Swing State Project

• AK-Sen: All signs are pointing to Lisa Murkowski winning this race, and joining Strom Thurmond in the won-a-Senate-write-in-race club. At the end of yesterday’s counting, which took us up to nearly half of all the write-in votes analyzed, the state Division of Elections is reporting that nearly 98% of all write-ins are being successfully counted for Murkowski. Even the rate of challenges, even if they were all successful (and few of them are), is inadequate for Joe Miller to make up all the needed ground (he’d need to shave off 12%, and isn’t even challenging at quite that rate). 45,132 write-ins have been analyzed so far, and only 1.52% have been successfully challenged by the Miller camp. Seemingly realizing the gap can’t be made up, the Miller camp, while still harping on the spelling issue and keeping that line of argument alive, is now turning to nebulous claims of voter fraud as their next line of attack, threatening a second potential lawsuit. His team is setting up a voter fraud hotline for people to report fraud, voter intimidation, and voter bullying. (Kind of a strange angle to explore, when you’re the campaign that has its own paramilitary goon force.)

• HI-Sen: The Republican bench in Hawaii basically begins and ends with outgoing Gov. Linda Lingle. As far as her running against octogenarian Dan Akaka in 2012, she says she’s going to take six months off from thinking about politics, and then give the race some “serious consideration” at that point.

• IN-Sen: Baron Hill is also looking for work in a few months, and he’s one of the biggest names on the Dems’ bench in Indiana. However, even with his potential choice of running for the Senate, for Governor, or his old seat in 2012, it sounds like he doesn’t plan on any of those.

• MO-Sen: Could we see a 2006 rematch in the 2012 Senate election in Missouri? Ex-Sen. Jim Talent seems to be prepping toward that, with GOP operatives saying he’s “furthest along” of all potential challengers to Claire McCaskill, who beat him in 2006. Other potential GOP names include ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (who’s probably likelier to run for Governor in 2012), and Ann Wagner, wealthy person (former RNC vice-chair and Ambassador to Luxembourg, the kind of goodies doled out to itinerant rich donors) and former campaign manager to Roy Blunt.

• ND-Sen: Jeremy Jacobs lists a few possible challengers for Kent Conrad, who looks vulnerable after Republicans ran up the score in North Dakota this year. Mentioned are Jack Dalrymple (the Lt. Governor, who’s about to become Governor once John Hoeven resigns, although he may be likelier to run for a full term as Gov. in 2012), AG Wayne Stenehjem, and Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk.

• Chicago mayor: And here I thought I was done with having to laboriously type out “Alexi Giannoulias” every day, like I have for the last few years. The recently vanquished Senate candidate is now at least considering the idea of pivoting over to the Chicago mayoral race, presumably under the principle of striking while the iron is hot in terms of his name recognition and donor base. He’s getting urging from several anti-Rahm Emanuel aldermen. (UPDATE: OK, scratch that. A Giannoulias spokesperson now says no, he’s not running for mayor.)

• DSCC: I think we’ve gotten closer to getting someone willing to hold the burning bag of dog doo than we have so far: Harry Reid personally asked Michael Bennet to lead the DSCC next cycle, and Bennet “didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no.”

• DCCC: Dan Boren is moving the anti-Nancy Pelosi push to a new front: demanding that the position of DCCC chair be up for a true vote by the whole caucus, not a de facto appointment by leadership. He’s being seconded in the effort by Larry Kissell, of all people (the same guy who got $1.7 million in DCCC aid this cycle after stinking it up on the fundraising front, and may be worried that another Pelosi ally might cut bait with him next time and make him catch his own fish). It’s not clear who they’d rather see than likely chair Steve Israel, especially since they both had praise for departing chair Chris Van Hollen.

• Redistricting: Guess who’s leading the push for Utah to switch to a independent redistricting commission, instead of it being done by the heavily Republican legislator? Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson, who may figure he’ll be given an even worse version of UT-02 in 2012 than he currently has. (Interestingly, there’s the possibility that a commission might give him a worse district, though; it’s also possible that a GOP gerrymander might decide to concede a swing seat to him (probably the best Matheson could hope for) and go for three safe GOP seats, instead of risking a push for a 4-0 map.) Also on the redistricting front, here’s a good overview from Real Clear Politics’ Sean Trende, who goes state-by-state with possible outcomes.

• WATN?: Ashwin Madia (whom you probably remember for losing the MN-03 race in 2008) is taking over the helm for VoteVets for the time being while its current head, Jon Soltz, is deployed to Iraq. Also in the news is Andy Dillon, who lost the 2010 Dem gubernatorial primary after being termed-out as state House speaker. Turns out the centrist Dillon is crossing the aisle one last time: he just signed on as state Treasurer at Rick Snyder’s request (it’s an appointed position in Michigan).

• Money: When they write the tale of the 2010 election, the role of the Chamber of Commerce (and other third-party GOP backers, but especially the Chamber) will probably loom a lot larger in retrospect than it does right now. The Chamber spent $32 million, almost entirely on GOP candidates. The Fix also takes a look at self-funders, and calculates how much they spent per vote. The biggest fail was probably Linda McMahon, spending $97 per vote in a losing effort, outpacing Meg Whitman who spent only $57 per vote to lose by a similar margin (albeit for a much bigger price tag overall). Rick Scott spent “only” $29 per vote to win; the biggest bargain may have been Ron Johnson, who won spending only $7 per vote (although he did a lot of conventional fundraising too). In House races, Tom Ganley spent $29 per vote to lose ignominiously; the biggest spender was the victorious Scott Rigell in VA-02, at $30 per vote.

• Post-mortem: If you’re still feeling down about last week’s losses in the House and need some rationalization about it, here are a couple pieces that don’t really try to put a happy face on the results but still show how very predictable the whole thing was. Alan Abramowitz, certainly no mindless cheerleader for the Dems, points out some of the ways in which it was something of a mile-wide, inch-deep victory for the GOP. And while the teeth-gnashing that accompanies the graph is worth a read too, here’s a piece built around an amazing scatterplot from John Sides that shows how Democratic House candidate performances tracked presidential preferences district by district.

• Maps: If you’re tired of looking at glitzy, state-of-the-art political maps, here’s an amusing look back at the New York Times’ earliest attempts at mapping the nation’s political geography, going back as far as 1896. (As you might expect, their graphics capacity has evolved considerably.)

Stick a fork in this one…

A recanvass of votes Friday in all 16 counties in Central Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District showed Democratic U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler leading Republican Andy Barr by 648 votes.

Secretary of State Trey Grayson said the recanvass requested by Barr showed Barr picking up only one vote in Lincoln County, putting Chandler’s lead at 648 votes. It was 649 before the recanvass.

The total vote count from the recanvass is Chandler with 119,812 votes and Barr with 119,164 votes.

Grayson said Barr has until the end of business Friday to ask the Franklin Circuit Court to conduct a recount of the votes. That would be at the candidate’s expense, Grayson said.

Barr has a news conference scheduled for 3:30pm. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him concede, but if he wants to drag this process out and spend thousands of dollars on a recount, that’s his prerogative.

UPDATE: Probably sensing the uphill climb he faces, Barr has conceded the election.

So, I said I’d actually play around with Dave’s Redistricting App.  Unfortunately, I don’t really know my geography that well, as to what parts of what district are D or R leaning, or have significant populations of what minority groups, or where college town communities are, etc..  But I needed a goal to work toward.

I started trying to see how I could redistrict Rhode Island as closely following county lines as possible.  But that was boring.  The insane maps–such as abgin’s New York Baconmandering–are more fun.  But I don’t know where anything is.  Wait…I’ll stroke my ego by writing out my username’s initials!

The other requirements for this map were to get as close to an even division of population as possible, and to retain five districts.

Map and other info below the fold.

Fitting the G in there was rather hard.  It still looks rather sloppy.  Well, granted, so does the M.  Next time, I should pick appropriate states for doing what I want to do with them…

I know a lot of cities were cracked.  This is mostly for population balancing and location (i.e. letter-drawing) reasons.

FWIW, the population figures for these districts are as follows, according to Dave’s App.  (They might not be totally correct: for example, a tiny district east of New Britain seems to contain no voters for some reason.)

Interestingly, I’ve ended up with three districts of about seventy-something percent white populations.  Dunno if CT has enough minorities to trigger VRA restrictions, but I didn’t take them into account here anyway.

Who goes where?  First thoughts suggest that all but the new 4th district might stay D, especially the second (central CT cities except Hartford and Middletown) and third (Hartford, Middletown, and Norwich).  However, after trying to think for a bit about which incumbent should go where,…I became very confused.  Maybe Himes could get the new CT-05, and give DeLauro the new CT-02, while Courtney and Larson can decide who gets CT-03 and CT-04.  Larson would likely take 03, but amusingly, I would suddenly become represented by Joe Courtney.  (Well, it was close anyway, I live next to Tolland County which is currently in Courtney’s district.)  I guess this leaves C. Murphy to take CT-01…?

(Yes, Salisbury and Sharon are covered by the table, but you can safely assume they’re in the new 4th district.)

And then I pressed “Use New Pop Est”.  And all the numbers changed and now I’m off by like 10,000 people in some districts.  And I can’t change them back.  And I don’t know how to load a map back into the App…  Are these the new population counts from the 2010 Census data?

For some reason, coming up with a title for this made me think of “My Little Pony”.  I’m not a fan of it, but I just realized that it might be amusing to produce a My Little Ponymander.

Unrelated note: If anyone was wondering what happened in the general election rematch for probate judge in my area between Brian Griffin and Marianne Lassman Fisher, here are the results: Griffin 13,458; Lassman Fisher 11,679.  Griffin again won Windsor by a big enough margin to overcome Lassman Fisher’s combined smaller margins in East Windsor and South Windsor.

• AK-Sen: Joe Miller made a drive toward the hoop with his attempt to get an injunction to force the state to stop counting write-in ballots that weren’t spelled precisely “Lisa Murkowski,” but a federal judge stuffed that back in his face late yesterday, denying the immediate injunction and saying there’s no risk of irreparable harm; the question, of course, will continue in the courts, just at a more leisurely pace while the count goes on. As for the actual counting (which began yesterday, and went through about 20% of the total), things have seemed to continue on pace for Murkowski to hold on. 89% of the write-ins were unchallenged for Murkowski. 8.5% of the ballots were challenged by Miller observers, but only 1.4% of ballots were successfully challenged. Only 164 of the 19,203 ballots analyzed had write-ins other than Murkowski (including, amusingly, two people who wrote in Joe Miller). Roll Call points out that Murkowski would be on track to win even if Miller’s injunction succeeds, considering what a small percentage of ballots are being challenged in the first place, which makes it look like Murkowski’s remarkably painstaking campaign of instructing people how to spell her name paid off.

• IN-Sen: If there’s a Republican who’s guilty of the crimes of attempting to legislate and not punching Dems in the groin at every opportunity, it’s Richard Lugar. Between that and his age, he’s at great risk of a teabagging in 2012 (assuming he doesn’t retire), and there’s already a line forming of potential primary rivals expressing interest, including state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, state Sen. Mike Delph, and 2010 primary loser Don Bates.

• MA-Sen: Here’s another piece handicapping potential challengers to Scott Brown; while most of the names are familiar (Mike Capuano, plus assorted other Kennedys and Reps.), it adds one more to the mix that I haven’t heard but certainly seems plausible: Gov. Deval Patrick, whose stock has risen lately with a surprisingly comfortable re-election.

• VA-Sen: Beltway Kremlinologists are analyzing Jim Webb’s pronouncements, notably ambivalent about another Senate run, and announcing that he’s sounding even iffier now. While George Allen seems to have the inside track on the GOP nomination, filling a hole left by Webb would be a big question mark for the Dems. Ex-Gov and DNC chair Tim Kaine seems like the likeliest bet, although Tom Perriello also gets a mention.

• FL-22: Somehow I suspect someone from GOP leadership paid a visit to Allen West and gave him a refresher course in political discipline, as he abruptly reversed course and decided that his bomb-throwing best friend from the right-wing radio world, Joyce Kaufman, won’t be his chief of staff. As we talked about yesterday, the main problem might not be her long track record of outrageous statements but the Ethics and FCC problems that might result if she kept her day job too.

• NY-29: While everyone knows that Joe Manchin, Chris Coons, and Mark Kirk are gaining early entry to the Senate for the lame duck session (because of the special election status of their elections), there’s also one new House member also getting that privilege. Recall that David Paterson bumped the special election to replace Eric Massa all the way back to November to coincide with the general election, so Tom Reed is set to be sworn in next week too (gaining the seniority edge over his myriad fellow GOP freshmen). (UDPATE: Several folks have pointed out that Marlin Stutzman, just elected to IN-03 in a dual special/general in the wake of Mark Souder’s resignation, also gets the same treatment next week.)

• DSCC: The quest for a DSCC leader just goes on, as no one wants to be left holding that flaming bag of dog doo. Al Franken took himself officially out of the running. Even Chuck Schumer, who everyone regards as the fallback position if no one else steps up, is still adamant that he isn’t going to take it either.

• Money: I don’t think the Dems could have salvaged the House even if it hadn’t been for the huge last-minute outlays of advertising cash from American Crossroads and assorted other 527s, but it certainly helped the GOP run up the score in the close, late-breaking races. At any rate, it’s good to see that at least someone on Team Blue is recognizing that we’re behind the 8-ball on the dark money front, and at least for the short term it’s a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em scenario. David Brock from Media Matters is on the case, trying to pull such a mega-527 together to start corralling high-dollar Dem donors.

• CO-St. House: This is a pleasant surprise: the Dems may yet be able to hold onto the state House in Colorado (which would let them keep the trifecta, if that happened). The GOP is claiming a 33-32 majority right now, but the race in HD-29, where incumbent Debbie Benefield apparently lost to Robert Ramirez by 208 votes, is at least back on the table with 687 more votes discovered that need to be counted. (Of course, it’s worth being skeptical about her taking nearly 2/3s of those outstanding votes.)

• NY-St. Sen.: Here’s the situation with the Senate in New York, where it may be weeks before we know who’s in charge. The GOP has paper-thin leads in two Dem-held seats: Mark Grisanti leads Antoine Thompson in a Buffalo-area seat, while Jack Martins leads Craig Johnson in northern Nassau County. (There’s also one other race not yet called, where incumbent Dem Suzi Oppenheimer still leads.) Dems have asked for recounts in both the races where they’re trailing, so this is apt to drag on. If the leads hold, the GOP will retake control the Senate 32-30 (assuming Grisanti cooperates with them, which sounds like it may not be a done deal). If Dems turn one around, the clusterfudge gets even nuttier, as it’ll be a 31-31 tie, which should let Dem Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy be the tiebreaker but promises endless litigation over just what sort of powers the still ill-defined LG position even has.

• WATN?: Three different names from Florida are considering their options today. One is Jim Davis, not the creator of Garfield but rather the five-term ex-Rep. who left the House in 2006 to run for Governor (and lost to Charlie Crist), who’s now looking for a political third act as Tampa mayor. The election to replace termed-out Pam Iorio will be held in March. Another name is Rod Smith, a former state Sen. whom you might remember losing the 2006 Dem gube primary to Davis, and losing in 2010 as Alex Sink’s running mate; he’s set to take over as Dem state party chair, as Karen Thurman looks like she’s finally getting put out to pasture after another terrible cycle. Finally, there’s Alan Grayson, who’s going to need a new job in a few months; he says he’s likely to run for something again someday, not wanting to waste the large supporter base online that he built over the last few years.

• Polltopia: Scot Reader has a very interesting look at the success rates for internal polls this cycle (of which there were an unprecedented number released). He finds that GOP internal pollsters performed better than Dem internal pollsters this cycle, to the extent that firms like POS were pretty close to the mark. (Although it’s worth noting that, while public polling of Senate and Gov races was close to the mark — with the exception of Nevada, where the internal polling was much closer — it also tended to underestimate Republican support in the House, in the end.) If his name sounds familiar, he’s the guy behind the Polltrack twitter feed (now renamed Pollmaven), which we strongly urge you to follow.

Public Policy Polling (10/28-30, likely voters):

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 44

David Williams (R): 35

Steve Beshear (D-inc): 45

Phil Moffett (R): 26

(MoE: ±3.1%)

Steve Beshear certainly is looking relatively healthy, especially compared to the shellacking that Jack Conway just received at the hands of Rand Paul. Of course, it’s not really a given that state Senate Majority Leader David Williams will be the Republican nominee, but the man is definitely trying desperately not to get Trey Grayson’d. At a recent chat at the University of Kentucky Law School Federalist Society, Williams came out of the closet as a 17th-er. (Yes, he actually said that the biggest defect in American government is the fact that the law allows citizens to directly elect their own Senators.) Moreover, he openly compared himself to John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech by stirring the crowd with an equally inspiring message for the 2010s: “I am a Tea Partier”.

No, there’s no end in sight for this nonsense.

It’s been less than a week since Bill Brady conceded defeat to Governor Quinn, but nomination petitions for Mayor (and Aldermen) can be filed starting next Monday, November 15th, and due a week after that, November 22nd.

Last time we discussed this race, it seemed like everyone and their mother was considering running. But since then, the 800-pound-fuckin’ gorilla Rahm Emanuel has jumped in, and is taking up most of the oxygen in the room.

Many people have declared that they’re not running now, but notably:

• Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is out.
  

• Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is, well, otherwise occupied.
  

• Congressman Luis Gutierrez is staying put.
  

• Congressman Mike Quigley is a no.
  

• Daley critic 2nd Ward Alderman Bob Fioretti was originally in, but dropped out after announcing he has cancer.

So who’s actually in?

• RAAAAHM.
  

• IL-07 Rep. Danny Davis
  

• City Clerk Miguel Del Valle
  

• State Senator James Meeks
  

• Daley appointee-turned-critic Gery Chico
  

• Cook County Board of Review member Larry Rogers
  

• Former US Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, and possibly:
  

• Soon-to-be former US Senator Roland Burris

As the Trib suggests, this compressed timeframe might make it hard for any of the candidates to build a true ward-by-ward organization – and candidates may be relying on the aldermanic machines to turn out some votes. Plenty of endorsements have flown around…and can probably be shown visually (we’ll keep this updated as more endorsements roll out). Green for Emanuel, yellow for Chico, red for Del Valle, blue for Davis.

Dems are feeling some California love tonight:

California Rep. Jerry McNerney claimed victory Wednesday after the latest vote tally put the second-term Democrat up by 1,681 votes, but Republican David Harmer accused McNerney of a premature celebration.

“Congressman Jerry McNerney has won re-election in California’s 11th Congressional District,” McNerney campaign manager Doug Greven said in a statement. “With the vast majority of votes tallied, the results are clear. Congressman McNerney now has an insurmountable lead.”

Harmer is refusing to concede, and the McNerney camp estimates that there are 11,000 absentee and provisional votes outstanding in San Joaquin and Contra Costa and 700 in the more McNerney-friendly Alameda and Santa Clara counties. Harmer would need to utterly romp among the outstanding votes in order to win – and that’s very likely a fridge too far for him.

So yeah, everyone on here likes to talk about how the West Coast and New England formed our firewall last week, but I don’t see too much mention of Maryland – we do exist, and we do kick some major ass. Therefore, I’ve decided that I’m going to write a few diaries about political trends in Maryland, past and present. There isn’t really a plan to this, I just want to provide some good info that maybe fellow SSPers can use.

The topic today is trends in the Maryland State Legislature, 1974-2010. Maryland’s current system involves 47 legislative district, each of which elects 1 Senator and 3 Delegates. The 3 delegates can be elected together, or can be elected in 1 or 2 member subdistricts. There are really no guidelines for the creation of subdistricts, so they really just represent another opportunity to gerrymander.

The current system came about in the early 1970s when Maryland’s old way of apportioning delegates was thrown out in court. Maryland has had 4 legislative maps and 10 elections under this plan.

In the first election (1974), the Democrats won close to 90% in both chambers. This made me wonder whether Maryland had ever been controlled by Republicans, so I checked the Maryland Manual. In fact, it had – back in the late 1800s the Republicans briefly held a supermajority in the legislature, as crazy as that sounds. Back then, Western Maryland was very Republican, Central Maryland (including Baltimore City) was a swing region, and the Eastern Shore and Southern MD were mostly Democratic.

I’d wager that the current era of Dem dominance came about as a result of the New Deal (and has only faced minor changes over the decades). Interestingly, back in the 70s when the Republicans had 10% of the legislature, some of that 10% came from Montgomery County, while the Dems held almost the entire Eastern Shore and even held seats in Carroll County, north Baltimore County, and north Harford County.

Here are the figures.

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Uploaded with ImageShack.us

From these graphs, one can see that the Maryland Democratic Party really skated by until the 1990s, when their share of the seats dropped from 90% to 70%. This is still enough to coast by on, but it is somewhat less impressive. The two major loss years for the MD Democratic party were 1990 and 1994; 1994 in particular was a disaster, since we almost lost the governorship.

Compared to 1994’s loss of 16 seats in the GA, or even 1990’s loss of 8 seats, this year’s loss of 6 seats, 4 of which were open seats, really does not look bad at all.

In the State Senate we actually picked up 2 seats, which not only makes Maryland one of the few states where we picked up state legislative seats, but also bring the MD Dem Party to its largest # of seats in the State Senate since 1990. Indeed, Maryland is a very unique state politically, where even conservative Dems can still survive.

Oh, one more thing: Baltimore City started with 11 seats back in the 70s and now only has 6 (soon to be 5.5), but this doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on the toplines – as many of these seats have gone to MoCo and PG.

So yeah, I think I’ll write my next diary as an analysis of Dem losses in MD in 2010 and an appraisal of Dem strength as it stands. Let me know what you think of this diary and if there’s anything Maryland-related in particular that you’d like to see in the future.

Another Dem save:

Democratic incumbent Jim Costa declared victory late Wednesday afternoon in his hotly contested race against Republican Andy Vidak in the 20th Congressional District.

“This has been a hard-fought campaign,” Costa told reporters outside his campaign headquarters in downtown Fresno.  “But it appears now that it’s over.”

Costa spoke after Fresno County released new results from thousands of absentee and provisional ballots that had not been counted on election night.

Those results wiped out Vidak’s 145-vote lead and vaulted Costa into a 1,200 vote lead in the 20th district.

Thousands of ballots remain to be counted in Fresno and Kern counties, but those are Costa strongholds.