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Leading Off:
• AZ Redistricting: According to the Arizona Capital Times, Gov. Jan Brewer may call a special session of the legislature as soon as today, apparently to move forward with the impeachment of the Democratic and independent members of the state's redistricting commission. (The two Republicans on the panel have already been told they are in the clear, of course.) It seems like it's a race against the clock, with Republicans eager to effectively dismantle the commission before it can finalize the new maps.
However, it's not entirely clear exactly how quickly the commission can act. According to Proposition 106, the ballot measure which created the redistricting commission back in 2000, the timeline only says that after publishing draft maps, the commission must allow a public comment period of "at least thirty days," after which the commission "shall then establish final district boundaries." The draft plans were made public on Oct. 3, so theoretically, the commission could issue final maps on Nov. 2—but for what it's worth, the commission has meetings planned through at least Nov. 5. We'll know much more later today.
Senate:
• RI-Sen, RI-Gov, RI-01: Anthony Gemma, who ran in the Democratic primary for the 1st CD last year and is thinking about doing the same thing again, is apparently also considering a run for the Senate—or for governor, which shows you just what kind of flake he is. While polling has shown freshman Rep. David Cicilline potentially vulnerable, it's hard to do anything but laugh at the idea of a primary against Dem Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse… and it's just as hard to imagine the conservative Gemma gaining any traction in the free-for-all that is likely to develop among Democrats looking to take on independent Gov. Lincoln Chafee. Just ridic.
• UT-Sen: Dem Rep. Jim Matheson, who had long contemplated a statewide run as an escape hatch from getting screwed in redistricting, announced on Friday that he would not run for Senate against Orrin Hatch. However, he's still holding out the possibility of running for governor—and of course he could try to seek re-election to the House, in spite of the rough map the GOP just passed.
• WI-Sen: It's not a full-blown endorsement from retiring Dem Sen. Herb Kohl, but I think commenter Gpack3 gets it right when he says: "In Kohl-speak, this is the equivalent of doing cartwheels and screaming":
“I know Tammy Baldwin and she’s an outstanding person. She’s been a great representative for this part of Wisconsin. I believe she’ll be an outstanding candidate. If she’s our nominee what advice she asks more for I’ll be happy to provide.”
Gubernatorial:
• KY-Gov: A couple of final ads in the Kentucky gubernatorial race. Dem Gov. Steve Beshear stays positive, touting his "steady hand" during times of crisis:
Meanwhile, the GOP ticket trots out Richie Farmer and his absolutely preposterous '70s porn 'stache to go negative on Beshear by trying to tie him to Barack Obama:
Hell, that's beyond '70s porn. A guy wearing that 'stache commanded a Russian naval vessel during the Russo-Japanese War. And not a successful one.
• ND-Gov: Why oh why must politicians do this to us? GOP Gov. Jack Dalrymple "is planning a multicity tour across North Dakota on Tuesday to announce his intentions regarding the 2012 race"… but he won't say in advance of this tour whether he will actually run. Gah! Of course, as a member of the state's historical society says, he's "never heard of a politician planning a multicity tour to say he isn’t running for office," which makes this all the sillier.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor plans to join the race for the Democrats in November, after a special legislative session comes to an end on Nov. 12. Taylor is generally considered to be a strong get for Team Blue, so this contest should be a good one.
• WA-Gov: The University of Washington has a new poll showing pretty much what every other pollster sees: Republican Rob McKenna leads Rep. Jay Inslee by about half a dozen points, but he's the beneficiary of greater name recognition thanks to his statewide post as attorney general. Click the link for our full post at Daily Kos Elections, including numbers for the presidential race and ballot initiatives as well.
House:
• AR-02: Drew Pritt has long been one of the biggest jokes when it comes to the automatically lulzy province of perennial candidates, but he's outdone himself with his latest appearance on the scene. I can't possibly summarize; you'll have to click through yourselves.
• CT-05: Foreign policy analyst Mike Williams just dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination. Williams is young (just 31) and his fundraising badly trailed that of the other Dem candidates.
• IL-11: Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham says he may join the GOP field in the redrawn 11th CD, though Republicans are still waiting to see if Rep. Judy Biggert will seek re-election here. Cunningham ran for Congress once before… all the way back in 1972 (losing in a GOP primary). At 71, he's almost as old as Biggert, who is 74.
• IL-12: Dem state Rep. John Bradley says he won't seek retiring Rep. Jerry Costello's seat.
• NJ-05: Ultra-conservative GOP Rep. Scott Garrett makes a visit to a chemical plant in his district—and to the "Things You Aren't Allowed to Say" Dept.
Spanier said the best people to do business with are those in the American Midwest because of their "straight-forward" attitude.
"Other ethnicities are not that way," Garrett said. "They'll say yes to you constantly and then you'll realize they really didn't mean it."
• SC-07: GOP state Rep. Alan Clemmons says he won't run for his state's new congressional seat and will run for re-election to the state House instead, though he didn't rule out a future run for Congress.
• NM-01, NM-02: Republican businessman Jon Barela, who came within four points of defeating Dem Rep. Martin Heinrich in 2010, says he's considering another go at the now-open 1st CD seat. Meanwhile, former Dem state Rep. Jeff Steinborn confirms he's looking at a run against GOP Rep. Steve Pearce in the 2nd District. As Heath Haussamen notes, "The entrance of either into a congressional race would reshape that contest."
• NY-13: NYC Councilman Vincent Gentile, who first expressed interest in early October, says he just had a "challenging conversation" with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee about taking a run at freshman GOPer Mike Grimm. It sounds like the "challenging" nature of the discussion stems from the D-Trip wanting to make sure Gentile is ready to raise the kind of money he'll need (a lot) to wage a competitive campaign in New York City. Gentile didn't offer a timetable for making a decision, but added that he'd step aside if ex-Rep. Mike McMahon opted for a rematch. (By the way, for a handy scorecard on who's been considering this race, check out Colin Campbell's list.)
• NY-15: Could the clown car save Rep. Charlie Rangel yet again? The ethically embattled veteran lawmaker looks like he will once more be on the receiving end of a multi-way challenge in the Democratic primary; last cycle, he scored just 51% in the primary but survived in part because of a fractured field. (His nearest opponent, Adam Clayton Powell IV, mustered only 23%.) Now, Clyde Williams, described by the New York Times as "a former adviser to President Bill Clinton and a leading Democratic official with ties to President Obama," is in the process of launching a campaign against Rangel for the upcoming election, and he's already commissioned a poll and started raising money. But one of the 2010 pack of challengers, former Rangel aide Vince Morgan, says he, too, plans to run again and is already attacking Williams. Morgan only scored 2% last year, so he probably won't amount to much, but it's surely circus music to Rangel's ears.
Azi Paybarah, writing in Capital New York, also adds the following:
Other candidates who have looked at the race previously, and may do so again, include Joyce Johnson, whom the New York Times endorsed; Assemblyman Keith Wright, the chairman of the Manhattan Democratic organization, who is close to Rangel and could be a leading candidate to replace him should Rangel step down or not seek re-election, as is often rumored to be the case; Adriano Espaillat, a newly elected state senator who could appeal to the growing Hispanic population in the district, depending on what happens with redistricting; and Adam Clayton Powell IV, the former assemblyman and the son of the legendary congressman whom Rangel unseated 40 years ago, who has run and lost against Rangel twice in the past.
Other Races:
• OH SB5: With Ohio's Issue 2 as the hook, a very interesting post from Dan Hopkins at The Monkey Cage takes an empirical look at the accuracy of ballot measure polling. Analyzing 438 surveys about such measures from 2003 to 2010, Hopkins finds that that election day results tend to differ from the polling by about 8% on average, and in a quarter of all cases, the swing would be enough to turn PPP's SB5 polling into a dead heat. The further difficulty is that except for a handful of issues that respondents tend to lie about to pollsters for reasons of social desirability (for instance, gay marriage bans perform better than they poll), it's very hard to know which direction polling error is likely to lie. So if the polling is off on Issue 2, it could just as likely be in one direction as the other.
• WI Recall: In the first public sign that last summer's recalls have paid off, GOP state Sen. Dale Schultz has scuttled Republican plans to require any further recalls held this year to use the new district lines passed by the legislature earlier this year. Schultz was able to put his foot down because the GOP now controls the Senate by just a 17-16 margin—which actually means any single Republican can derail the caucus. Interestingly, Republicans aren't even sure they have the votes to pass another piece of recall-related legislation, a requirement that petitions be notarized; nevertheless, the bill's sponsor plans to bring it up in committee tomorrow so that it can go before the full chamber Wednesday, the last day the legislature will be in session this year.
Redistricting Roundup:
• MN Redistricting: I'll admit I haven't watched this yet, but if you want to take redistricting junkie-dom to the next level, The UpTake has posted an hour-and-twenty-minute-long video of oral arguments before a special redistricting panel of the Minnesota Supreme Court. A transcript is here.
• SC Redistricting: The Justice Department has granted preclearance to South Carolina's congressional map, yet another sign Eric Holder's DoJ doesn't seem to be taking a very aggressive approach on redistricting so far, except with regard to Texas. The Palmetto State is 28% black and now has seven congressional districts; simple math says two of those ought to be majority-minority, but the new plan only contains one such seat. Back in May, when the map first began to circulate, SC Dem Party chair Dick Harpootlian said that Democrats were "95% likely" to file suit against it—but most of Harpootlian's comments at the time were critical of GOP attempts to pack black voters on the legislative level. Any suit arguing that the congressional map should include a second black district would of course take a constructively pro-packing posture, so perhaps Democrats would prefer to let the matter drop.