Whilst the Massachusetts Senate Special and a series of dodgy house polls have Democrats convinced that the November midterms will be apocalyptic; the fact is that a number of Republican held House districts are in fact vulnerable to a takeover from Democratic challengers.
The most important question for us horse-race analysts is probably, "What does this mean for whether he's gonna be running at all, and for which seat?". The guy, who's both a moderate Republican and a veteran member of Congress, is obviously aware of these shenanigans, but does he want to have to deal with them?
In other news, please say hi to Bill "Quarter Alligator" Posey on your way out.
• FL-Sen: Here's a pretty serious repudiation of Charlie Crist by the GOP party faithful. At a county party straw poll in Pasco County (Tampa exurbs, one county removed from Crist's Pinellas County home), Marco Rubio beat Crist 73 to 9. Luckily for Crist, the primary electorate includes a much broader sample than the party's diehard activist base who actually show up for meetings... but this shows just how badly things are for him with the base.
• IL-Sen: Bad news for AG Lisa Madigan, whose list of demands for a Senate race include an Obama endorsement, a cleared field, and no brown M&Ms at the catering table: Barack Obama announced that he wouldn't be endorsing anyone in the Senate race. Good news for Roland Burris, on the other hand: a state prosecutor has decided that Burris won't face perjury charges over his vague statements to the state legislature about his appointment to the Senate by disgraced former governor Rod Blagojevich.
• KY-Sen: SoS Trey Grayson has decided to start fundraising like a madman in the coming weeks, scheduling eight more events before the end of the fundraising quarter in June. Grayson opened his exploratory committee on May 6, so he has had only half-a-quarter in which to try to top Jim Bunning.
• MN-Sen: The FEC released two draft opinions that, if enacted by the full commission, will prevent Norm Coleman from tapping his campaign funds for his legal defense fees associated with his FBI investigation. (This doesn't affect the costs of paying for the recount, which are paid in part by the Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee instead.)
• CA-Gov: Has anyone noticed that LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who everyone assumes is running for Governor, hasn't taken any steps toward running for Governor? The folks at Calitics have noticed, and the fact that Villaraigosa (whose popularity in LA seems to be faltering) just took over the 2nd VP role for the US Conference of Mayors (which puts him on track to become the organization's president in 2011) is another tea leaf that he won't run. If he doesn't run, that just leaves an all-Bay Area clash between old (Jerry Brown) and new (Gavin Newsom) for the Dem nod.
• MN-Gov: GOP state Rep. Paul Kohls from Minneapolis's western exurbs has announced his candidacy for the Minnesota governor's race. He joins former GOP state Rep. Bill Haas as official candidates, but at least a dozen more people seem intent on entering the race.
• FL-15: Rep. Bill Posey got nothing but scorn when he aligned himself with the most tinfoil elements of the GOP in introducing his birther legislation, but he's just ratcheting up the crazy. Posey picked up four more co-sponsors (Culberson, Carter, Neugebauer, and Campbell). Also, while being interviewed on WorldNetDaily's radio show about the bill, Posey outright accused Barack Obama of hiding something and, for good measure, tried launching a feud with Rachel Maddow.
• NM-01: Jon Barela, a former vice-chair of the New Mexico GOP and former head of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce, officially announced his candidacy against Rep. Martin Heinrich. He did so with the endorsement of 2008 candidate Sheriff Darren White. While it's now a D+5 district, it's almost half Latino, so Barela could make some noise if he gets some traction in the Latino community.
• OH-08: Speaker Minority leader John Boehner got a break: his would-be primary challenger, iconoclastic Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, has opted not to get in the race. This frees Boehner up to spend more of summer of 2010 fundraising for other House candidates, or at least working on his tan.
• VA-05: Very little has been happening in VA-05 while everyone waits to see whether ex-Rep. Virgil Goode will try to get his old job back from Rep. Tom Perriello in this GOP-leaning district in rural Virginia. One GOPer isn't waiting, though: Cordel Faulk is publicly considering the race. Faulk hasn't held office, but he has an interesting job; he's the spokesman for Charlottesville-based professor and pundit Larry Sabato.
• NY-St. Senate: With the New York State Senate collapsed into a 31-31 tie, turncoat Dem (and, for now, Senate president and thus acting Lt. Gov.) Pedro Espada Jr. has come up with a rather novel legal theory in the absence of any constitutional clarification: he gets two votes, one ordinary vote as Senator and one tie-breaker vote as LG. Of course, nobody else seems to think this, and other theories are popping up as to who might get a tie-breaking vote (Former LG and current Gov. David Paterson? Assembly speaker Sheldon Silver?) if the Senators can't figure out how to break the deadlock themselves. Meanwhile, a likely primary challenger to Espada has already popped up: Haile Rivera, an activist and ally of city councilor Eric Gioia who had previously been planning his own city council run this year.
Oh boy, the wingnut is strong in these folks. Dave Weigel reports that Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), (in)famous for his birther bill requiring documentation that a candidate for President was born in the U.S., has picked up four more co-sponsors, all Republicans (of course). They are:
John R. Carter (TX-31)
John Culberson (TX-07)
Randy Neugebauer (TX-19)
John Campbell (CA-48)
Rep. Bob Goodlatte (VA-06) had already signed on last month. More after the fold....
P2012. Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) introduced legislation requiring future Presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate in order to be eligible to run in future White House races.
Rest of the quote below the fold.
Do we have anyone to deal with this first-term crackpot standing in an R+5-ish central Florida district? Posey won his first race with 53.1% against Stephen Blythe, who took 42%.
I wrote this as a comment a while back but decided to make a dairy to an idea that came to me.
I've lived here my whole life and i'll admit there are a lot of Republicans in the area but the trend is going our way and for the first time ever I saw more Democratic signs then Republican signs in my area in Brevard county. Granted I haven't been around that long but the sheer sight of that was pretty inspiring considering how red we are considered.
I'm gonna do my best to perdict what this district looks like now after the presidential race.
Back in August, we crunched the voter registration numbers in nine key Florida congressional districts, and found Democrats making big gains in all of them.
The Florida Division of Elections has just posted new numbers for each congressional district, and a quick glance confirms that the trend is continuing big time. Statewide, Democrats have added an additional 200,000 registered voters to their advantage over the GOP since July. But let's take a look at the same nine districts that we looked at in August.
In the 2006 column, we have the GOP's voter registration advantage in each district as of October 10th, 2006. In the next column, we have the numbers as of July 28 of this year, followed by the most recent numbers (October 8). Take a peek:
District
Oct-06
Jul-08
Oct-08
FL-08
14,388
2,113
9,243
FL-18
23,202
8,456
1,730
FL-25
21,818
7,857
3,364
FL-21
28,146
14,999
10,543
FL-24
32,310
23,263
14,333
FL-16
31,228
21,201
16,286
FL-15
31,509
22,153
16,569
FL-09
33,956
28,614
24,952
FL-13
62,230
55,542
51,933
Wow -- for the first time, Democrats now have a partisan advantage in the 8th District, where Democrat Alan Grayson is taking on GOP crumb-bum Ric Keller. Keller is locked in the fight of his political life, and these numbers prove it.
While two of these districts are pretty much off the map in terms of realistic Democratic pick-up opportunities (the 9th CD and the open seat dud in the 15th), the other huge shift can be seen in South Florida, where Democrats are waging tough fights against the Diaz-Balart brothers (the 21st and 25th CDs) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the 18th District. For years, these districts were seen as Republican strongholds, but now, Democrats have chipped away significantly at the GOP's edge.
Democrats have even made up a lot of ground in the 16th District; it's just too bad that disgraced Rep. Tim Mahoney has squandered it all.
Full raw numbers for all of these districts are available below the fold.
A quick round-up of the results from last night's congressional primaries:
AK-Sen (D): Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich won the Democratic Senate nomination with an impressive 91% of the vote, with 98% of precincts reporting.
AK-Sen (R): Ted Stevens survived his primary against banker Dave Cuddy and Floridian beardo Vic Vickers (and several other also-rans), but only with 63.5% of the vote.
AK-AL (D): Ethan Berkowitz won the Democratic nomination for the state's at-large House seat by a 59-41 margin over '06 candidate Diane Benson. Alaskan Independence Party candidate Don Wright received 5600 votes and will appear on the November ballot.
AK-AL (R): With 98% of precincts reporting and many absentee ballots still outstanding, Don Young has taken a 145-vote lead over Sean Parnell. This race is heading into "contentious recount territory" real fast.
FL-08 (D & R): Democrat Alan Grayson upset '06 nominee Charlie Stuart by a 48-28 margin for the right to take on Ric Keller in November. Keller, meanwhile, barely survived his primary challenge from right-wing radio personality Todd Long, with only 53% of the vote to Long's 47%.
FL-09 (D): In a bit of an upset for the DCCC, attorney Bill Mitchell beat out wealthy former Plant City Mayor John Dicks by a 38-33 margin for the nomination against frosh GOP Rep. Gus Bilirakis.
FL-10 (D): Dunedin Mayor Bob Hackworth dispatched '06 nominee and Ron Paul acolyte Samm Simpson by a 47-29 margin for the chance to take on longtime GOP Rep. Bill Young. Max Linn, a self-funding candidate who ran for Governor in 2006 on the Reform ticket, only earned 24% of the vote.
FL-15 (D & R): Physician Stephen Blythe crushed pilot Paul Rancatore by a 65-35 margin for the Democratic nomination for this open seat. Republicans nominated state Sen. Bill Posey with 77% of the vote, and he seems poised to run away with this race come November.
FL-16 (R): Pittsburgh Steelers heir Ed Tom Rooney won a tight three-way race by a 37-35-28 margin for the GOP nod to face off with Democratic Rep. Tim Mahoney.
FL-24 (D): Former state Rep. Suzanne Kosmas crushed '06 nominee Clint Curtis by a 72-28 margin. Kosmas will face ethically-challenged GOP Rep. Tom Feeney in November.
Polls are now closed in the great state of Florida, where we'll be tracking the results for the Democratic primary in Florida's 8th District, and the GOP primary in Florida's 16th. There are also a number of other primaries in FL-09 (D), FL-10 (D), and FL-15 (D), but we won't be focusing too heavily on those rinky-dink races.
11:23PM (David): In FL-16, Rooney now has an 800-vote lead with just 3% of precincts remaining.
11:14PM (David): Don't touch that dial - we'll be up and running with an Alaska thread any moment now. Polls close there at midnight eastern time.
11:06PM: 77% in, and Harrell is back up by 80. In the words of the immortal Samuel L. Jackson, hang on to your butts.
10:45PM: 75% in, and Rooney is up by 300. Over in FL-09, with 93% reporting, Bill Mitchell has a 950 vote lead over former Plant City Mayor John Dicks. That's something of an upset for the DCCC, who had hoped that Dicks could make this an interesting race. Guess not.
10:29PM: 72% in, and Rooney is hodling onto a 210 vote lead.
10:08PM: With 66% in right now, Rooney is up by 200 votes.
9:58PM: Over in FL-24, Suzanne Kosmas has beaten Clint Curtis by 72-28. No doubt that Curtis will soon gather "sworn affidavits" from voters showing that he actually won.
9:51PM: The see-saw continues in FL-16, where Rooney is back up by 140 votes with 54% in.
9:43PM: Harrell is now up by 310 votes with 49% reporting. Keller is holding on to his 2600 vote lead with 97% in.
9:17PM: Looks like we can now officially close the book on FL-08. With 93% of precincts reporting, Grayson has won by a 48-28-17 margin.
9:07PM: It's even tighter in FL-16 now, with Harrell leading by only 70 votes.
8:46PM: Harrell's lead is now down to about 180 votes. Looks like Mike Gravel fan Stephen Blythe has easily won the Dem privilege to get beaten by Bill Posey over in FL-15.
8:26PM: Keller has pushed ahead to a 2500 vote lead now, while Harrell is clinging to a 400 vote lead over Rooney with 18% in.
8:21PM: Grayson has really run away with FL-08. The results so far are almost a complete reversal of the 2006 primary. Grayson turned a 2500 vote deficit in Orange County into a 5000 vote lead, and close losses in Marion and Lake counties into blowouts. Looks like shaving off the scary beard helped!
8:15PM: SSP is calling FL-10 for Bob Hackworth, who has wrecked shop against Sammwise Simpson and Max Linn.
8:00PM: Grayson has pushed ahead to a 5800 vote lead, while Keller is still holding on by 1600 votes.
7:51PM: The DoS now shows Harrell up with a 1000-vote lead in FL-16.
7:46PM: According to the DoS, Grayson now has a 20% lead over Stuart, with a cushion of 5600 votes. Ric Keller has now padded his margin over Todd Long to 1,500 votes and 4%. Still, this race is way closer than it should have been.
7:40PM: Keller continues to lead by 1,200 votes, and Rooney is now edging ahead to a 200 vote lead with 10% reporting.
7:35PM ET: Rooney is leading Harrell by one vote with 6% reporting in FL-16, according to the AP.
7:26PM ET: Alan Grayson has a big early lead in FL-08 according to the DoS -- 10,922 to Charlie Stuart's 6,065, with Mike Smith lagging in third. More shockingly, Ric Keller is barely beating his right-wing challenger, Todd Long, by 14,850 to 13,743 among the early votes. Wow.
With congressional primaries in Alaska and Florida on August 26th, tonight was the deadline for candidates to file their pre-primary fundraising reports with the FEC. I've rounded up the numbers of interest, covering the period of July 1st through August 6th, in the chart below. All figures are in thousands.
Christine Jennings has yet to file her report, but once she does, it will be available here.
