The AP has just called Arizona’s 9th district for Democrat Kyrsten Sinema over Republican Vernon Parker — giving Congress its first openly bisexual member. But almost a week after the election, five more House races have yet to be called. A few were among the country’s most expensive House races. Right now, Democrats lead in all five.
In the wake of Tuesday’s election, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele is talking some trash. The Daily Caller reports:
“What was the mess I left behind?” Steele said Monday in response to a question from The Daily Caller during a conference call organized by his firm. “Winning.”
“I get the Washington B.S. and all of that when it comes to trying to make me look bad,” he said. “But hey, the facts are the facts.”
Steele chaired the RNC from 2009 to 2011, so he was there for the 2010 Republican wave. But he is best known for his struggle to raise money and stay on message. Steele’s successor, Reince Priebus, inherited $20 million in debt.
From states across the country, Americans have filed petitions on the White House Web site seeking to secede from the union and form new state governments.
While most of the petitions come from states that supported Mitt Romney in last week’s election, a few swing states and even the deep blue Northeast are represented.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was “dumbfounded” by last week’s election, he told NBC’s “Today” on Monday.
After a recount of ballots cast during three days of early voting in Florida’s St. Lucie County, Democrat Patrick Murphy still leads Rep. Allen West (R) by a margin of more than 0.5 percent, more than enough to avoid an automatic recount of all votes.
West gained votes, but Murphy still held a 50.3 percent share of the ballots and an overall lead of 1,907 votes.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, said late last week that we should scrap the the electoral college.
“[I]’s pretty disappointing when you think that just a few states really determine who’s been elected president,” she said Friday. “And they get all the attention.”
Twitter sure does kill the effectiveness of the old post-election Friday afternoon bad news dump, doesn’t it? #Petraeus
— Mark Joyella (@standupkid) November 9, 2012
Thousands were tweeting Friday afternoon about the curious timing of Gen. David Petraeus’s resignation as head of the CIA.
Petraeus was mentioned more than 57,000 times between 3 and 5 p.m. ET Friday after his announcement, according to data from Topsy Pro. And housands of those tweets suggested the timing has something to do with Benghazi and his scheduled testimony on Capitol Hill next week. Here’s what some conservatives and journalists had to say:
Laura Rozen reports that while Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is considered a likely candidate to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he might not get the post for several reasons. Among them: Democrats are worried Scott Brown could win his vacant Senate seat in a special election.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has told the White House that he will be “furious” if he loses Kerry from the Senate, to leave the Massachusetts Democratic Senate seat facing Republican Scott Brown with millions of dollars in the bank left over from his unsuccessful Senate race against Democrat Elizabeth Warren.
Brown has already praised Kerry as a great choice for secretary of state, suggesting he has the same thing on his mind.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus will decide by next week whether to run for his post again.
He is leaning towards running, a senior Republican official says, and has been getting calls and e-mails from committee members urging him to stay on. Priebus, the former head of the Wisconsin Republican Party, took control of the RNC in 2011. He is widely credited with leading the committee out of debt incurred under former chairman Michael Steele and repairing relations with top Republicans.
The chairmanship is ultimately in the hands of those 168 members, who will vote on their new leader in January. Had Mitt Romney defeated President Obama on Tuesday, he would have chosen the party chairman.
