IL-Sen: In DC celebrating Greek Independence Day, Alexi Giannoulias also met with White House political advisors David Axelrod and Patrick Gaspard. No real word on what was discussed.
PA-Sen: Ouch - check out this blistering broadside directed at Joe Sestak from PA Democratic Chair T.J. Rooney. Rooney blasted Sestak in a sternly-worded letter for not paying his campaign workers the minimum wage and encouraged him to make a concerted effort to vote more often on the House floor. (JL)
TX-Sen: Will she resign or won't she? The Politico catches up with GOP Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, still fresh from her massively underwhelming performance in the Texas gubernatorial primary, and reports that she "has nothing to say, and I won't for a while" regarding her future plans. Senate Republicans, apparently, are taking her silence as a sign that a resignation is not actually in the cards, despite KBH's repeated promises in the past year that she would definitely be leaving the Senate regardless of the primary result. (JL)
CO-Gov: Teasing teaser Tom "The Teaser" Jensen teases us with this tease:
Well we'll have Colorado Governor numbers out [today] and here's a little preview - John Hickenlooper's net favorability is 36 points better than Bill Ritter's net approval. As you can imagine that makes Hickenlooper just a little more competitive in the horse race.
AL-05: It's the party switch which keeps on backfiring. Unlike a lot of other, uh, Republicans, Parker Griffith accepted a bunch of money from Charlie Rangel, which he was in a hurry to give back. The problem is that Rangel donated in 2008 - and Griffith recently told angry ex-supporters (to whom he had promised refunds) that he couldn't return their money from the previous cycle since it had already been spent.
GA-07: Ralph Reed says he'll announce his plans today, but according to Roll Call, GOP bigs think he's going to pass on a run. Reed's previous run for office did not go particularly well - he got crushed in the 2006 Republican primary for GA Lt. Gov., losing 56-44.
LA-03: Lawyer Jeff Landry joined the GOP field to replace Rep. Charlie Melancon yesterday, but CQ thinks that there are bigger names still in the offing: House Speaker Hunt Downer and Scott Angelle, "a Democrat who was named by Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal in late 2007 to serve as Louisiana's secretary of the Department of Natural Resources." Dems are also holding out hope for a more prominent candidate, such as state Rep. Fred Mills (who might decide after the legislative session ends on June 21) or former Rep. Chris John.
MI-01: Teacher and former Charlevoix County commissioner Connie Saltonstall plans to challenge Bart Stupak in the Democratic primary, specifically citing Stupak's infamous anti-choice amendment and threats to vote against healthcare reform if he doesn't get his way. Saltonstall lost a race against incumbent GOP state Rep. Kevin Elsenheimer in 2008, 61-37.
NM-01: NRCC Chair Pete Sessions will campaign in Albuquerque with fellow GOPer Jon Barela, who is hoping to unseat frosh Dem Martin Heinrich.
NY-13: Here's a nice score for frosh Dem Rep. Mike McMahon. Richmond County Borough President James Molinaro, an elected Republican who came up with the Conservative Party, has endorsed McMahon for another term in the House. Molinaro endorsed McMahon in 2008, but that was against the detested specimen that was Bob Straniere, who seemed to turn off just about every member of the Republican and Conservative Staten Island hierarchy. (JL)
NY-29: David Paterson says that he's going to call the special election "as soon as possible," and that he doesn't think the seat will be left vacant for the rest of the year.
House: Some chair shuffling as 69-year-old Rep. Norm Dicks, the second most-senior member of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, takes over the reins in the wake of John Murtha's passing, as expected. This mondo committee post potentially means tons more campaign donations will head Dicks' way, giving him a chance to shower that wealth on others.
WATN?: Ex-Rep. Eric Massa is now under investigation "for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office." Also yesterday, Glenn Beck apologized at the end of his Massa interview, saying: "America, I'm going to shoot straight to you. I think I've wasted your time."
It's been a bit since the Massachusetts election, in which unknown Republican Scott Brown emerged to upset the favored Democrat Martha Coakley in one of union's deepest-blue states. Since then, Democrats have been recalibrating their strategy.
In a previous post, I outlined the results of how a tied election might look like. Let's take a look at the prediction:
We have a couple of special elections tonight, which SSP community members have already created diaries for. In MN, MinnesotaMike is covering a state Senate special election, while Oregon has a couple of tax-related measures on the ballot, which tietack is on top of. Check those links out for full coverage.
UPDATE: We've lost in Minnesota, where Mike says of the results: "Disapointing, but a 6.5 point loss is as close as a Dem has come to winning this seat in decades."
On the plus side, the ballot measures in Oregon look like they are winning by pretty decent margins, with 79% of the vote tallied:
Measures 66 & 67 raise the $10 corporate minimum for the first time since 1931, and increase the marginal tax rate on the richest Oregonians (those who make more than $250,000 a year).
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
On November 3, while voters are going to the polls to decide governors races in New Jersey and Virginia, the fate of gay marriage in Maine, and special elections for congressional seats in California and New York, voters in Georgia will cast votes for municipal elections. In addition, there will be special elections to fill seven vacant seats in the General Assembly: two state senate seats and five state house seats. Here's a rundown. In summary, there is only one seat (HD-141) that stands a chance off changing parties, but the other ones bear some attention, too.
"Dede Scozzafava, the GOP nominee in a key upcoming House special election, is running dangerously low on campaign cash, according to several GOP sources familiar with her spending and fundraising."
Interestingly the article goes on to say that the RNC has sent only two staffers and hasn't contributed a cent to the race. Owens is outspending her 12-1. Even Hoffman has spent more. The NRCC is trying to make up the difference but even they have been overtaken by the DCCC.
"Despite a recent poll showing the GOP nominee with a 7-point lead over Owens, the spending disparity has many Republicans downbeat about her prospects."
I have to say I'm surprised at this. You would think the RNC would be flooding cash into the district to try and get a clean sweep of all the big races on November 3. Politico suggests they are concentrating on the gubernatorial races but that seems dubious at best. Maybe they just don't want her to win. I know I don't.
This doesn't surprise. A lot of people, including people here in New York, have made the same argument. Part of it has to do with a lack of research on Scozzafava. The other half of it is a lack of information on the Democratic candidate Bill Owens, who conservatives call "liberal" and some progressives like Markos have called a "Blue Dog."
After reading Markos' post multiple times, it seems he uses the following as important points for his "liberal" labeling of Scozzafava.
Five weeks from election day and Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava (R) leads Bill Owens (D) by seven points with Doug Hoffman (C) trailing in the first independent poll of the special election to replace Army Secretary John McHugh in the House of Representatives for New York's 23rd District.
The topline numbers from the Siena College Research Institute (LV, 9/27-29, MoE 3.9%) are:
"This is a wide open race. One in five voters is currently undecided. Add to that the fact that one-third of Scozzafava's current supporters and one-quarter of Owens's current supporters say they are not very certain of their choice and that they very well may change their minds between now and Election Day."
I think it fair to say this is a total tossup, particulary with the better known Scozzafava having such a small lead. I will update with more thoughts when I've poured over some of the internals.
UPDATE
Looking at the 2008 presidential race in the district we find Obama won Clinton, Essex, Franklin, Madison, Oswego and St. Lawrence counties. McCain carried Fulton, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lewis and Oneida.
The three-way makes it difficult to extrapolate but Scozzafava leads big in the West (which is where her Assembly district is located) matching McCain in Jefferson and Lewis counties but also in St. Lawrence where Obama won big.
On the contrary Owens leads in some of the central counties she represents and which McCain won, namely Madison, Oneiga and Oswego.
The good news is they are tied in places Obama won big - Clinton, Essex and Franklin. As andgarden mentions in the comments Obama is popular in the district so if people there get to know Owens and like what they hear I think there is a good chance he can take this one.
On the flipside McCain did well in Fulton and Hamilton so Owens is overperforming there though I suspect that has more to do with Hoffman taking conservative votes.
UPDATE 2
Favorables are interesting. Scozzafava clocks in at 33-20-47, favorable, unfavorable, no opinion. Hopefully Hoffman's kamikaze act helps make people form a negative opinion.
Owens is at 23-12-64 so significantly more room to grow. Hoffman at 16-13-71.
Top issues, economy and health care, unsuprisingly, and the candidates are split.
McHugh's endorsement would be key according to the numbers but if Obama comes out for Owens is it at all likely he will oppose his new boss? Interesting.
Survey USA's poll showing Nikki Tsiongas only leading Jim Ogonowski 51-41%, has given me (and should give Democrats) some pause.
And frankly, the Democrats have underperformed in
special elections this year. In GA-10, the runoff was between two Republicans. We lost a seat in the NY state assembly. Additionally, the
Dallas mayor's race was a terrible result.
If this seat goes Republican, especially to a candidate who says we should be in Iraq indefinitely, this may be a bad omen for holding on to the House next year.
Given that the GOP has their strongest possible
candidate with 9/11 connections (his brother piloted one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center), is this a race to worry about? Comments appreciated, especially those with some local knowledge.
Just in case you missed it, eight-term Democratic Rep. Marty Meehan has announced that he will resign from Congress in July to become the next chancellor of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, which means that we will have a special election on tap to fill his seat within 160 days of the vacancy.
A few words about Meehan: ProgressivePunch gave him a rating of 87%, which is by no means bad, but that only fits him about midway in the Democratic caucus in terms of progressive voting patterns. For a D+11 Massachusetts district, one would think that he could have afforded to play to the base a bit more. My biggest knock against Marty, though, was his utter selfishness during the netroots-led "Use It Or Lose It" campaign last fall to arm the DCCC with the additional resources it needed to help expand the battlefield in closing weeks of the 2006 elections. Despite sitting on a $5+ million warchest, Meehan only gave a paltry $125,000 (PDF) to the DCCC during the last cycle, and dug his heels in the ground while his House colleagues, such as fellow Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, donated up to 30% of their cash-on-hand on top of their required dues. Like a squirrel burrowing more seeds than he could use underground for the winter, so too did Meehan cling to his oversized war chest in the hope that he could use it in the event of a Ted Kennedy or John Kerry retirement (which did not happen for Kennedy in '06, and won't for Kerry next year, either). So, after all those months of stinginess to his fellow Democrats, Meehan won't be able to use his warchest, anyway. One wonders what will become of the $5m+. Gifts to the DCCC, DSCC and other Democratic candidates? Or will he hide it under the earth once more, hoping for a Kennedy retirement in 2012? I'll let you guess the answer.
In any event, it'll be a new day for MA-05. The question is: which one of the following names is both a suitably progressive Democrat and a team player?
Politicians eager to fill Meehan's seat have wasted no time positioning themselves for a run, with at least 10 candidates flirting with a potential campaign. The list of Democrats include Niki Tsongas, wife of the late US senator Paul Tsongas; state Representative Barry R. Finegold of Andover; Eileen Donoghue, the former Lowell mayor and current city councilor; state Representative James B. Eldridge of Acton; and Stephen Kerrigan, a former aide to Senator Edward M. Kennedy and to Attorney General Thomas Reilly.
