• PA-Sen: Democratic internal pollsters Garin-Hart-Yang, at the behest of the DSCC, took a look at the possible Pennsylvania Senate primary between Arlen Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak. There’s no information about the dates or the MoE, but it shows Specter beating Sestak 56-16 (with 16% undecided), not much different from R2K‘s 56-11 a few weeks ago. This falls against a backdrop of coalescing conventional wisdom that Specter has, after a rocky first week, settled down into reliable Dem-ness (although Campaign Diairies offers an effective rebuttal of that idea).
• The Corrections: Two things have already changed since yesterday’s digest: Suzanne Haik Terrell, suddenly rumored to be ready to primary David Vitter, backed down and endorsed Vitter. And in California, Dianne Feinstein walked back comments about running for Governor, saying it’s “very unlikely” and that she’s tired of being asked about it.
• Senate: PPP put together a handy scorecard of all the approval ratings for Senators they’ve polled so far this year. Amy Klobuchar is tops, at 62/25, followed by Tom Coburn and Kay Bailey Hutchison. The bottom 3? Jim Bunning, Mel Martinez, and Roland Burris (at 17/62). The only other Dems in net-negative territory are the Colorado 2, Mark Udall and Michael Bennet (and that’s from that widely-poo-pooed Colorado sample).
• FL-Sen: Rep. Kendrick Meek just got two endorsements as he and state Sen. Dan Gelber battle for supremacy in their shared south Florida stomping grounds: Broward County Mayor Stacey Ritter and West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel. (Of course, Gelber may shortly be in the AG’s race instead, so this all may be moot.)
• FL-16: Speaking of the Florida AG’s race, the DCCC has a top contender in mind for the 16th: state Sen. Dave Aronberg (who instead seems likely to square off with Gelber, and 2006 gov candidate Rod Smith, in the AG’s race). Aronberg’s seat is up in 2012, and wouldn’t have to give up his Senate seat to go for FL-16, although state law would require him to give it up to run for statewide office. The DCCC is talking to St. Lucie County Commissioner Chris Craft as a backup plan.
• MS-01: Nobody’s exactly sure what “national pundits” the rumors came from, but Rep. Travis Childers quickly quashed suggestions in a recent interview that he might jump to the GOP (and the deep minority) to have an easier go in the 2010 election. (What is this, the 90s?) “Absolutely not,” he said. “I’m a Southern Democrat – I vote what’s best for Mississippi.”
is running for Alabama Gov again.
What was wrong with PPP’s Colorado sample?
Um, what?
Childers is a lifelong Democrat and he’s not even the most conservative of Democrats. Gene Taylor, Parker Griffith, Bobby Bright, Jim Marshall, they’re all more conservative than him. Childers is actually fairly progressive overall considering the area that he represents.
“tired of being asked everywhere she goes whether she will run”, instead of being a weasel why not bring yourself to say something like: No. Absolutely not. Period.
Sheesh; egomaniac Senators…
http://blogs.ajc.com/political…
The fact that Barnes is showing such big leads and STILL isn’t in the race tells me he really doesn’t want to get in.
Mid-Atlantic Leadership Fund is running ads against Chris Christie.
Anyone know who these folks are
Jon Corzine is pushing eliminating the state’s property tax rebate for everybody but the elderly and disabled. Meanwhile, he gets no love from “business” but continues to shove money at those creeps. This is really a dangerous move. Last year he threatened to eliminate it, wound up increasing it but got no PR benefit due to months of talk. talk, talk. I hope Codey once again saves this in the state senate.
He’s literally talking about effectively raising taxes on the entire middle class by more than a thousand dollars.
Glad to hear Childers say he’s not switching. Our party needs more people like Childers who are willing to vote their district’s interests, even if it is out of touch with the party’s view.
Lieberman polled that strongly to begin with.
That’s not to say Sestak would win – Lamont had a very strong issue upon which to play and faced an unusually incompetent campaign by Lieberman and Gerstein, whereas Sestak needs to rely more upon residual distrust of Republicans – but it is to say that within two weeks of launching his first ad the polling would be more like 50-35.