Senate:
•NV-Sen: Republican pollster Magellan Strategies has a new survey out (their first in Nevada this year) showing Rep. Shelley Berkley leading Sen. Dean Heller 46-44. Heller leads Berkley's Democratic primary opponent, wealthy lawyer Byron Georgiou, by a 46-33 spread.
•WI-Sen: Republican ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson has hired two fundraisers, which presumably means he's thinking semi-seriously about the open seat Senate race.
Gubernatorial:
•FL-Gov: Call it Jon Terbush's revenge. A month ago, the TPM writer penned a piece arguing that unpopular Republican governors could help Barack Obama's re-election chances in key swing states like Florida. Stu Rothenberg then fired off an inappropriately personal response in Roll Call, claiming there was no historical evidence of such a link.
But Terbush is the one chortling now: Public Policy Polling gave him an advance look at new survey which indeed shows that Rick Scott's miserable performance is in fact helping Obama. Forty percent of respondents say that Scott's actions as governor make them less likely to vote Republican for president next year, while just 26% say it makes them more likely, and 34% say he has no effect. As Tom further notes: "18% of voters who disapprove of Obama are so turned off by Scott that they're less likely to vote for the GOP next year."
House:
•IL-08: Even though Tammy Duckworth resigned her post at the Veterans Administration a couple of weeks ago, Dave Hinton of the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette reports that the Democrat says she "cannot speak about any potential run for Congress yet." Wonder what's up….
•IL-13: We mentioned the other day that former Dem state Rep. Jay Hoffman is considering a run in the new 13th CD. Now he's saying he'll decide in the next "month and a half to two months." Hoffman, a twenty-year veteran of the legislature (though only 49 years old), is also weighing a rematch against the Republican who narrowly turned him out of office last fall, Dwight Kay. (Interestingly, Hoffman came very close to winning a congressional race back in 1996, losing in the old 20th by half a percent to Rep. John Shimkus when Dick Durbin left the seat open to run for Senate.)
Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Rep. Tim Johnson says he's renting an apartment in Litchfield, even though he already lives in the redrawn district (in Urbana), to make it easier for him to campaign in territory that's new to him.
•IL-17: George Gaulrapp, the mayor of Freeport (pop. 25K), announced he'd run in the new 17th, presumably against GOP freshman Bobby Schilling. Gaulrapp ran for Congress last year against Don Manzullo in the old 16th, getting pasted by a 65-31 margin.
•KY-06: The NRCC has a new ad out trying to tie Dem Rep. Ben Chandler to Barack Obama, using a clip of Chandler himself speaking. Props to Kyle Trygstad, who reports that the buy is for $20K. Not major, but that does add up to quite a few meatball subs.
•NV-02: Nevada's Democratic central committee made Treasurer Kate Marshall the party's nominee in the upcoming special election almost by acclamation, with delegates casting 117 of 122 votes in her favor. She'll face Republican Mark Amodei on Sept. 13, though the state supreme court could still transform this race back into a "ballot royale" open to all comers. A hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, but no word on when a ruling might get handed down.
•TX-33 (?): Two former mayors of Highland Village (pop. 15K) are hoping to run for Congress as Republicans, but I'm not clear on how this is supposed to work. Highland Village is squarely inside the new 26th CD, which is home to GOP Rep. Michael Burgess. But both Dianne Costa and Bill Lawrence say they want to run in a new district, with Costa specifically saying she isn't challenging Burgess. The problem is that the only nearby incumbent-less seat is the new 33rd, which doesn't cover any part of Denton County, home to Highland Village. So the idea of an ex-mayor carpetbagging just strikes me as a little odd.
Other Races:
•Ohio SB5: Devious is the only word for it. The Columbus Dispatch reports that GOP Gov. John Kasich's people are trying to get the proposed referendum that would block implementation of the anti-collective bargaining law known as SB5 split into five separate ballot measures. As the piece notes, while SB5 as a whole polls very poorly (meaning repeal is popular), when Quinnipiac asked respondents about specific components, several individual chunks polled much better, so Kasich could save big portions of the bill this way. Oh, and you'll like this: The board which will decide the issue is chaired by Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted. Think we'll get a fair hearing?
•WI Recall: We Are Wisconsin, the labor umbrella group formed to help with the recall efforts, is up with its first ad, a spot hitting GOP Sen. Sheila Harsdorf for cutting education and supporting tax cuts for the wealthy. Harsdorf is being challenged by teacher Shelly Moore, who is herself the target of a Club for Growth attack ad.
•WI Sup Ct.: Ya think this would have swung 3,502 votes across Wisconsin? Several sources tell the Journal Sentinel that everyone's favorite state Supreme Court justice, David Prosser, put fellow judge Ann Walsh Bradley "in a chokehold" during a heated meeting earlier this month. Others say that Bradley charged at Prosser, who "raised his hands to defend himself and made contact with her neck." No matter what, this is pretty nuts.
Grab Bag:
•Voter Suppression: It seems like the only good news that ever comes on the voter suppression front is when a Democratic governor thwarts a Republican legislature, but at least we're two for two on that front in recent weeks. On the heels of Jay Nixon nixing a voter ID bill in Missouri, Bev Perdue did the same in North Carolina. The lege is going to try to over-ride in July, but the bill passed purely along party lines, so the GOP will have a tough haul.
Redistricting Roundup:
•Illinois: Out there in the multiverse, there's an Earth-like world indistinguishable from ours except for one thing: that Gov. Pat Quinn decided to veto his state's new congressional redistricting map. I have a very hard time envisioning the fallout from such a move (nuclear warfare is not unthinkable), but thankfully, that world is not ours. Though he waited weeks for no apparently reason, Quinn finally put ink to paper and signed the remap into law. Thank the maker!
•Wisconsin: It sounds like the state GOP really is forging ahead with plans to force through an early round of redistricting. The Journal Sentinel is reporting that Republicans have already drafted new legislative maps, but apparently no one has seen a copy. A congressional plan circulated recently, but that was a supposedly leaked map, not something that was part of any actual piece of legislation.
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