You know how much I like to cover election races from every corner of the country, and today I deliver yet again. This time, the news comes straight out of Hawaii where Honolulu Councilmember Ann Kobayashi has just announced that she will run a grass-roots campaign against incumbent mayor Mufi Hannemann.

Mitt Romney wanted badly to be president, but he didn't get his pony. However, it turned out that he is so eager to settle for a rocking horse that the Boston Globe is reporting that Willard is prepared to eat his $45 million campaign debt.

What does a $54 million hammer feel like? According to The Politico, House Republicans are about to find out.

John McCain must be confused these days. According to this report, he either doesn't know what office he is running for or he fully expects to lose. While at a stop in New Mexico, he made a quick plus for senate candidate Steve Pearce and said

If you listen to McCain's campaign and his apologists in the Mainstream Media, you would think Americans love a president who doesn't pay his credit card bill, "forgets" to pay property taxes, makes crude comments about presidents' daughters and, as reported by John Arivosis on Americablog, tells rape jokes.

Whatever the polls may currently say about Elizabeth Dole's lead over Kay Hagan, it doesn't seem to matter to the DSCC. According to The Politico, they are about to bring the house down around Dole's head.

It's well known around these parts that the past few years have seen me change form a frequent critic of the DCCC to one of its biggest supporters. Chris Van Hollen has proven himself to be an aggressive chairman and he is not satisfied to sit back and defend the majority we already have and is working to expand it. They have raised a lot of money and recuited strong candidates all over the country, even ib some of the more Republican parts of South Florida. The only problem is that Red-to-Blue Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz continues to undercut challengers to three right wing Republicans, epsecially Ileana Ros-Lehtinen.

You would think that, for a political junkie like me, San Francisco would be heaven, and it really is. However, it can also be a curse. When I lived in Michigan, it was very easy to keep up with the political scene. National, state and county races were held during even-numbered years, local elections during odd-numbered years and school board races were decided during the summer. County races, at least in Wayne County, were typically quiet. But now I live in San Francisco.

So where is this "Latino problem" I keep hearing about? According to all the pundits, they liked Hillary so much during the primaries that McCain is cleaning up among the group. The only problem is, it's not true. According to a poll reported by Talking Points Memo, Barack Obama maintains a small lead on the stregnth of...Latino voters.

The one clihe I have been using over and over this election year is "you just can't buy this kind of luck". And now, with  today's news today's news I just have to say it again. You just can't buy this kind of luck. The homophobic Republican Alabama State Attorney General, Troy King who was recently caught by his own wife with meat in his mouth, may not resign after all. According to Left in Alabama:

John McCain and the "Bomb Iran" crowd among the neocons have some serious egg on their faces, compliments of none other than Matt Drudge, of all people. He is quoting a developing NYT article that reports that the Iran missile test that got everyone in a tizzy is a fake.

This is the biggest election year I have ever seen. With so many House, Senate, Gubernatorial and state legislative races in addition to the presidential race, one can spread donation money very thin and not really make a dent. However, there is a way to concentrate your firepower in such a way that your donations can have an impact on all levels of government: County Democratic organizations.

Dina Titus stands a very good chance of beating Jon Porter and it is a very simple issue of math. There may be too many Democrats for Porter to win. According to a report brought to us via Political Wire, he will have to fight for his political life.

HOLY CRAP. The Cook Political Report House Honcho David Wasserman just released his latest House ratings, and he has opened the blue floodgates on 30 House districts. And some of them are HUGE news.

George W Bush is a moron, this we know. But you never know how big a moron he is until you watch his "energy policy" in action. Case in point: While Republicans were talking about the Chinese drilling off Cuba and Bush's jawboning Saudi Arabia (who do not have much more oil) into giving us more black goodness, the Chinese quietly made a deal with a country that is soon to become the third largest oil exporter in the world: Brazil. According to an email alert I received today:

What a choice we face. Our wonderful president's "stewardship" of the national domestic front, lack of energy policy and a miserable failure of a foreign policy have brought us to the situation that we face: a double-whammy of oil-driven inflation and an economic downturn due largley to the current financial crisis. Our "CEO president" prides himself on delegating (since he doesn't know how to do anything, himself), but unfortunately, he doesn't delegate well either. Treasurey Secretary John Snow is largely absent from the scene as he knows his party is already screwed and he'll be out of a job anyway. Fed. Chair Ben Bernanke realizes that he is stuck with a job to do and the Board has nearly obliterated the dollar in order to kick-start the ecenomy, with little effect.

Once upon a time, there was a certain president form Texas who fancied himself as an "oil man". It does not matter than he never succeeded at anything in business except land sweetheart deals from his dad's friends. Didn't matter that he could never somehow stike oil in all of TEXAS. He was an oil man, by golly, and he promised that he would jawbone those Saudis into increasing production to bring down the price of gasoline. Well, Bush did such a great job that OPEC Chief Chakib Khelil predicts that oil should hit $170/barrel before the end of the summer.

In the outstanding election year that was 2006, there remains a sore spot that nags me to this day: The IL-06 race. I still remember the anger on the part of a lot of progfressives when Rahm Emanuel recruited Tammy Duckworth to run for the seat. She did not live in the district because her special-buit house (to accomodate her disabilties) was located just outside. What's more, a number of good folks were very attached to Christine Cegalis who nearly knocked off Henry Hyde in the 2004 election. A lot of bitter words were exchanged on Daily Kos and some of the negativity unfairly (in my opinion) was foisted upon Duckworth. She evntually lost the election.