SSP Daily Digest: 8/10

by: Crisitunity

Mon Aug 10, 2009 at 1:26 PM EDT

• IL-Sen: Like the party guest who just won't get the message it's time to go home, Roland Burris is suggesting that he might still "change his mind" about his decision not to run for a full term in the Senate. Maybe he sees more of an opening with the increasing likelihood that Chris Kennedy won't run? (Seems like the opposite would be true, though -- he'd need multiple top-tier candidates to split the vote in order to sneak through.)

• NV-Sen: Republicans continue to search for a top-tier challenger to Harry Reid, but they have at least a warm body willing to go up against him: Danny Tarkanian, never before elected but best known for losing the 2006 Secretary of State race. He also lost a state Senate race to Mike Schneider, although he did win a libel suit against Schneider over claims made during the campaign. (If his name sounds vaguely familiar, he's the son of The Shark, towel-biting former UNLV basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.)

• TX-Sen, TX-06: Smoky Joe Barton, who's been a Republican Representative in the Dallas suburbs since 1985, is reportedly interested in running for the Senate seat to be vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. Although he's a long-time power in the House, as one of 32 representatives he may not have the statewide name rec to go up against, for instance, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst -- but it's a freebie, as he won't have to give up his seat to run in the special election.

• AL-Gov, AL-02: I hadn't heard that Rep. Bobby Bright had considered running for Governor -- after all, he just got to the House -- and it sounds like he never really did, other than publicly saying "never say never." But today his office reaffirmed that he's running for re-election in the 2nd.

• MN-Gov, MN-01: Minnesota's Republican Lt. Governor, Carol Molnau, is contemplating her place on the totem pole, with an open governor's seat in 2010 but every heavy-hitter in the state already running for it. She won't rule out the governor's race, but is also considering running in the 1st against Rep. Tim Walz, where she'd presumably have the primary to herself but would be running uphill against Walz, who had one of the most resounding re-elections of anyone from the Class of 06. (H/t MinnesotaMike.)

• SC-Gov: Week from hell for Mark Sanford: first, his wife moves out, then it comes out that Mr. Fiscal Conservative has been using the state plane for personal trips, in violation of state rules, including for a birthday party and the kids' sporting events. Most notable: a trip between Myrtle Beach and Columbia just to get his hair cut, at a cost of $1,265.

• NY-23: It's August 10, and that means candidate interviewing day for the Democratic party chairs in the 23rd. By the end of the day, we may know who the candidate will be. There's still no timetable on the special election, though; it may take a while for the nomination of Rep. John McHugh to be Secretary of the Army to go all the way through, as both Kansas Senators have put a hold on him in a tangentially-related effort to prevent Guantanamo detainees from being transferred to the military brig at Fort Leavenworth.

• PA-10: Democratic Rep. Chris Carney finally has an announced opponent, Iraq vet and teabagger Christopher Bain. Considering that it's a red district, this seat seems to have been a low recruitment priority for the GOP.

• Census: Elected officials in the Gulf Coast states are worried about how the Census Bureau will count people who are still displaced by Hurricane Katrina (general Census policy is to count people based on wherever they're residing on Apr. 1). This is a particular problem in New Orleans, which is hurting for funds but is down to a population of 311,000 (from 484,000 before the storm), and where a lower count means less funding; the city is hiring a full-time employee just to focus on local census issues.

• Polltopia: Our friends at PPP are running another "Where should we poll?" poll. This week, you can vote for Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, or Pennsylvania. Also, interesting food for thought from Jay Leve, head of SurveyUSA, as he contemplates the future of polling, in a world where the old paradigm (where people are sitting around the house ready to answer their landline and take the time to respond to a pollster) is about to vanish.

MN-01: Walz Won't Run For Governor

by: James L.

Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 11:32 AM EST

MNPublius first heard the news, and MinnPost.com confirms the news: Democratic Rep. Tim Walz won't be running for Governor in 2010:

Word had been circulating that Walz was calling key supporters to inform them of his plans. Walz confirmed his decision in an interview with MinnPost moments ago.

This bluntly:

Me: "I'm calling to confirm rumors that you have decided not to run for governor."

Walz: "That's correct."

Given the rogue's gallery of losers that the DFL has nominated for Governor in recent cycles, it's no surprise that a lot of Minnesotans hoped Walz would step forward and attempt to snap the DFL's remarkable losing streak. Guess not.

(Hat-tip: Rev. Wright)

Minnesota Elections Post-Mortem

by: Mark

Wed Nov 29, 2006 at 10:37 AM EST

I had a feeling in the closing weeks of the campaign that Democrat Tim Walz would pull off a victory in what only a few months earlier seemed like a kamikaze run against six-term Republican incumbent Gil Gutknecht, but I didn't think he'd win by a solid six-point margin.  Considering Gutknecht's mid-summer radio ad buys, I don't necessarily think that Gutknecht was unable to see this challenge coming.  Nonetheless, his response to the challenge was absolutely abysmal, with boilerplate TV ads where the incumbent couldn't even be bothered to make an appearance in his own commercials and a series of mismatched debate performances where Gutknecht was very clearly on defense at all times and losing badly to the charismatic Walz. 

I wrote a diary in September on how Tim Walz could eke out a victory in MN-01 with huge margins in his native Mankato and the college town of Winona, along with fighting Gutknecht to a draw in his native Rochester.  In the end, Walz won by huger margins that I would have deemed possible in Mankato and Winona, but also managed to win Rochester by an astounding eight percentage points.  Walz outperformed my expectations pretty much everywhere, padding his margin with wins in a few of the more conservative southwestern farm counties.  It'll be interesting to see how Walz holds up in 2008 and (hopefully) subsequent election cycles.  The one thing that concerns me is that Walz's presence on the campaign trail is his chief asset....and that presence will not be as abundant if he's stuck legislating in DC rather than travelling the district full-time as he did in 2005 and 2006.  Nonetheless, an excellent win for Walz, who I saw speak on two occasions and evoked a level of passion that I haven't seen since Paul Wellstone.  Keep an eye on this guy.  Big things could be coming from him.

As for MN-06, a number of things went wrong and helped voters in this conservative district fall into the arms of wingnut Republican Michelle Bachmann even though I predicted last summer that Bachmann was too conservative even for MN-06.  Since Bachmann got 50%, it's not fair to say that center-left Independence Party candidate John Binkowski cost Wetterling the election, but it would have probably at least been close without him in the race.  Nonetheless, far too many things went wrong in this race for Binkowski to shoulder the blame.

Wetterling hemmed and hawed for months, stating at one point that she couldn't win in this district and then pursued a Senate run.  When it was clear she wouldn't get the nomination against Amy Klobuchar, Wetterling made an eleventh hour leap into this House race, breaking her word against a moderate Democrat El Tinklenberg who, in hind sight, would have probably been a much better candidate against Bachmann.  Bachmann's reputation as the Legislature's wingnut-in-chief helped Wetterling pull off a small lead in September polls, but that's when the bottom fell out of her campaign. 

The polished Bachmann always mopped the floor up with the political novice Wetterling in debates and public forums and managed to mask her nutball tendencies to the voting public, all while the Wetterling campaign failed to effectively define her opponent.  In the end, some controversial ads by the Wetterling campaign (which I never saw) were heavily scrutinized by the local media and by the final week of the campaign, my dad was hearing from campaign insiders that Wetterling was toast. 

In retrospect, Wetterling's respectable performance in 2004 was the product of running against Mark Kennedy and having him step into the trap of swiftboating a figure as sympathetic as Wetterling.  Without Kennedy making her look good by comparison this time around, Wetterling's flaws were more easily apparent.  I'm expecting that Bachmann will make a regular habit of embarrassing Minnesota on the national stage, and could find herself perennially vulnerable in her district.  Here's hoping the Dems give El Tinklenberg another shot in 2008.

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