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8:36 AM PT: OH-Sen: On Tuesday, Sen. Rob Portman became the first notable would-be Republican contender to say no to a presidential bid. He will, however, run for re-election to the Senate in 2016, meaning that slim Democratic hopes for an open seat in Ohio will be dashed. But while Portman looks very strong to win a second term, it would be foolish to write this race off early, especially since Democrats have carried the Buckeye State in the last two presidential elections.
What's more, as community member Avenginggecko observes, Mark Warner was an "indomitable titan" in Virginia politics yet barely survived last month, while Joni Ernst, a "crazy, paranoid conspiracy theorist tea partier" whom no one had heard of at this point in 2012, will soon represent Iowa in the Senate. A lot can change between now and Nov. 2016, and some things definitely will.
8:55 AM PT: 2014 & 2016: Over the weekend, David Jarman offered two retrospective pieces on the midterm elections, one focusing on the biggest electoral themes of the cycle, and the other looking at some of the most interesting races and why they turned out the way they did. Meanwhile, Steve Singiser turned his gaze ahead to 2016 and compiled an early list of Democratic targets in both the Senate and House. The most vulnerable GOP freshman in the lower chamber? Steve picks Nevada Rep.-elect Cresent Hardy. Click through to find out why.
11:07 AM PT (David Jarman): NC-Sen, VA-Sen: An interesting post from math-blogger Brian Hayes looks specifically at the North Carolina and Virginia Senate races, but really, it's more generally applicable to all aspects of the gerrymandering debate, and the role polarization and geographical self-sorting play in that. He created histograms showing the percentage of Republican votes in all precincts, and it's certainly not a normal-looking Gaussian distribution (and it's even further away from being a standard bimodal distribution).
Instead, in both states, it's a lopsided curve that tops out with the modal number leaning toward the GOP side of the graph, with a fat tail leading off onto the Democratic side of the graph. In other words, even though these are states that are near 50-50 when considered as a whole, the majority of precincts have a significant Republican majority (with the mode around the 60-65 percent Republican mark), with the Democratic population sequestered in a smaller number of dark-blue precincts with a 20 or 30 percent Republican share. Remember, we aren't talking about gerrymandered districts here, but about precincts, the most fundamental building block ... which means that any map starts out tilted in the Republicans' favor, even before any gerrymandering further consolidates their position. (Click through to his link to see the fascinating graphics.)
11:21 AM PT (David Jarman): PA St. Senate: One legislative chamber where Democrats were playing some offense but wound up losing net seats this year was Pennsylvania's Senate, where they lost a couple seats in the exurban counties that ring Pittsburgh (one incumbent, one open seat). Louis Jacobson, moonlighting for PoliticsPA, takes an in-depth look at what happened in southwest Pennsylvania (even as Pittsburgh itself keeps getting bluer).
Really, it's not a surprising story, similar to what's happening in white working-class areas around the nation, though the trends seem amplified here simply because SW PA, similar to next-door West Virginia, used to be so blue as recently as the 1980s. A lot of it is cultural issues, and energy-sector growth in the area with Marcellus Shale drilling, but it also has to do with labor's declining strength here (not just in terms of numbers of members, but also in terms of how the remaining unions have gotten less one-sidedly Democratic in orientation).
11:33 AM PT (David Jarman): WATN?: You might know Harris Wofford for his brief time as Pennsylvania's Senator in the 1990s, including his special election surprise victory over Dick Thornburgh that presaged Democratic strengths in 1992 (and the equally zeitgeist-y loss to Rick Santorum in 1994). Well, Jason Zengerle has an interesting profile of Wofford's peripatetic life before that, turning up Zelig-style at world-changing events, sometimes in the company of figures like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
12:49 PM PT: LA-Sen: So not only has the partisan split in the early vote gone very much against Mary Landrieu (fewer Democrats and more Republicans have cast ballots ahead of Saturday's runoff, compared with the November primary), but the state of Louisiana also collects demographic information about who's voted as well. As Philip Bump visualizes (working off data compiled by Scott Bland), the runoff electorate is also whiter and more male—exactly what Landrieu doesn't want to see.
The DSCC long ago wrote off this race, cancelling their ad reservations, and the NRSC quickly followed suit. All the polling we've seen has put Bill Cassidy up by double digits, and though it's been entirely Republican or Rasmussen-flavored, considering GOP polls undershot this year, is that fact really going to give anyone hope? All of this leads us to conclude that we have no choice but to induct Landrieu as a member of the Tom Corbett Club for Dead-Duck Incumbents. As such, we're moving our rating on this race from Likely Republican to Safe Republican.
1:46 PM PT: Chicago Mayor: A new poll of Chicago's February mayoral race conducted by David Binder Research (on behalf of a "national labor organization") finds incumbent Rahm Emanuel at 44 while Cook County Commissioner Jesus "Chuy" Garcia takes 16 and Alderman Bob Fioretti 15. That lead's a good bit wider for Rahm than the 33-18 advantage he had over Garcia in a recent Lake Research poll sponsored by a pro-Garcia union, but these latest results still show the race headed to an April runoff since Emanuel can't clear 50 percent.
In a hypothetical second round, though, Rahm would start off ahead of Garcia by a 49-37 margin, though the race has scarcely begun and Emanuel only started advertising on TV within the last week or so (all positive so far). Still, that's awfully close to the 50 percent mark. (Lake, by contrast, had Emanuel ahead just 36-31.) But both Garcia and Fioretti have little name recognition, whereas everybody knows Rahm. He has $10 million in his coffers, but these kinds of numbers don't reflect any sort of broad popularity. It'll take a lot for Garcia, who is the better-positioned challenger, to knock Emanuel off, but it's not out of the question.
3:01 PM PT: KY-Sen: Okay, so, Rand Paul has now confirmed that he's seeking re-election to the Senate. Good for him. But of course, his ambitions don't end there. Paul really, really, really wants to run for president, too, except that state law won't let him seek both offices at the same time. So what's a poor fellow like Rand to do? Apparently, every imaginable thing he can. According to Shane Goldmacher, these are all the contingencies Paul has in the works:
- Change the law. Nope, already failed. Democrats held the state House last month, despite Paul's best efforts, and Speaker Greg Stumbo says he won't allow a vote on a bill to permit simultaneous candidacies. Next.
- Move the May presidential primary to a March caucus. This would cost the GOP a lot of money since they'd have to foot the bill (instead of the state), and it would only help in the spring, since Paul would still appear on the ballot twice in November. An earlier caucus in his home state might, however, give his presidential campaign a boost.
- Dare Democratic Secretary of State Alison Grimes to actually enforce state law and see if she'll back down. So much for Republicans respecting the rule of law, huh?
- Try to oust Grimes next November. If successful, a new (Republican) secretary of state would be sworn in before the state's filing deadline, but if that dude refused to enforce the law, then that could very well risk a voter lawsuit.
- File a lawsuit himself. What precedent would Paul cite here, Logic and Law v. Because Reasons?
- Run in the presidential primary in every state but Kentucky, and run for Senate at home. A deeply weird move and a problematic one if he captured the presidential nomination, because it's not clear whether Republicans could replace Paul on the November ballot for Senate. And even if they could, Paul could lose his White House bid and thus still get left out in the cold.
One option not under consideration, apparently, is just running for president and giving up his Senate seat. That, of course, is what Kentucky law demands, and it's the only alternative that would, unlike all these other shenanigans, not call into question his commitment to both offices. But evidently that doesn't matter to Rand Paul. We'll see if it matters to voters.