The head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee approached former Gov. George Pataki this week about running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, according to a person who spoke to Pataki about the private meeting. [...]
Pataki, now in private law practice, hasn't yet accepted or rejected the idea, the person said. The race would be against Kirsten Gillibrand, who was recently appointed to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton when she became Barack Obama's secretary of state.
When the NRSC is desperate to drag in a bozo who left office with some downright cruddy approval ratings, you know that the GOP shelf is pretty bare in the Empire State.
So what of Peter King? He still could run, but one gets the distinct sense that his Viagra dosage is running pretty low now that he's missed the opportunity to run against Caroline Kennedy.
Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman declares open season on white guys in suits, and that means you, Fat E. Bluntz Rep. Roy Blunt:
"I'm in the process of laying the groundwork that I need to get done before making an official announcement," Steelman told POLITICO. "I'm definitely strongly leaning towards doing this."
Her expected entrance in the campaign increases the likelihood of a divisive primary, which Blunt had been trying to avoid.
In the interview, Steelman took some sharp jabs at Blunt, describing the seven-term congressman Blunt as being part of the "old-boys' network" who has spent too much time in Washington.
"Roy Blunt is another white guy in a suit, and I think the public wants change," Steelman said. "There's a good old boys' network out there that's hard to penetrate... and it's not always in the best interest of the party or for conservative principles."
Hoo boy. Can Steelman succeed in mucking up two statewide primaries in a row for the GOP? Granted, I fully realize that Hulshof was probably doomed anyway last year, but she sure didn't make things any easier for Kenny Boy.
Research 2000 for Daily Kos (2/16-18, registered voters):
Patty Murray (D-inc): 53
Dave Reichert (R): 40
Patty Murray (D-inc): 55
Rob McKenna (R): 39
(MoE: ±4%)
Research 2000 takes a look at the 2010 Washington Senate race for Daily Kos, and there's really not much to see here. Patty Murray wins easily against two of the few Republicans that people in Washington actually like, Rep. Dave Reichert and Attorney General Rob McKenna. But neither of them have given any indication of running for the Senate, and if either of them had any urges, this poll is likely to squelch those.
McKenna has his sights set on the 2012 gubernatorial race (which will presumably be an open seat), while Reichert is (as I've talked about at length) the GOP's only hope of holding onto the Democratic-leaning WA-08 and the state GOP won't want to sacrifice him for a longshot bid against Murray. With Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers climbing the House leadership ladder and Dino Rossi having seen the extinction of his career, there just aren't any top-tier elected GOPers in the state to make this race.
Expect them to take the route they took in 2006 with Mike! McGavick and pick some super-wealthy self-funder you've never heard of, who won't break 40% but will at least be able to pay for his own funeral. (It's been long-threatened, but it may finally be John Stanton's turn in the dunk tank.)
RNC chair Michael Steele, in an interview with the Washington Times:
"We want to convey that the modern-day GOP looks like the conservative party that stands on principles," Steele told the Washington Times. "But we want to apply them to urban-suburban hip-hop settings."
"It will be avant garde, technically," he said of the new public relations team he's signing on. "It will come to the table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook." He also added: "I don't do 'cutting-edge.' That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge."
Simpsons episode 4F12, "The Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show:"
EXECUTIVE
(pause) We at the network want a dog with attitude. He's edgy, he's "in your face." You've heard the expression "let's get busy"? Well, this is a dog who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly.
KRUSTY
So he's proactive, huh?
EXECUTIVE
Oh, God, yes. We're talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.
MEYER
Excuse me, but "proactive" and "paradigm"? Aren't these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important? Not that I'm accusing you of anything like that. I'm fired, aren't I?
MEYERS
No, no, no! He was supposed to have attitude.
SILVERMAN
Um... wh-what do you mean, exactly?
MEYERS
Oh, you know, attitude, attitude! Uh... sunglasses!
EXECUTIVE
Can we put him in more of a "hip-hop" context?
KRUSTY
Forget context, he's gotta be a surfer. Give me a nice shmear of surfer.
EXECUTIVE
I feel we should rastafy him by ... ten percent or so.
State Sen. Dan Gelber (Miami area)
Mayor Pam Iorio (Tampa)
Rep. Ron Klein (FL-22)
Rep. Kendrick Meek (FL-17)
Former state House Speaker Allan Bense (Panama City area)
Rep. Vern Buchanan (FL-13)
Rep. Connie Mack IV (FL-14)
Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio (Miami area)
And of course, Gov. Charlie Crist needs no introduction. The only people on this list who have actually announced, though, are Meek and Gelber - the field is very much in flux. (North Miami Mayor Kevin Burns has also jumped in on the Dem side, but he wasn't tested.) Anyhow, I only have two quick comments:
1) Yes, I realize that Connie Mack (aka Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy IV) is fortunate, politically speaking, to share the exact same name as his famous father, who was a US Senator until 2001. But wasn't it a bit much for Quinnipiac to prod respondents by wording their question like so: "Is your opinion of Congressman Connie Mack IV, son of former United States Senator Connie Mack, favorable, unfavorable or haven't you heard enough about him?" I think that partly explains his unusually high numbers.
2) Crist looks like he's riding tall right now in the Republican primary, but a colleague of mine well-versed in Florida politics has me convinced that Crist's apostasy will guarantee him a fierce challenge from the right. His cheerleading for the stimulus - which the GOP standard-bearers have insanely decided to turn into the ultimate conservative litmus test - is just Exhibit A on his list of sins. We'll see if the wingnuts can really make him feel pain, or if they'll just have to suck it up and (gasp!) support someone electable. Obviously, we're rooting for option one.
Looks like we can soon dust off those Sparksmania stickers...
Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks is moving closer to a decision on which statewide office he'll seek in 2010.
Sparks, a Democrat, said he has narrowed his options to the races for governor or lieutenant governor. He said he plans to announce his choice by mid-March.
"If I could run for ag commissioner again, I'd do it," said Sparks, who is term-limited from running for re-election to that post. "But I do have a desire to continue serving the people of this state."
Sparks apparently won't wait on Lt. Gov. Jim Folsom to tip his hand. Folsom, also a Democrat, is expected to enter the 2010 race to replace Gov. Bob Riley. U.S. Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, announced his candidacy earlier this month.
Sparks ruled out speculation that he might challenge U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Tuscaloosa, who is up for re-election in 2010. Shelby's campaign war chest - currently at more than $13 million - and his Senate seniority give him an overwhelming advantage over any potential challengers.
Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) will announce his candidacy for Senate on Thursday, sources close to Blunt have confirmed.
Blunt has been expected to enter the 2010 race for weeks. His candidacy sets up a potential clash of the families in Missouri, as Secretary of State Robin Carnahan has entered the race on the Democratic side.
If Blunt, the father of unpopular ex-Gov. Matt Blunt, is the best the GOP can come up with here, then I like our chances with Carnahan. But like any statewide Missouri race in recent history, I would expect this to be closely-fought, and the early polling agrees.
However, primaries are still a distinct possibility here -- state Treasurer Sarah Steelman is still contemplating a run on the Republican side, and 1st CD Rep. Lacy Clay is still "weighing his options" for the Democratic nomination.
Open seat fans shouldn't get too excited about Blunt's 7th CD -- Obama lost the district by a 63-35 margin last November, only a slight improvement from John Kerry's 67-32 beatdown four years earlier.
President Obama has settled on Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, a key ally with a record of working across party lines, as his top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday. [...]
It remained unclear whether the White House would finish vetting Ms. Sebelius in time to finalize her nomination by next week. Advisers described her as "the leading candidate" and said there were no others to mention, although they emphasized no final decision has been made. After the troubles with Mr. Daschle and other recent nominees, the White House has intensified its vetting to make sure it thoroughly scrubs its choices before Mr. Obama gives the final signoff.
Assuming Sebelius is nominated and accepts the gig (and you would think she would have publicly declined by now if she were not willing to serve), Democrats will have a pretty barren shelf of possible candidates for the state's open Senate race in 2010. What a bummer.
SSP currently has this race on our list of Races to Watch, but it's hard to see how this contest heats up without the presence of Sebelius.
The presidential-results-by-congressional-district crowdsourcing project at Swing State Project just keeps rolling along, and we're really getting close to total completion. We're adding 31 more districts today, having scored precinct-level data from some of the largest counties still outstanding (most notably, Queens County, NY, and Wayne County, MI). That leaves only 18 districts with problem counties left to go! (Nassau and Erie Counties, we're lookin' at you...)
As always, big thanks to all SSP readers who've contributed to this project, with extra thanks for this batch to Democratic Luntz and jeffmd, who rocks an Excel pivot table like nobody's business. If you want to see a handy list of all districts in one place, look here. If you want a fuller picture, waves one, two, three, and four are here. And if you want an absolutely crushing level of detail, just click on our master database and then on a particular state to see each district in all its precinct-level glory.
So what are the highlights and lowlights for this installment? As we've seen earlier, California just went from dark blue to even bluer, and that seeped all the way down to some of its reliably red districts (CA-24 in Ventura County went narrowly for Obama... which hopefully will convince Elton Gallegly of the many botched retirement attempts to actually get off the pot this time... and we even came close in CA-19, which stitches together the Sierras and the whiter parts of the Central Valley). A lot of that movement may have to do with California's huge Latino population, fed up with the GOP's increasing reliance on immigrant-bashing; parallel movement is seen in Texas, where two mostly-Latino districts (TX-15 and TX-27) also show wide swings in the Democratic direction.
Also, as we've seen in other districts, Indiana had some of the biggest Democratic swings in the nation, simply by virtue of the Democrats showing up and competing there for once. Check out IN-06. Remember, this is the district represented by Mike Pence, arch-wingnut who just got promoted from leading the RSC to the #3 position in the whole GOP caucus... and now he's in a district that McCain won by just 6 points.
On the bad side of the ledger, we're seeing continued declines in some of the blue-collar white-ethnic districts in the NYC area. These districts suffered some of the biggest declines in that nation from Gore to Kerry, and I thought that might be a temporary 9/11 effect since those districts were some of the ones hardest hit. However, we've continued to lose ground in NY-09 (the old-school parts of Brookyln and Queens), and are stagnant in NJ-04 (Ocean and Monmouth Counties, where people from NY-09 go to retire). Not that it matters too much; these districts are outweighed by the overall blue trends in these already-blue states. And in NY-09 they still managed to kick out state senator Serphin Maltese to finally flip control of the New York senate; Obama's performance may have to do more with 2008-specific racism/latent PUMAism than an overall trend.
Also troubling is what's going on in eastern Ohio, where we lost ground in OH-06 and OH-17. It's not hard to explain -- OH-06 is considered the Appalachian part of Ohio, while OH-17 is centered on Youngstown, a place similar to Pittsburgh's collar counties where the once-strong union base is dying off or drifting away as the manufacturing sector evaporates. This is more worrisome since Ohio is a swing state where every vote counts, but as this part of the state is hollowing out while the Columbus and Cincinnati areas are starting to move into our column, it's not a killer.
Finally, I'm making good on my promise of some updates, based on further refining of early-vote or split-precinct data, or finding more data from small counties where we'd previously made a "close enough" judgment. As you'll see, the numbers haven't moved that much, with a few exceptions (perhaps most significantly in IL-18, which we originally thought Obama had won by a few thousand votes but turns out he lost by a few hundred; see also improvements in FL-06 and FL-07, SC-01 and SC-06). This will only be of interest to people who are real sticklers for accuracy or who are keeping their own spreadsheets on this subject. (Of course, since we're talking about Swing State Project here, that probably describes most of our readership!) The updates tables is over the flip...
"My consideration of running against Sen. Dodd is not poll-driven," said Simmons, who criticized Dodd for losing touch with his constituents. "When I first ran for Congress in 1999, the Republican brand was way down in the toilet, and people said I was crazy to run when the GOP was out of favor - and I was able to beat a 20-year incumbent."
Simmons said that, if he runs, he would face a significant fundraising disadvantage against Dodd. Still, he believes he would be financially competitive enough to run a formidable statewide campaign.
"He'll go to his pals in the banking industry and get lots of money - and I won't have that opportunity. But I don't believe that Senate offices are meant to be bought and sold," Simmons said.
"I'm definitely interested,'' Simmons told Capitol Watch. "I'm angry about what's going on in Washington, D.C. ... I've worked all my life, and I've watched my IRA go down 50 percent, and I'm luckier than most."
If I were to guess, I'd say that Simmons will go for it. And why not? He certainly has nothing to lose, and a scrappy campaign against a stodgy, troubled incumbent could be pretty fun.
"Good for him to stand up for his beliefs," Simmons said of Gregg. "It's ironic that the Democratic choices don't get approved because they don't pay their taxes, and the Republicans don't get approved because they won't sell out their principles."
David Leavitt, the former Juab County attorney best known for his successful prosecution of polygamist Tom Green, has been telling folks at the various Republican Party's Lincoln Day dinners this month that he plans to run for the Senate next year. That is a direct challenge to the incumbent Bennett, who will be seeking his fourth term.
David Leavitt, the brother of former Utah Gov. and Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, ran for Congress last year, but was defeated at the State Republican Convention by then-incumbent Chris Cannon and eventual winner Jason Chaffetz. Earlier, David Leavitt was defeated in his bid for re-election as Juab County attorney.
Other Republicans mentioned as possible challengers to Bennett include Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and Mike Lee, former counsel to Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.
To paraphrase Mary McCarthy, every word Michele Bachmann utters is moronic, including "and" and "the." Delightfully, Dump Bachmann caught her doing an interview on wingnut radio the other day, and Steve Benen has excerpted the best goodies:
ACORN is "under federal indictment for voter fraud," but the stimulus bill nevertheless gives ACORN "$5 billion." (In reality, ACORN is not under federal indictment and isn't mentioned in the stimulus bill at all.)
Many members of Congress have "a real aversion to capitalism."
the stimulus bill includes a measure to create a "rationing board" for health care, and after the bill becomes law, "your doctor will no longer be able to make your healthcare decisions with you."
The recovery package is part of a Democratic conspiracy to "direct" funding away from Republican districts, so Democratic districts can "suck up" all federal funds. Bachmann doesn't think this will work because, as she put it, "We're running out of rich people in this country."
The "Community-Organizer-in-Chief" is also orchestrating a conspiracy involving the Census Bureau, which the president will use to redraw congressional lines to keep Democrats in power for up to "40 years." When the host said he was confused, noting that congressional district lines are drawn at the state level, Bachmann said Obama's non-existent plan is an "anti-constitutional move."
God I love Michele Bachmann. The only thing that would have made this interview more perfect would have been some hot anti-light rail fulmination. But I'm sure she'll get right on that next weekend.
It looks like Tim Ryan will be staying out of the race for retiring GOP Sen. George Voinovich's Senate seat, but he isn't staying out of the primary war between Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher:
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who mulled running for the Senate seat, will now be endorsing Fisher according to a senior Ohio Democratic source.
So it begins. Expect more movers and shakers to pick a side in the near future. One key player to keep an eye on: Sherrod Brown.
But hey, at the very least, with Ryan taking a pass on the Senate race, we won't be seeing Capri Cafaro in Congress anytime soon.
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-inc): 42
Peter King (R): 26
(MoE: ±3%)
In the political chess game, David Paterson may have felt he was thinking ten moves ahead by picking Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the vacant Senate seat, by picking a young, charismatic woman with monster fundraising capacities who may well be holding the seat 40 years from now. However, it's starting to look like, in doing so, he wasn't thinking two moves ahead... as Quinnipiac now shows both Paterson and Gillibrand highly vulnerable in the 2010 primary. Picking Andrew Cuomo to fill the Senate seat would have killed two birds with one stone in the short-term for Paterson (get a Senator who's known statewide and ready to stand on his own, and give his electoral archrival something to do other than challenge him in the 2010 election). Instead, he gambled on long-term dividends, and it's possible neither he nor Gillibrand will be around to enjoy them.
The Gillibrand/McCarthy numbers seem likely to evolve over time, as 39% remain undecided. And both candidates seem largely unknown outside their respective corners of the state; Gillibrand's favorables are 24/9 with 65% "haven't heard enough," (and 81% "haven't heard enough" in the NYC Suburbs) while McCarthy's are also 24/9, with 66% "haven't heard enough" (with 88% "haven't heard enough" upstate). An uncontroversial two years for Gillibrand, combined with tacking left on guns and immigration issues, should bring her numbers up (although revelations like the one today that she keeps two guns under her bed can't be helping matters). Gillibrand has little trouble disposing of Rep. Peter King in the general (there's no polling of an all-LI slugfest between King and McCarthy).
Paterson, however, trails Cuomo by a 2-1 margin, and, unlike Gillibrand, everyone knows who he is. His favorables are a fairly grim 41/35, while Cuomo clocks in at 63/15. Cuomo also dominates a hypothetical matchup against Rudy Giuliani while Paterson only ties him. Much of this does, in fact, seem to be blowback from the senator selection process. Paterson gets a mark of 35/52 for approval/disapproval of how he handled the process, down from 44/42 from last month. We may be looking at a truly epic miscalculation from Paterson here, one for the history books.
