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Senate:
• IN-Sen: Wonder if Dick Lugar's having second thoughts after Dem Kathy Hochul's victory last night in NY-26. Lugar said he'd vote for the Ryan budget when Harry Reid brings it up later this week, ostensibly to shore himself up against getting teabagged. But he has a legit Democratic challenger in the form of Rep. Joe Donnelly now (who of course voted against the Ryan plan), and he'll be handing him this issue on a silver platter inlaid with gold-pressed latinum.
• MA-Sen: The New York Times takes notice of the Draft Elizabeth Warren movement, and claims that unnamed Democratic officials are trying to get her into the race. I don't even think there's a single blind quote from a single "official" in the whole piece, though (and the DSCC wouldn't comment).
• NM-Sen: New Mexico's new Republican governor, Susana Martinez, said she has no plans to endorse in the GOP Senate primary, even though her Lt. Gov., John Sanchez, just got into the race. But then things got… weird. Maybe not Marty McFly traveling back through time and kissing his mom weird, but still strange. The Fix:
Then she added, somewhat oddly: "To prevent this race from becoming a distraction, Lt. Gov. Sanchez will not be given responsibilities in my administration beyond the select few provided for in the state Constitution." In an interview with The Fix, Sanchez responded, "You probably would have to ask either the governor or her staff to expound on that," and emphasized that he supports her agenda. Sanchez became Martinez's running mate when he won the GOP primary for lieutenant governor last year.
• TX-Sen: A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (conducted on the Internet) finds Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst unsurprisingly leading the GOP field, albeit with just 25%. Everyone else is in single digits (and remember that Dewhurst made some remarks a while back suggesting he might not even run).
• WI-Sen: Aaron Blake says his sources claim that GOP ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson is "90% in" the race; meanwhile, other sources seem to think Russ Feingold doesn't want to run. The evidence seems a little thin, though I'm inclined to agree.
House:
• IN-05: Marion County coroner John McGoff, who nearly beat GOP Rep. Dan Burton in the 2008 primary and was part of the six-car pileup that allowed Burton to skate with just 30% of the vote in 2010, will apparently announce today that he's gonna try a third time.
• IN-06: Speaking of Burton, the guy who almost toppled him in last year's primary, fellow Republican Luke Messer, officially announced he'd run for Congress again this year, albeit in the slightly re-drawn 6th CD (which now includes his house). Messer had telegraphed this move for a while, and the 6th is open because Rep. Mike Pence is running for governor.
• MI-11: Come on, really? Now GOP Rep. Thad McCotter says he's thinking about a presidential run? He's not exactly a backbencher, but he doesn't light up the skies, either. I think this just shows how amazingly unimpressive the Republican field is right now, that guys like McCotter and Peter King can even have these conversations without being universally laughed at. (Just to clarify: I'm laughing.)
• SD-AL: This Roll Call piece mentions a Dem name we hadn't heard before, suggesting that Matt Varilek, a staffer for Sen. Tim Johnson, could challenge GOP frosh Kristi Noem.
• WA-??: It's a statewide poll, natch, but we don't even know where Dennis Kucinich might land (when he comes down from Cloud City), so it's fair game: PPP shows his favorables at 19-28 in Washington state. Voters are also opposed to him running there by a 12-39 margin.
Grab Bag:
• Census: An informal (but pretty thorough-sounding) survey by the New York Times of three city blocks (two in Brooklyn, one in Queens) pretty much confirms what everyone in New York, from the Bronx to the Battery, has been saying for months: the Census Bureau undercounted the city. Read the article for the full flavor of the investigation and its findings.
Redistricting Roundup:
• South Carolina: Roll Call says "consensus is building" around a proposed GOP map to redraw the state's congressional districts, in part because the state's lone Dem Rep., Jim Clyburn, seems pretty pleased with things. (We previously discussed the map here.) But other Democrats, including old-new state chair Dick Harpootlian, are pretty pissed off. Indeed, Harpootlian accused the Republicans of engaging in "racial apartheid" by packing black voters. The GOP sounds pretty confident about their plan passing muster with the DoJ, but I'm skeptical that they can avoid drawing a second majority-minority district.
• Texas: This is pretty amazing: Even though the legislative session doesn't end until May 30, Republicans have admitted defeat and now definitively say they will not produce a congressional map of their own! Kel Seliger, the chairman of the state Senate's redistricting committee, says it's "too late to get a map through the process" and says either the courts will draw one, or Gov. Rick Perry will call a special session on another topic and "we will ask to have [redistricting] added to the agenda."
I'm pretty blown away by this, since no one does partisan gerrymandering with more bone-cutting ferocity than Texas Republicans. A last-second map is still possible (as is one later in the year), but am I wrong to be surprised that this issue got shunted to the back burner — and possibly out of the kitchen entirely? Is Seliger trying to force Perry's hand by holding out the specter of a court-drawn map? Doesn't Perry himself care? Is this all some odd charade? Man, if nothing else, watching the redistricting process unfold nationwide this year has taught me to expect absolutely nothing — and anything.
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