The Utah GOP primary is on June 22nd: Tim Bridgewater is one of the two candidates who will be competing for the nomination. He checked in with us today:
Tim’s site is here.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
Tag: senate
State of the Race: Mike Lee (R CAND, UT-SEN).
#rsrh Rossi in, Simmons out: the implications.
Dino Rossi, a two-time Republican nominee for governor in Washington, is set to announce, likely on Wednesday, that he is running for Senate, according to a G.O.P. official.
…and Simmons out.
Former Connecticut Rep. Rob Simmons announced Tuesday that he is suspending his campaign for Senate, just days after he lost the state Republican Party nomination to former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon.
Continue reading #rsrh Rossi in, Simmons out: the implications.
Crist, will Greene Sink Meek?
Well… no. But it was too obnoxious a title to pass up.
Prior to everything else: Rubio.
I had originally titled this as “Democrats get their own Orange Guy in Florida,” but it isn’t fair to hold the tint control in Jeff Greene’s introductory video against him*. Greene is the Big Meanie who has just swooped into the Florida race to ruin Rep. Kendrick Meek’s and Senator Robert Menendez’s day; he’s got no real qualifications except having money, but he apparently makes up for that by having a lot of money. Enough money, in fact, that he’s telling people not to give more than $100 apiece: that translates to “I’m going to self-fund this windmill tilt.”
And that means, yeah, he doesn’t have a chance of getting the nomination. Not to be unnecessarily blunt about it, but the Democrats are not going to abandon their only African-American major candidate for Senator, and no matter that Meek was a sacrificial lamb in the first place; he’s their sacrificial lamb, darn it, and there are limits. Also, the fact that Greene so helpfully has used his own introductory video to give us an idea of what line of underhanded personal attacks to use against him in the primary** tells us that said attacks will be able to mine a rich vein of material. So I don’t expect this guy to win. But I expect that he’ll make the Democrats pay for that win.
Through the nose***.
Moe Lane
Portman rivals Rubio in 1Q fundraising: 2.35 million.
Rob Portman announced today that his U.S. Senate campaign raised $2.35 million during the first three months of 2010 and has $7.6 million cash-on-hand. More than 5,600 individuals contributed to the campaign during the first quarter, bringing the total number of individual supporters to more than 13,000 – over 80 percent of whom are Ohioans.
Couple that with his polling outside the MoE on the latest Rasmussen and Portman’s having himself a decent quarter here. As opposed to his Democratic counterparts, who are currently rather busy cutting each other into ribbons over whether or not there’s a whispering campaign going on:
[OH SOS Jennifer] Brunner told The Vindicator during a Friday telephone interview that her criticism is “obviously getting under his skin. I have evidence, but when people who support me tell me these things they’re afraid to let me give their names. There are numerous instances where either he or his wife will say to people that the governor has endorsed [Lt. Gov.] Lee [Fisher]. People won’t come forward because they’re scared.”
Meanwhile, Fisher is bragging about his role in the 172K job loss in Ohio in 2009.
No, really.
Moe Lane
PS: Support Rob Portman anyway. There’s always the chance that the Democrats will wise up and nominate a functional candidate for Ohio Senate.
Crossposted to RedState.
Barbara Boxer (D, CA) to get primary challenger: Mickey Kaus.
Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer for her seat. He said he took out filed papers at with the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters, although a spokeswoman there could not yet confirm the filing.
The Democrat has been centrist and even conservative on some of the issues on which Boxer has taken a more left-leaning stand, including immigration: He does not favor amnesty and favors a more restrictive national policy.
Mickey’s even admitted to it on his site, which would explain why it’s not been updated for a week otherwise. For obvious reasons, I’m not endorsing him – a hypothetical Senator Kaus would caucus with the Democrats, which breaks the first rule of my endorsement criteria – but if you’re a Democrat who is tired of a liberal idiot* or idiots representing you, well, do something useful about it. Nobody cares if you’re just going to be mortified.
Moe Lane Continue reading Barbara Boxer (D, CA) to get primary challenger: Mickey Kaus.
Barbara Mikulski and the Democratic margin of error.
As in, there isn’t one.
Jim Geraghty dumped a bit of cold water on this not-yet-officially-refuted rumor that Senator Mikulski is planning to retire:
…the least she’s ever gotten in a Senate race is 60 percent. Evan Bayh faced a tough reelection bid, but Mikulski’s biggest-name opponent so far, is Queen Anne’s County Commissioner Eric Wargot. She’s raised $3 million, he’s raised $176,526. Even in a terrible year for Democrats, she should be safe.
If Mikulski is contemplating retirement, it’s not because she fears she’ll lose in 2010.
…which is true enough: if Mikulski is retiring (we should probably get that confirmed today), it won’t be because of the current political environment.
But from now on, reasons for Democratic drop-outs no longer matter. Particularly in the Senate. Continue reading Barbara Mikulski and the Democratic margin of error.
DOOM for Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D, AR)? #rsrh
Maybe, maybe not – but when Tom Jensen feels the need to start his preview of the Senate race in Arkansas with the sentence “[w]e are going to have Blanche Lincoln-John Boozman numbers tomorrow* and they aren’t pretty for Lincoln” you can be reasonably certain that they won’t be giving out free kittens and ice cream at the Arkansas Democrat party HQ in celebration of the news. The general impression that I’m getting, in fact, is that when it comes to November the difference between Lincoln and other potential Democratic alternatives is going to be mostly in seeing how far the rubble bounces…
Moe Lane
*This was written yesterday, so expect the news sometimes Tuesday morning.
Breaking: thank you for DE-SEN, Democrats.
(Via AoSHQ) Beau Biden looked at the calendar, looked at the actuarial tables, and decided to wait until 2014.
Delaware attorney general Beau Biden announced Monday that he will not seek election to the U.S. Senate seat once held by his father, Vice President Joe Biden.
The younger Biden told supporters in an e-mail that he will run for re-election as attorney general rather than seek the Senate seat his father held for 36 years.
Biden’s decision comes on the heels of a GOP upset in Massachusetts last week that ended the Democrats’ filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. It leaves veteran Republican congressman and former two-term governor Mike Castle, one of the most successful politicians in Delaware history, still waiting for a Democratic opponent.
I’m translating, mind you. Also, I’m not really surprised.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
NEXT.
Also: [ahem] “See, I told you so.”
[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers – and I assure you, I don’t ever want to get on Glenn’s bad side. I heard that he once linked a site in Reno, just to watch it crash…
This message goes out to every vulnerable Democratic Congressman representing a Republican or even centrist district – and after tonight, who among you is not vulnerable? It is a simple message: we can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way. The easy way is, you suddenly decide that you have a burning desire to spend more time with your families. So you don’t run for re-election, you walk off stage technically undefeated, and you go join a lobbying firm. The hard way is, you do run for re-election, and we pry you out of your seats.
We want to do this the hard way. We will enjoy doing it.
That’s your only warning. And remember: nobody is going to be able to save you. If the President, the DSCC, the DCCC, the DNC, the SEIU, ACORN, and the netroots couldn’t manage a win in Massachusetts… what do you think that they can do for you?
Moe Lane
PS: To my readers… go have a drink. Go have a few. Celebrate. Tomorrow, we talk about how we’re going to take FL-19 and HI-01 away from the Democratic party.
PPS: More than a few people wanted me to mock specific members of the netroots in this post – but when I’m on my way to the main hall to deliver a message I see no reason why I should stop at the kennels along the way. Continue reading NEXT.