief in-house lobbyist)… on the one-year anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Good optics!

• ND-Sen: This should scare absolutely no one off, from either party: Republican Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk, the only declared candidate to succeed retiring Sen. Kent Conrad, raised all of $32K in Q1. John Hoeven he ain’t. While we’re on the subject of North Dakota, former Sen. Byron Dorgan, who retired last year, just donated the bulk of his remaining campaign funds – $1 million – to a new charity he founded, the Center for Native American Youth. A worthy cause, I’m sure, but I’ll bet Joe Sestak would have really appreciated that extra mil.

• OH-Sen: It’s weird how the GOP went from utterly dominating last year’s Senate election in Ohio to digging out their barrel-bottom scrapers from the back of the utility shed. Ken Blackwell says he’s talking to the NRSC about a possible run… though I guess it’s not really clear if the NRSC is talking back. A lulzy quote: “You don’t just come out and build the sort of support base that I have overnight.” True – you probably need to spend two years running a crappy campaign to do as terribly as he did in the governor’s race back in 2006.

• TN-Sen: This is a little odd: Sen. Bob Corker said he “came close” to not seeking re-election this cycle. Too bad we don’t have a candidate who could make hay out of Corker’s lack of fire in the belly (a phrase he actually uses with respect to some fantasy presidential run, but seems applicable to his day job, too).

• VA-Sen: It’s starting to feel like the wingnut candidates are doing everything they can to make life easier for George Allen by piling into the clown car that is the GOP primary field. The latest is rich dude Tim Donner, whom we mentioned last month. Almost all of these weirdos claim to be teabaggers in good standing, so this almost assuredly means we’ll see some People’s Front of Judea/Judean People’s Front nonsense, rather than a united effort to stop Allen. Lame.

Gubernatorial:

• KY-Gov: Republican frontrunner David Williams raised just $450K in Q1 and has $670K on hand. (This compares to Gov. Steve Beshear, whose numbers we mentioned previously: $1.3m/$3.3m.)

• NC-Gov: PPP’s monthly home-state poll shows Gov. Bev Perdue inching up against Republican Pat McCrory, trailing 49-38 instead of 50-36. That’s very similar to a new SurveyUSA poll which has McCrory up 51-39.

• SC-Gov: The issues are a little too complex for me to try to summarize here in a digest bullet, but the link will take you to an interesting story exposing some pretty naïve political incompetence on the part of supposed GOP wunderkind Gov. Nikki Haley. One thing I’d like to remind folks of is that despite the Republican bloodbath of 2010, Haley didn’t perform all that impressively. In fact, she had the second-narrowest win out of all 20 victorious GOP gubernatorial candidates, just 4.3%. Only Rick Scott won more narrowly, and he’s Rick Scott. Dem Vincent Sheheen got almost no national attention but should have, given his strong performance in a tough state in an impossible year. If Haley continues to stumble, I think she could prove surprisingly vulnerable in 2014.

Via the National Journal:

Two-term Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada will resign on Friday, Republican sources tell National Journal, ending a once-promising career that had the former veterinarian and casino manager eyeing a possible presidential bid before an ugly sex scandal and subsequent ethics probe snuffed out his ambition and, eventually, his Senate tenure.

Ensign’s resignation will clear the way for GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval to appoint GOP Rep. Dean Heller, already an announced candidate for Ensign’s seat, to the Senate vacancy.

Ensign, 53, began notifying Nevada friends of his intentions late Thursday. The senator has kept his distance from official GOP circles in Washington for months, but word quickly spread to GOP figures inside the Beltway who tell NJ they are certain Ensign will resign.

“We have no reason to doubt that it’s true and believe it’s happening,” a senior GOP official told NJ.

I’m pretty surprised to see this happen – Ensign had many chances to resign over the years, and sooner would have been better for him than later. But with his announcement six weeks ago that he wouldn’t seek re-election, there just didn’t seem to be a reason for him to quit early anymore. So either he’s doing one last solid for the GOP (as the National Journal notes, this will give Heller an easy and instant move into the Senate), or he’s worried that the still-pending ethics investigation against him will somehow make him look worse than he already does, or both.

I’m not sure whether a year-and-a-half of incumbency will make a huge difference in next year’s race (Heller would have to stand for re-election in November 2012), but I’m guessing Shelley Berkeley, the almost-certain Democratic nominee, would rather face Rep. Heller rather than Sen. Heller. I’ll be very curious to see how she reacts if this comes to pass, and what her strategy looks like.

One final observation: Assuming Sandoval does the obvious thing here, this would also create a vacancy in Heller’s 2nd CD seat. That would prompt a special election, presumably under existing district lines, which could be a very entertaining affair. Candidates have already been lining up for the GOP primary to replace Heller, so I’d guess they’d all likely run in a special election, too – and that includes Sharron Angle. If Dems put up a strong candidate, we could potentially steal this seat. It’s going to be interesting.

UPDATE: Ensign in fact decided to announce today, via press release. He says his resignation will be effective May 3.