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Senate:
• MN-Sen: This, folks, is the Minnesota Republican Party's first (and so far, only) candidate in the race to challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar:
“Quite often you hear people say, ‘What about separation of church and state?’ There is no such thing,” Severson told Brandon. “I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation.”
He continued, “We are a nation based on Christian principles and ideals, and those are the things that guarantee our liberties. It is one of those things that is so fundamental to the freedoms that we have that when you begin to restrict our belief and our attestation to our Christian values you begin to restrict our liberties.”
He added, “You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty.”
That's former state Rep. Dan Severson, who, as expected, formally announced his candidacy yesterday. Don't be too dismissive, though: Severson nearly beat Secretary of State Mark Ritchie last year, losing 49-45. Granted, that was 2010, but I don't like getting haughty this early in the cycle.
Gubernatorial:
• IN-Gov: Hoosiers have always been well-represented at Daily Kos Elections (and our predecessor site, the Swing State Project), and it looks like you guys have scored a pretty good recruit. As expected, Democratic former state House Speaker John Gregg has formed a gubernatorial exploratory committee, but given how prepared he sounds, this seems like a formality. (Gregg says he called all 92 county chairs last weekend. That's a lot of calls!) Gregg could still face a Democratic primary, but for now he has the field to himself. You can watch his welcome video here:
House:
• NV-02: Urgh. Former Dem state party chair Jill Derby, who sought this seat in 2006 and 2008, sounds like she has no interest in clearing a path for Treasurer Kate Marshall. She insists that she's "the best candidate and a lot of people think that as well," and also claims that local and national Dems have promised they wouldn't try to ease her out of the race. Please, pretty please let's not screw up this golden opportunity.
• NY-26: The news coming out of western New York has been so fast and furious we've been devoting special roundups to them. So click the link to catch up on the latest and greatest.
Other Races:
• Wisconsin Recall: Dems look set to score another strong recruit today, as former Brown County Executive Nancy Nusbaum is expected to announce her candidacy against GOP state Sen. Rob Cowles. (Rich Langan, another Dem who had recently joined the race, said he would drop out.) Those of you with good memories might recall that Nusbaum ran in the Democratic primary in open-seat WI-08 race in 2006, when GOP Rep. Mark Green vacated the seat to run for governor. She came in third to now-ex-Rep. Steve Kagen and business consultant Jamie Wall, but raised over a million bucks in the effort, so she's got some chops.
And in some more good news, the effort to recall Dem Julie Lassa utterly failed, as Republicans admitted they only gathered a third of the necessary signatures. This brings an end to all of the signature drives, leaving us with (at the moment) recalls moving forward against six Republicans and three Democrats. Since you can't tell the players without a program, the Journal Sentinel has yer program right here. Now what did you want to tell the players?
Grab Bag:
• DCCC: The D-Trip is doing yet another one of its "announce some robocalls to earn some free media" campaigns. The topic, of course, is Medicare — click through the link to see exactly who they are targeting. I continue to be amazed at how much coverage these stunts get. They even managed to get play in the New York Times!
• Town Halls: There is one thing I do like about the DCCC's new website that accompanies the above-mentioned robocalls: They have a handy new list of Republican town halls taking place this week. (Congress is in recess yet again, what a shocker.) Click the link to see if there's one in your area.
Redistricting Roundup:
• Florida: Alex Leary of the St. Petersburg Times has a good, in-depth history of redistricting in recent decades in Florida, detailing the partnerships forged between Republican legislators and black Democrats that resulted in the creation of new majority-minority districts. Leary's hook is Rep. Corrine Brown's third congressional district (it's actually plurality, not majority, black), a gerrymander of questionable legality which she's been trying to preserve in the face of Florida's new "Fair Districts" amendments. Brown is party to a mostly-Republican backed lawsuit against these new redistricting measures, which has earned her the ire of many fellow Dems.
• New York: While the Voting Rights Act's Section 5 "preclearance" rules are often commonly invoked with regard to Southern states, here's a good reminder that the list of "covered jurisdictions" is surprisingly broad. (See here for a good summary of which areas are covered and why.) Among the affected locales are the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx — which means that any changes that would affect voting statewide have to get precleared with the Department of Justice.
One such change just got approval: New York state's new law requiring that prisoners be counted, for redistricting purposes, where they last lived, not where they are presently incarcerated. Republicans (whose state Senate majority hinges on counting inmates as residents of sparsely populated upstate districts) had wanted the DoJ to deny preclearance to this law, but got turned down. The GOP is vowing to fight the ruling in court, but I don't see how they have much of a leg to stand on.
Further down in the weeds, Republicans are trying to ram through a redistricting plan in the Nassau County Legislature which basically does everything possible to preserve their majority. While the chutzpah may be respectable, a state court judge has temporarily blocked the new map, which sounds like it has some serious minority vote dilution issues.