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Leading Off:
• MA-Sen: In case you missed it, Elizabeth Warren announced yesterday that she raised an astounding $3.15 million dollars in the third quarter—and remember that she only launched her exploratory committee in mid-August and formally kicked off her campaign in mid-September. Wowza! No word on how much she has in the bank, though. Meanwhile, Scott Brown reported pulling in $1.55 million and has $10.5 mil cash-on-hand.
Separately, a third straight poll shows Warren's numbers surging, moving her into a close race with Brown. Click the link for the full set of numbers at Daily Kos Elections.
3Q Fundraising:
• NH-02: Annie Kuster (D): $360K raised, $590K cash-on-hand
• OR-01: Suzanne Bonamici (D): $600K raised in two months (the AP also adds that she's spent $100K on TV ads so far)
• WA-Gov (Sept. only): Rep. Jay Inslee (D): $450K raised, $1.6 mil cash-on-hand; Rob McKenna (R): $486K raised, $1.2 mil cash-on-hand
• WA-01: Andrew Hughes (D): $140K raised
House:
• IN-06: Usually it's a bit newsy when a former state senator decides to launch a run for higher office. But when you're making your ninth bid for Congress and you haven't actually served since the 1970s, well, that puts you in the rarefied category below Some Dude status: perennial candidate. The only thing lower than that is "gadfly," which Bill Frazier might just be, since he's run in the past as an independent. But now he's returned to the GOP fold and will seek Mike Pence's open seat. Good luck with that!
• IN-09: You may not have heard of Jonathan George, but he has quite the pedigree: He's a retired brigadier general and "a former top Air Force officer who led transition efforts in Afghanistan and most recently served on the National Security Council." He's also running for Congress as a Democrat and will challenge freshman GOPer Todd Young. This is particularly good news as two potentially strong recruits (state Rep. Peggy Welch and 2010 Auditor candidate Sam Locke) had already turned down the race. This seat was made a little bit redder in redistricting, but only a touch (a net of two points). If George turns out to be a strong campaigner, this could definitely be a winnable contest.
• LA-06: Caroline Fayard, the young Democratic attorney who outperformed expectations in the 2010 Lt. Gov. race but then declined to run for Secretary of State this year, says she's still interested in seeking office. She says she might run against GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy in the 6th CD, but that seems like a suicide mission to me. Under the old lines, the district went for John McCain by a 57-41 margin and we had the absurd luck to pick it up in a 2008 special election; now it's stretched all the way out to 67-31. Those numbers are so awful—they'd likely make this one of the twenty reddest districts in the nation, if not worse—that I have to wonder how serious a pol Fayard even is. She doesn't even live in the district, so perhaps, as Bucktown Pirate suggests over at Daily Kingfish, "maybe she's just flying by the seat of her pants and suggesting random races to enter based on off-hand conversations."
• MD-03: The Fix has another "name that district" contest, this time for the comical 3rd District that Gov. Martin O'Malley is proposing. I'm at a loss for words.
• MN-01: GOP state Sen. Mike Parry (mentioned previously last month) has decided to challenge third-term Dem Rep. Tim Walz. Even though the courts have yet to decide on a new map for Minnesota (the GOP legislature deadlocked with Dem Gov. Mark Dayton), Parry expects to be in the same district as Walz because their home towns are near each other. Parry may not be the only Republican entrant into the race, and his temperament has been an issue before. As Mark Fischenich of the Mankato Free Press explains:
[Parry] reportedly walked out of a meeting between Dayton and Legislative Republicans, called for Dayton’s resignation and once declared that Dayton “has no feelings.”
• MN-03: Businessman and Navy veteran Brian Barnes says he'll run against sophomore GOP Rep. Erik Paulsen. He's the second Democrat to join the field; small-business owner Sharon Sund launched her campaign in August.
• NM-02: Mayor Martin Resendiz has given up his plans to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. Steve Pearce, and if you've been following revelations about him, you'll understand why. In short:
Resendiz's political career imploded in August when news broke that, in a 2010 deposition for a civil suit against the city, he admitted signing contracts for work with an architectural design firm after drinking with company executives for several hours.
• PA-03: Former Dem Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper, who has been weighing a rematch, sounds unlikely to pull the trigger, mostly because she's concerned (rightly) that redistricting will give GOP freshman Mike Kelly a safer district. I'm not surprised, since Dahlkemper has already missed the quasi-deadline she set for herself back in March. At the time, she said "Waiting until fall would put me or anyone else at a great disadvantage." Well, it's already autumn—and in fact, Dahlkemper announced her first bid for Congress in Oct. 2007. I personally don't think it's too late to join the race, but what matters is whether she does.
• UT-04: Mia Love, the mayor of Saratoga Springs, says she's considering a run in Utah's brand-new but as-yet-undrawn 4th Congressional District. Love became the state's first black woman mayor last year, in an absurdly fast-growing town (2000 pop. 1K, 2010 pop. 17K)—not to be confused with the more famous city in upstate New York. It sounds like she's pretty close to entering the race but wants to wait on the final outcome of redistricting.
Other Races:
• Special Elections: Johnny Longtorso:
Oklahoma SD-43: A formerly Republican-held seat in the Oklahoma City suburbs, the candidates are Army veteran Kenneth Meador for the Democrats, and former OU employee (seriously, that's all I could figure out) Greg Childers for the Republicans. Amusingly, the former incumbent barely won in 2008 against a Democrat named David Boren, who is in no way related to former Senator David Boren. While researching this, I also found this wonderful picture from the 2008 recount. Anyway, the district went 62-38 McCain in '08, but according to DRA, the average is only 52-48 Republican. Not that I'm expecting a miracle in Oklahoma.
Grab Bag:
• Dark Money: Could GOP infighting save us from the worst depredations of conservative dark money? Politico's Kenneth Vogel details the emerging turf war between Karl Rove's American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS and the Koch brothers' Americans for Prosperity. While the two rival factions worked together in 2010, they split earlier this year over the debt ceiling compromise (Rove's camp was in favor, the Kochs' against), and there are other signs of friction. None of this, I'm sure, will stem the flow of all this right-wing cash, but if these heavy hitters even occasionally wind up working at cross purposes, that would be a blessing.
Redistricting Roundup:
• MA Redistricting: There are no maps available, and this still seems to be at rumor level, but supposedly the legislature is considering two different congressional redistricting plans. One would mash up conservaDem Stephen Lynch's 9th CD in Boston's southern suburbs with freshman Bill Keating's South Shore/Cape Cod-based 10th District. The other would reduce the western part of the state to a single seat, thus pitting Richard Neal (MA-02) and John Olver (MA-01) against one another. Olver, though, is 75 years old and his wife is battling cancer, so some observers think he may retire, even though he's insisted he's running for re-election.