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Leading Off:
• IL-08: Looks like the already-testy Democratic primary here is about to get nastier. Obama strategist David Axelrod not only held a fundraiser for Tammy Duckworth (netting $75K), but he's now trying to shove Raja Krishnamoorthi out of the race as well:
"I think he's made a mistake by getting into this race, but sometimes you know you have to make your mistakes and learn from your mistakes and unfortunately it's going to be an expensive lesson," Axelrod told the Associated Press.
Those remarks sound pretty dickish to me, particularly since Krishnamoorthi was running before Duckworth joined the field. I'm not suggesting anything idiotic like that Raja had "dibs" or whatever, but it's pretty obnoxious to say someone "made a mistake" to run for office when no one else was doing so.
Senate:
• MI-Sen, IN-Sen: Friday was a day of out-of-state endorsements from Crazyland for two Senate hopefuls. First up, Michele Bachmann's thrown her backing to ex-Rep. Pete Hoekstra in Michigan, while at the same time, Sharron Angle's announced her support for Treasurer Richard Mourdock in his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar. Meanwhile, the guy Hoekstra is trying to beat in the GOP primary, Clark Durant, officially launched his campaign on Friday as well.
Gubernatorial:
• WV-Gov: An excerpt from a press release from Dem Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin:
According to the last campaign finance reports before the 2011 Special General Election, Tomblin raised $565,936.81 in the period. Bill Maloney collected just $127,075, including $8,000 at a fund-raiser in Georgia, where he owns a retirement home.
House:
• AZ-Sen: Dave Catanese reports that two top advisors to Gabby Giffords are encouraging former Surgeon General Richard Carmona to run for Senate, which presumably confirms that Giffords has no intention of doing so herself. Meanwhile, the Arizona Republic reports that Dem Rep. Ed Pastor says that Carmona is also being recruited by some big names, including former Sen. Dennis DeConcini. Carmona has suggested he's open to a run, but hasn't sounded particularly enthused so far. Pastor himself says he's still considering the race, too, and is waiting on redistricting.
• NJ-03: Major bummer. Carl Lewis says that he won't run against GOP freshman John Runyan (in what would have been a great sports-themed matchup) in 2012, but he hasn't ruled out another Senate bid in 2013.
• OH-03: Last week, in response to the detailed version of the new (and extremely gerrymandered) OH-03 I posted, several people pointed out that the city of Columbus itself has weird municipal boundaries, so the lines of the redrawn 3rd couldn't be considered that bizarre. While Columbus does indeed have odd borders, though, there's only a limited relation between those lines and what the Republicans have created. On the overlay map below, OH-03 is in blue and Columbus is in red. Purple shows the overlap (credit to jeffmd for the image):
Please note that none of this is to decry odd-shaped gerrymanders — I think it's silly to harbor a fetish for "clean lines" or "compactness." I point this district out only to demonstrate how aggressively the GOP drew its map.
• OK-02: Businessman Wayne Herriman became the first Democrat to officially enter the race for this open seat, though others are still considering. The list includes assistant U.S. Attorney Rob Wallace, former state Sen. Ben Robinson, and current state Sen. Jim Wilson.
• TX-25: Cleburne Mayor Justin Hewlett says he plans to join the GOP field in the incumbent-less 25th CD this week. His explanation for why he wants to run amused me a little bit:
“I talked to Bill Flores who said it looks like he’s not going to be our congressman after the next election because of redistricting,” Hewlett said. “I began to see these people announcing, and none of them live in the district. At first I thought that can’t be right so I looked it up in the Constitution. Sure enough, you only have to be a resident of the state and meet an age requirement.
“I thought that was ridiculous because I want people that live in my district to represent me.”
Other Races:
• IA-St. Sen.: As expected, Democrats will tap former TV anchor Liz Mathis in the crucial special election in the 18th SD. Mathis won't be formally named until Sept. 28, but she says that she'll be the nominee. More unexpectedly, though, Republicans selected Linn County Republican Party co-chair Cindy Golding, who won an outright majority on the first ballot at the nominating convention.
Redistricting Roundup:
• OH Redistricting: Ordinarily I don't pay a lot of attention to maps released by minority parties, because they never stand a chance of going anywhere. But I'll give the Ohio Dems credit for cleverness on this one. They just introduced legislation which features a map (see it here) that won a redistricting contest sponsored by some good government groups. The sly detail here is that the map was drawn by a Republican state legislator! Okay, it's not that perfect, since the creator is actually a state Rep. in Illinois, not Ohio, but that's still pretty amusing. There's also some p.r. value to this map here, unlike in other states, because Democrats may still have a shot at overturning the GOP's redistricting legislation at the ballot box. Thanks to Republican chicanery, that's looking unlikely, but if it does happen, this map helps to demonstrate how crazy the actual map is.
• PA Redistricting: God bless Joe Pitts. The senior Republican member of Pennsylvania's congressional delegation is balking at redistricting plans which would shore up the seats of fellow GOPers Pat Meehan and Jim Gerlach while making his own seat bluer. That's not to say "blue": The current 16th CD went for Bush by over twenty points both times. But Pitts is probably fearful because Barack Obama did wildly better, losing by just a 51-48 margin. Pitts also lives in the easternmost portion of the district and Republicans want him to move west; even if he's trading Rs for Rs, it seems like he wants to stay among those most familiar to him. But really, he's being absurdly paranoid, and if it causes the GOP to draw a sub-optimal map for themselves, terrific.
• UT Redistricting: Utah legislators have whittled down their list of proposed congressional maps to just six, which you can view here. Only one of the plans goes for the Salt Lake City "donut" hole; the rest are all variants on the "pizza slice" plan, though some of these pies were clearly cut up by blind tree sloths.
• Redistricting: ProPublica has a lengthy piece on the infusion of special interest money — particularly from the Koches — into the redistricting process.