Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning.
Sign up here.
7:31 AM PT: Jobs: I know that a lot of you like to discuss the monthly jobs numbers (and I'm sure you've already been at it this morning), since there's no doubt that the health of the economy plays a role in determining who wins at the ballot box. So on that note, I want to recommend this post by my colleague Tim (aka Meteor Blades), who, like clockwork, is always Johnny-on-the-spot with a clear-eyed take on the new employment report each month.
8:04 AM PT: NC-11: Roll Call's Joshua Miller reports that, according to an unnamed source, Dem Rep. Heath Shuler's chief-of-staff, Hayden Rogers, is thinking about running to replace his boss in Congress. (As you know, Shuler announced his retirement on Thursday.) And to put on my Great Mentioner hat, here's another thought: Could state Rep. Patsy Keever switch over to this district? Keever is a redistricting victim who recently announced a run against Republican Patrick McHenry in the adjacent 10th CD. But she ran in the old version of the 11th once before in 2004, performing creditably against the man Shuler beat two years later, Charles Taylor, losing 55-45. (The Kerry-Edwards ticket fared worse, 57-43.)
9:52 AM PT (David Jarman): WA-Sen: I don't think anyone gave much weight to persistent Dave Reichert-for-Senate rumors other than Seattle Times writers trying to drum up eyeballs, but those rumors can finally be put to rest. The four-term Rep. from WA-08 in the Eastside suburbs gave official word on Friday that he'll be seeking re-election to the House, probably feeling happier that he got a noticeably safer district out of redistricting (trading Bellevue for Wenatchee). That leaves the GOP without a top-tier challenger to Maria Cantwell; they do have state Sen. Michael Baumgartner in the race, but his Q4 fundraising was weak ($120K) and most people's first exposure to him was him sticking his foot in his mouth by saying Cantwell didn't have standing to talk about teenage girls' right to access the 'morning after' pill because she isn't married. The story does mention that Port of Seattle Commissioner Bill Bryant is still interested in the race; Bryant would give the GOP someone with a more moderate presence and a King County base, but the downside is that Port Commissioner is a pretty obscure position and few people even in King Co. have heard of him.
10:04 AM PT (David Jarman): NM-Sen: When you're spending all your time putting out press brush fires that you're about to drop out of the race, well, suffice it to say, you're probably about to drop out of the race whether you want to or not. That's the state of things for Republican Lt. Gov. John Sanchez, who, as we mentioned in Thursday's digest, was rumored to be about to bail on the Senate race and possibly drop down to NM-01. While Sanchez is continuing to push back on the rumors, sources tell NM Politics' Heath Haussamen that the decision to drop out has already been made, and the evasive knots that Sanchez ties himself into in the story certainly don't instill much confidence (the whole story is worth a read). Haussamen also notes that Sanchez's Q4 fundraising report still isn't available and that it's been months since anything has changed at his website or Facebook page
10:49 AM PT (David Jarman): HI-02: Former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann is out with an internal poll giving him a showy lead over Honolulu city councilor Tulsi Gabbard and the minor players in the Democratic primary race to succeed Rep. Mazie Hirono. The poll, from never-heard-of-'em-before pollster QMark, finds Hannemann at 57%, Gabbard at 14%, and Esther Kiaaina, chief advocate for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, and attorney Bob Marx both at 4%. This seems credible based on the huge name rec disparity that must exist between Hannemann and the rest of the field (the Honolulu mayor has jurisdiction over the entire island of Oahu, giving him 953K constituents, almost 3/4ths of the state's entire population), though it will presumably tighten as the other candidates get better known. (If you aren't familiar with this race, it's a common source of consternation among our commenters, that with either Hannemann or Gabbard this 73% Obama district seems poised to elect a social crypto-conservative; the question is which of them fits that bill more?)
10:54 AM PT (David Jarman): ME-02: Here's one more internal poll in a House race that has surprisingly dominant numbers. Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud, who's held the rural 2nd for 10 years (which holds 1/2 of Maine's population and maybe 80% of its area), is out with a poll from Normington that gives him a 55-32 lead over his Republican rival Kevin Raye. That's not surprising given the power of incumbency and the district's Democratic lean, but maybe surprising given that Raye is a cut or three above Michaud's usual Some Dude-level opposition; he's the state Senate president. (Raye lost to Michaud once before, in 2002 when the seat was open. Bet Raye's wishing he would have tried this in 2010 instead of this year.)
11:02 AM PT (David Jarman): MI-Sen: Are you ready for some [expensive political advertising during an important game of] football?!? Pete Hoekstra hopes you are, as the Republican ex-Rep. looks for something to help close the polling gap (usually in the high single-digits) against Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow. He's spending $144K to air an ad (in Michigan only) during the Super Bowl. People are abuzz about the ad because it's from Republican ad impresario Fred Davis, whose success in Michigan with Rick Snyder's "one tough nerd" ad (which catapulted Snyder from rich-but-unknown status) is balanced out against other duds like Carly Fiorina's "Demon Sheep." Also, if you want a sneak peak of the ad before Sunday, you can get the campaign to e-mail it to you in advance, for a mere $7.50! (Not sure I've ever seen that kind of fundraising gimmick before.)
11:10 AM PT (David Jarman): Fundraising: The DCCC is touting some cool numbers: the average Q4 for its top-tier Red to Blue candidates was better than the average Q4 for their Republican opponents, by a margin of $201K to $178K. You can click through to their pdf to see the individual race-by-race breakdown, where Dems won 10 of the 19 faceoffs. This should be just an appetizer, though: here's a reminder to keep your eyes peeled, as later today Daily Kos Elections will have our full 4Q worksheet for the entire House!
11:30 AM PT (David Jarman): AZ-St. Sen.: Much like the namesake of his metropolitan area, former state Senate president Russell Pearce hopes to rise up from the ashes of the pyre that was his recall election last year and take flight once more. (Maybe he can use a convenient unfinished offramp to get his orange Pinto aloft.) While he hasn't formally declared his intent to run for his old seat, he has filed state paperwork allowing him to do so, and says he's being pushed by a lot of people to run.
11:39 AM PT (David Jarman): MI-11: We see a lot of weird fundraising reports during the reporting season, but this one really raised our eyebrows. You may remember Republican ex-state Rep. Rocky Raczkowski, who lost pretty narrowly to Rep. Gary Peters in MI-09 in 2010. Despite early signals he'd run again for Congress, in October he verified he wouldn't run in the 11th and would be supporting Thad McCotter in his reelection bid. Nevertheless, he continued to raise and spend throughout Q4 like a man intent on running for something, with $107K raised and $192K spent. The explanation? Turns out he's still getting scammed by Base Connect, the churn-and-burn Republican direct mail fundraising operation (formerly known as BMW Direct) that, unless your name is Allen West, leads to high yields and even higher costs.
11:55 AM PT: PA Redistricting: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has finally released its hotly anticipated opinion explaining the reasoning behind its recent ruling that the state's new legislative maps violate the state constitution. We haven't had time to digest it (the main opinion is 87 pages long), and there are also two opinions which concur in part and dissent in part (here and here), as well as a full-blown dissenting opinion. Dig in!
12:05 PM PT (David Jarman): IL-11: It's always a little embarrassing for any politician to flub getting on the ballot because of signature-gathering snafus, but this has a whole new dimension in embarrassment to it, because of his day job. Kane County Clerk Jack Cunningham was going to run against Rep. Judy Biggert in the GOP primary in the 11th (already a tall order, given her long incumbency... though redistricting essentially dismantled her old 13th and left her best option as running in the new 11th, sort of a descendant of the Kane County-centered old 14th). Turns out he can't, because only 526 of the needed 600 signatures were valid (out of the 1,265 he submitted). For Kane County's chief elections officer, that's a whole new level of fail.
12:10 PM PT (David Jarman): OH-Sen: We'll have a full post on this later today or tomorrow, but Public Policy Polling is out with the Senate portion of their Ohio sample, and find Dem incumbent Sherrod Brown with his usual double-digit lead over GOP state treasurer Josh Mandel, 47-36. That's still a little closer than their November sample, where Brown led 49-34.
12:19 PM PT (David Jarman): NJ-09: "Celebrity rabbi" isn't a very common job description, but it looks like the GOP might actually land one in an interesting race: Shmuley Boteach, author of "Kosher Sex," frequent Oprah guest, and spiritual adviser to Michael Jackson. Boteach, who lives in Englewood, put his name in for the GOP nomination just ahead of the filing deadline. The 9th does have a significant Orthodox population, but the winner of the Bill Pascrell/Steve Rothman primary slugfest should have little trouble in November; this was a safely Democratic district even before redistricting (61% Obama), and the new addition of Paterson ought to push it even further in the blue direction.
12:22 PM PT (David Jarman): NJ-10: Quite a few members of the Congressional Black Caucus are facing primary challenges this year (about the only way you ever get turnover, in most of their districts), and we can add one more to the list: Donald Payne, Sr., who represents the Newark-based 10th. The 77-year-old Payne will face much younger Newark city councilor Ron Rice, in what seems more like a generational changing-of-the-guard primary than one motivated by ideology; Rice made his rumored bid official on Thursday.
12:42 PM PT (David Jarman): FL Redistricting: As expected, the Florida state House passed its version of the state's redistricting maps Friday afternoon, and it goes next week to the state Senate (although the Senate has been pushing its own similar-but-visibly-different map, so it remains to be seen whether they pass the same map or something else). And here's something to be said in favor of Florida's beleaguered Dems that can't be said about a lot of other swing states with GOP-held legislatures: they held the line against the map, with no one voting in favor of it. Regardless of what happens in the Senate, expect this one to go to litigation, as Florida's anti-gerrymandering Fair Districts Initiative, vague as it is, gives Dems a potentially strong weapon here.
12:47 PM PT (David Jarman): FL-22: The newly Allen West-free 22nd is already turning out to be a magnet for Dems looking for a promotion, as Adam Hasner may not look as imposing a threat to keep this Dem-leaning district in GOP hands. The newest entrant is Kristin Jacobs, considered one of the more liberal members of the Broward County Commission, who said Friday that she'll run. Fellow Broward Co. Commissioner John Rodstrom is also scoping out the race, but West Palm Beach mayor Lois Frankel and accountant Patrick Murphy have staked out pole position already by virtue of a year's worth of gangbusters fundraising already.
12:52 PM PT (David Jarman): OK-02: Here's one more amusing find from our trolling of a quarter's worth of FEC data. Marine vet and defense consultant Dakota Wood is one of the Republicans running to succeed the retiring Democrat Dan Boren, but his latest FEC filing won't do much to give potential backers much confidence that he knows what he's doing. Not only are the actual numbers down in Some Dude territory ($20K receipts in Q4), but he used a Presidential reporting form to report those numbers (despite the fact that it clearly asks him to break down primary expenditures by state). Well, can't fault him for dreaming big, I guess.
12:58 PM PT (David Jarman): MO-Gov: Here's one more sizzling poll hot off the PPP grill: to perhaps no one's surprise, Dem incumbent Jay Nixon has huge leads over his token GOP opposition. I feel confident calling them both "token opposition" seeing that he leads Some Dude Bill Randles by a smaller margin (18) than he leads the rich guy who was supposed to ride to the GOP's rescue after the Peter Kinder implosion (Dave Spence, at 20).
1:01 PM PT (David Jarman): NC-Gov Rep. Brad Miller, who's looking for a new job once his term ends and who has expressed a bit more interest in a gubernatorial run with each passing day this week, is now publicly saying that he'll make a decision over the weekend whether or not to run. (If he does, he'd face Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton, ex-Rep. Bob Etheridge, and state Rep. Bill Faison in a Dem primary.)
2:15 PM PT (David Jarman): TX Redistricting: I could have predicted this just based on, y'know, the last few decades' worth of attempts by Democrats to negotiate with Republicans... but it looks like the proposed settlement of the Texas redistricting logjam, which looked promising a week ago, is now on the verge of being DOA. With no new court-drawn map forthcoming soon, that makes it likelier Texas will have to push its primary back from April (or spend millions to have split its presidential primary vote off from the rest).
2:18 PM PT (David Jarman): UT-Sen: Orrin Hatch, potentially in trouble in the Republican primary in Utah, seems to have some anonymous big-dollar friends in high places. Freedom Path, a 501(c)(4) that seems only involved in Hatch's race, is out with a new direct mail blast that doesn't mention Hatch but goes after his two state legislator opponents, Dan Liljenquist and Chris Herrod. (Don't confuse them with FreedomWorks, who are actively opposing Hatch.)
2:22 PM PT (David Jarman): NC-10, NC-11: Democratic State Rep. Patsy Keever, despite (or perhaps because of) being the target of the Great Mentioner earlier today, has announced that she will not switch from her run against Patrick McHenry in the 10th, to the open seat race in the 11th (vacated by Heath Shuler's early retirement). That switch would have made sense under the old lines, as not only was the 11th friendlier than the 10th but it was where Keever ran well against Rep. Charlie Taylor in 2004... under the new lines, though, the 11th is now redder than the 10th and the odious McHenry may present a better target than whatever blank slate emerges from the 11th's GOP primary.
2:57 PM PT (David Jarman): FL Redistricting: All of the attention lately has been on the Rooney/West/Hasner swap along Florida's Gold Coast, brought on by the new maps heading toward completion in the state legislature. But there's a similar dance going on in the state's north, where long-time Rep. Cliff Stearns is trying to figure out where to run. If he stays in the district where he lives, he keeps Ocala but gets mostly new territory to Ocala's south (instead of north like current FL-06, which stretches up to Jacksonville's suburbs)... and possibly also a primary matchup with Rich Nugent, who lives in that 11th district under the state House's map (but not under the state Senate map, called the 26th on that map, which puts Hernando County in a different district). Or, he can move one district to the north to the one centered in Jax-burb Clay County (the House 3rd/Senate 6th), which is incumbent-free but seems likely to attract Clay County Clerk Jimmy Jett, or maybe more imposingly, state Sen. Steve Oelrich. There's one other possibility for Stearns... he could move full-time to his beach house in the St. Augustine area, but that would put him in the House 6th/Senate 7th, where Rep. John Mica is likely to run (as it's most of his old turf, though Mica's Winter Park house isn't there anymore). (If none of that makes sense, the article has a very helpful closeup map.)
3:28 PM PT (David Jarman): TN-03: Scottie Mayfield just confirmed plans floated a few weeks ago that he's going to run in the GOP primary in the 3rd, where freshman Rep. Chuck Fleischmann is still trying to get entrenched. Mayfield owns a prominent dairy, so he's wealthy and, given that his name is plastered all over local dairy aisles, has name rec... but he may suffer the curse of the clown car, as Weston Wamp, son of ex-Rep. Zach Wamp, is also in the field and together they're apt to split the anti-Fleischmann vote.
3:40 PM PT (David Jarman): FL-26: Anybody remember Karen "Snakes in a Pool" Diebel? The Republican Winter Park city councilor was widely hyped in the 2010 FL-24 GOP primary for a few weeks (until less-than-flattering news about her mental stability started to come out). She lost that primary to now-Rep. Sandy Adams, but resumed running in early 2011, signing up with the FEC for the not-yet-existing 26th. Well, while combing through the FEC Q4 dump, we wondered why her latest report had six figures worth of refunds... and, after a little research, it turns out that she dropped out from the race last November. I'm mentioning that partly just because we like to be thorough, but also because it's amazing that someone of her (well, one-time) stature could drop out so quietly, with, as far as we can tell, nary a peep from even the local, let alone Beltway, press.