• NC-Sen: It looks like Elaine Marshall is fishing for campaign help outside of DSCC-approved circles. She recently hired A.J. Carrillo to "oversee day-to-day activities and coordinate strategy." Carrillo, as you may recall, managed Greg Fisher's ill-fated primary campaign against Bruce Lunsford in the 2008 Kentucky Senate race. Two years earlier, Carrillo had better luck, helping guide Jerry McNerney to an upset victory over the DCCC-backed Steve Filson in the CA-11 primary, and to another surprise win over GOP Rep. Richard Pombo in the general election. Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Richard Burr seems to be wistfully nostalgic for the days of Bush, going so far as to tap Karl Rove to headline a fundraiser for him.
• NE-Sen: Rasmussen's Magical Mystery Tour touches down in Nebraska today, and finds some frightening numbers for Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. In a hypothetical race against current Gov. Dave Heineman, Nelson trails by 61-30. Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012.
• UT-Sen (?): I wonder if this failed amendment to prohibit full body scanning as a "primary" screening device by none other than noted civil libertarian Jason Chaffetz could be used as fodder against him if he ever decides to run for Senate. Glenn Thrush, meanwhile, thinks the vote might have broader repercussions. For his part, Chaffetz is taking a surprisingly principled stand on his proposed ban.
• MD-Gov: Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley has picked up a primary challenger in George W. Owings III, a former state delegate who served in the Ehrlich administration as his secretary of veterans affairs. Owings plans to run to O'Malley's right in the primary. Good luck with that one.
• MI-Gov: GOP douche extraordinaire Pete Hoekstra is actually taking heat in the Republican primary from venture capitalist Rick Snyder for his recent fundraising email that invited contributions to stop "the Obama/Pelosi efforts to weaken our security" in the wake of the most recent attempted terrorist attack.
• MN-Gov: Josh Goodman has a good piece on Mark Dayton going public (but not fully) about his struggles with depression and alcoholism.
• WY-Gov: Will Democratic Gov. Dave Freudenthal try for a third term? He's seriously weighing the possibility, and has hired Global Strategy Group as his pollster to gauge his popularity in the state -- and very likely to see if voters would mind if he challenged the state's gubernatorial term-limits law in the courts.
• AL-05: The Alabama Democratic Party doesn't believe that Parker Griffith and his consulting firm will delete the data that they downloaded from the party's database just hours before Griffith defected to the GOP. While the ALDP is threatening Griffith and Main Street Strategies with legal action over the data, the Alabama GOP is salivating over the prospect of getting its hands on it.
• FL-17: Hotline on Call takes a look at the bubbling-under Democratic primary to replace Kendrick Meek.
• PA-07: Democratic state Rep. Bryan Lentz, who's running to replace Joe Sestak in the House, is seeking to stake out a position as the reform candidate in his race against his likely Republican opponent, former US Attorney Pat Meehan. Lentz has called for the removal of ethically-questionable state House Majority Leader Todd Eachus as the head of the Democratic caucus.
• WA-03: Reid Wilson takes a closer look at the field to replace retiring Democratic Rep. Brian Baird. All signs are pointing to a likely run by ex-state Rep. Denny Heck.
• KY-State House: Gov. Steve Beshear has set a February 2nd special election date to fill the central Kentucky House seat of newly-elected Republican state Senator Jimmy Higdon.
• Texas: SSP's thunder from down under, benawu, reminds us that the filing deadline for Texas closes in a week, and Democrats still have a lot of congressional races left unfilled, including the sadly-vacant TX-10.
• Strategy: Steve Rosenthal, a respected name in Dem consulting circles, has a very good piece on the five-step recovery process he suggests that Democrats follow in order to mitigate electoral damage in 2010.
While it may feel like we wrapped up the election cycle on Tuesday, there are always more elections to come. This post covers the special and runoff legislative races coming up in the next month. There are three other important races, the Mass. Senate race and the Houston and Atlanta mayoral runoff races, that will be covered in a future post.
Dems have a chance at picking up one seat in California, two in Tennessee and one in Kentucky, while they are defending another seat in Kentucky, one in Georgia and one in Iowa. There are also two interesting inter-party fights going on in the Georgia runoffs.
This is cross posted on my new blog dedicated to following special elections and culling absentee ballot information from all states into one spot to increase turnout in local races. To read more about each race and learn more about the candidates, click here.
I am sure I left out some races - I hope you will let everyone know about them in the comments and I will be sure to write about them shortly
With the 2010 Senate races in Ohio and Kentucky featuring two of the most competitive Democratic primaries of the cycle, in two of the key Senate battleground states, Senate Guru contacted the Democratic primaries' major candidates - in Ohio, Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher and Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner; in Kentucky, Lieutenant Governor Dan Mongiardo and state Attorney General Jack Conway - to ask them all one question:
Why should the progressive netroots support your campaign in you state's 2010 Democratic Senate primary?
To see the Ohio candidates' responses side-by-side, click here. To see the Kentucky candidates' responses side-by-side, click here.
It was a really nice article and it showed that despite the big battles, most people are trying to reach out to the other side somehow, even in some small way.
Every Republican, even the most conservative ones, gave kind, thoughtful answers... except for one: Jim Bunning.
His answer was simply this:
No.
So I ask you all this question: Does Jim Bunning even care anymore about trying to get reelected?
Here is Episode 9 of my never-ending redistricting series, in which I cover three states (Alabama, Arizona, and Kentucky) with little in common demographically other than all voting for John McCain.
The Republican Party leadership seems determined to squeeze Bunning into retirement and are adopting a new strategy in pursuit of their goal by starving him of campign donations and assistance. As noted in the Politico story:
That means little fundraising help from top Republicans in Washington, little to no engagement with the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a cold shoulder from Kentucky political strategists.
[skip]
Behind the scenes, Republicans in Washington and Kentucky are beginning to shut out Bunning, with no plans to give him the usual access to an extensive network of personnel, e-mail lists and contact information to reach out to potential supporters in his state.
The initial effort to persuade Bunning to retire failed miserably for Republicans. Bunning even went so as to threaten to resign, allowing the Democratic governor to select a successor, and also threatened to sue the NRSC if they supported a challenger. Needless to say, these actions did not endear Bunning to the Republican leadership, but they do seem to have succeeded in getting them to at least be more subtle in their efforts.
The article really shows how desparate McConnell and Cornyn are to force Bunning out. Obviously, these guys interact with him every day. So, the fact that they are so desparate to rid themselves of him suggests that Bunning is even more likely to implode while campaigning than even we might have believed. If the GOP leadership is this desparate to get rid of Bunning, then we really need him to be the Republican nominee. Besides donating to Bunning within the next few months, is there anything we can do to show Senator Bunning our "support"?
From the moment this race began to close I've been hoping that Lunsford would reprise McConnell's classic "Bloodhound" ad. Well, now he's done it! I'm afraid I don't know how to embed videos, but it's available on The Scorecard, which can be reached both through the Politico and RealClearPolitics. Not only do they have the new Lunsford ad, but they also have a link to the original McConnell ad.
For those who don't know it, McConnell's initial win over Democratic incumbent Dee Huddleston was largely credited to an ad where bloodhounds were trying to find a Huddleston lookalike, based on the fact that he had missed a lot of votes in the Senate. Now Lunsford has rolled out a parallel ad where the hounds are trying to find McConnell to get him to fess up to his real record in Washington.
I was living in Kentucky when McConnell ran the original ad. What poetic justice if a revised version of that classic ad would help bring him down in 2008!
Americans appear ready to sweep a lot of Democrats into office on November 4. Not only does Barack Obama maintain a solid lead in the popular vote and electoral vote estimates, several Senate races that appeared safe Republican holds a few months ago are now considered tossups.
Polling is harder to come by in House races, but here too there is scattered evidence of a coming Democratic tsunami. Having already lost three special Congressional elections in red districts this year, House Republicans are now scrambling to defend many entrenched incumbents.
In this diary, I hope to convince you of three things:
1. Some Republicans who never saw it coming are going to be out of a job in two weeks.
On a related note,
2. Even the smartest experts cannot always predict which seats offer the best pickup opportunities.
For that reason,
3. Activists should put resources behind many under-funded challengers now, instead of going all in for a handful of Democratic candidates.
Well, Heather Ryan has her first T.V. ad completed. It is a humourous take on Exxon Ed Whitfield's record of serving Big Oil and the Bush Administration which I have named "The Zephyr Hillbilly". It is our 30 sec. spot, and we have a couple of more in the offing.
One thing that has been consistent in the race for Kentucky's First Congressional District is that Ed Whitfield and his supporters can't stand to talk about issues, or anything of substance. Instead of talking about what Heather Ryan wants to bring to the next Congress, or how the candidates feel about Healthcare, Iraq, and the crashing Economy, they seem particularly angry at Heather and want to call her things like crazy, and fat.
