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8:22 AM PT: WA State Senate: A bummer, but not unexpected: Democratic state Sen. Nathan Schlicher has conceded the special election to Republican state Rep. Jan Angel, after late-counted ballots failed to narrow Angel's lead (which now stands at 52-48). In June's often predictive top-two primary, Angel led by a 55-45 margin, so Schlicher did manage to close the gap considerably. But Schlicher had only been appointed to the job earlier this year, while Angel had been elected to the same turf three times. Combined with the now-classic Democratic problem of mobilizing off-year voters, this was enough to give Republicans a victory.
It also means that Democrats would now need to win two seats in next year's regularly scheduled elections to take back the Senate from the GOP, which is still in the minority but controls the chamber thanks to the support of two renegade Democrats. Unfortunately, thanks to that top-two primary system, those two wayward Dems, Rodney Tom and Tim Sheldon, would be hard to beat, so mainstream Democrats will likely target Republicans. And one of those targets could very well be... Jan Angel. Schlicher would be the most obvious choice to take her on, but understandably, he's not ready to talk about his plans for 2014 yet.
9:06 AM PT (Darth Jeff): Site Features: If you're anything like us you're probably wondering, "When's the next election?" Don't worry, we got you covered. We've updated our elections calendar for the rest of 2013.
Looking ahead, Nov. 12 hosts the mayoral race in Tulsa between Republican incumbent Dewey Bartlett and his Democratic predecessor Kathy Taylor, and Nov. 16 features the competitive general election in LA-05 between state Sen. Neil Riser and businessman Vance McAllister (both Republicans). Nov. 19 also has a few exciting races. Democrats are trying to pickup an Assembly seat in Wisconsin and a state Senate seat in Iowa in two districts narrowly won by Mitt Romney; San Diego also has its mayoral primary that day.
We've also added a 2014 calendar to begin tracking next year's elections. We currently have scheduled special Congressional and state legislative elections as well as big city mayoral races. We'll be updating the 2014 calendar constantly as notable new candidates enter and new races are held.
9:31 AM PT: VA State Senate: With Democratic state Sen. Ralph Northam's victory in the race for lieutenant governor, a very important special election will soon take place to replace him. It's very important because the Senate is currently split 20-20 between the parties. If Democrats can hold his 6th District seat, Northam would be able to break ties in favor of the Dems; if Republicans pick it up, then they'd control the chamber outright, 21 to 19.
Already, interest is very high in the race, with three Democrats and two Republicans declaring their candidacies so far. A date for the special has not yet been called, but Democrats will pick a nominee at a caucus on Nov. 16, while Republicans will conduct a "firehouse" primary on Nov. 21. On paper, the 6th is pretty blue: According to Daily Kos Elections' calculations, it went for Barack Obama 57-42 last year. But Virginia Republicans have been able to win such districts in the past, thanks in part to off-year drop off in Democratic performance, so this seat will likely be heavily contested.
And if Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring manages to pull out a victory in the attorney general's race, his 33rd District would come up for grabs as well, though that's a bit safer at 59-39 Obama. His opponent, state Sen. Mark Obenshain, sits in a solidly Republican seat that went 60-38 for Mitt Romney.
10:21 AM PT: KY-06: Businessman Joe Palumbo, the son of longtime state Rep. Ruth Ann Palumbo, has dropped out of the race to unseat freshman GOP Rep. Andy Barr, citing a desire to spend time with his family. (I never understand this. Did he not remember he had young children when he entered the race?) That leaves nonprofit executive Elisabeth Jensen as the likely Democratic frontrunner, though this seat is a serious reach for Team Blue.
10:39 AM PT: PA-13: Seriously? In the previous Digest, we mentioned that the local branch of the Iron Workers had endorsed state Sen. Daylin Leach in the Democratic primary to succeed Rep. Allyson Schwartz. Now the union is trying to say "backsies!" and is instead endorsing state Rep. Brendan Boyle, with their business manager claiming that he somehow mixed up the two candidates' names. I find that very hard to believe, especially since Leach's campaign says they confirmed the endorsement with the union's president. As PoliticsPA notes, most of the building trades unions have gone for Boyle, so maybe the Iron Workers didn't want to be the odd man out. Still, this is very dodgy.
10:58 AM PT: GA-Gov: With state Sen. Jason Carter's entry into the Georgia governor's race, Democrats now have a credible challenger to take on Gov. Nathan Deal next year. While the climb is still exceptionally tough for any Democrat in Georgia, Carter's famous surname, the early polling, and the fact that the DGA's already backing him suggest he could throw a scare into Deal. Carter has a lot to prove, especially on the fundraising front, but an upset is no longer impossible. Therefore, we're changing our rating on this race from Safe Republican to Likely Republican.
11:27 AM PT: OH-Gov: It looks like the tentacles of the Suarez Corporation scandal wound up reaching higher than previously thought. On Wednesday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that GOP Rep. Jim Renacci wrote a letter to fellow Republican Gov. John Kasich in an attempt to get him to intervene on behalf of Benjamin Suarez, whose direct marketing firm was being targeted by local prosecutors in California. Suarez also reached out to Kasich directly, and his office claimed that the requests died there, with Suarez being told "we can't help you."
Well, someone on John Kasich's staff should have done a little more research before issuing that blanket denial, because a follow-up report on Thursday busted that claim completely. It turns out that Kasich's chief counsel sent a letter to California Attorney General Kamala Harris, asking her to "determine whether anything improper has occurred" in the Napa County DA's investigation of Suarez Corp. (Harris's response was a polite version of GTFO.)
Suarez, of course, had donated to Kasich's campaign (over $22,000), in addition to the donations he illegally smurfed through his company's employees to Renacci and state Treasurer Josh Mandel. (Mandel also wrote letters on Suarez's behalf.) All three have since either returned the contributions or donated them to charity, and none of these officials are directly implicated in the structuring scheme for which Benjamin Suarez and his company are currently being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's office.
But their willingness to help a shady character with such a shady undertaking—even a Kasich spokesman admitted that Suarez's requests were "inappropriate, and frankly, a little weird"—don't make them look especially good. And Kasich's denial that he'd ever helped Suarez was just boneheadedly stupid.
11:42 AM PT: NJ State Assembly: One other race that's gone into overtime is in New Jersey's 38th Assembly District, where, well, just take a look at this crazy tally from election night:
Yep, a virtual four-way tie at 25 percent apiece. As it happens, though, the results have grown even closer since then, and Democratic Assemblyman Tim Eustace is now
just 59 votes behind Republican Joseph Scarpa. (The top two finishers in each district get elected to the Assembly.) Democrats are expressing optimism that uncounted provisionals will allow Eustace to hang on to his seat, though of course Republicans are contesting these claims. But if Dems are right, then the party will have lost just one seat in the entire legislature (Nelson Albano in AD-01), despite Gov. Chris Christie's huge 22-point win at the top of the ticket on Tuesday night.
11:55 AM PT: P.S. On Thursday night, PPP teased a new poll it had conducted for the Ohio Democratic Party, saying that Kasich and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald are tied at 41 apiece (with 6 percent for Libertarian Charlie Earl), while state Rep. Connie Pillich leads Treasurer (and 2012 GOP Senate nominee) Josh Mandel 47-43. Tom Jensen tweeted that the OH Dems would release full results on Friday, but it looks like those plans have been delayed.
12:16 PM PT: VA AG: The Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman has been doing yeoman work tracking all the developments in the ongoing count in Virginia's ultra-tight race for attorney general, but if you're just tuning in and looking for a good overview of where things stand, check out this piece by the Washington Post's Ben Pershing. Pershing sums up what Wasserman's been tweeting all along: that heavily Democratic Fairfax County is reporting too few absentee ballots in the portion of the county contained in the state's 8th Congressional District, as compared to the parts of Fairfax in VA-10 and VA-11.
Wasserman estimates there might be over 3,000 such absentees uncounted, which would put Democrat Mark Herring narrowly in the lead if they break down the same way as Fairfax's votes have overall. But a previously uncounted pocket of votes in deep red Bedford County put Republican Mark Obenshain up around 1,000 votes, while we're still waiting for Fairfax to figure out just what the hell is going on. Stay, it goes without saying, tuned.
12:31 PM PT: And no sooner did I post that update than Pershing filed a new story of his own, with new information from Fairfax County. Due to a broken voting machine, there may be as many as 1,951 uncounted votes in the county, but if so, that probably wouldn't be enough for Herring to take the lead, since according to the state Board of Elections, Obenshain's edge is now 1,300.
12:39 PM PT: NJ-05: This report from PolitickerNJ is very thin, but supposedly Democratic state Sen. Bob Gordon, who just narrowly won re-election on Tuesday night, is considering a bid for Congress against GOP Rep. Scott Garrett. Even though Garrett's seat went for Mitt Romney by a narrow 51-48 margin last year, it contains some very rock-ribbed Republican turf that's not amenable to crossover voting, making it a tough reach for Democrats. But Garrett is also wildly conservative—probably the most right-wing lawmaker north of the Mason-Dixon line—so his extreme views could help put this seat in play.
12:55 PM PT: MA-Gov: For a candidate with massive leads in the polls, state AG Martha Coakley sure hasn't translated that into serious fundraising prowess since her entry into the governor's race in mid-September. In new reports covering the period of Sept. 16 through Oct. 31, Coakley was third among Democrats in money raised, with just $109,000. She was beaten by state Treasurer Steve Grossman ($305,000) and former Department of Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem ($158,000). Coakley's haul seems especially weak in light of the fact that she earned the endorsement EMILY's List immediately after announcing.
1:08 PM PT: VA-Gov: Just a few (final?) notes on the polling in Virginia. Mark Blumenthal pushes back against the notion that some "shy" Ken Cuccinelli supporters were reluctant to tell pollsters what their true preferences were. Chiefly, says Blumenthal, if this has been a genuine phenomenon, it would have screwed up McAuliffe's internal polling as well, not just the public polls. But as we've been told, Hart Research's numbers always had the race close and didn't suffer from this "shy voter" problem. At the same link, there's also some discussion of the Emerson College Polling Society, with a bit of explanation about the group's methodology from their faculty advisor.
1:17 PM PT: NY-19: Democrat Frank Steinherr, an attorney at the prominent New York City firm of Paul Weiss, says he's thinking about running for Congress in the 19th District, where wealthy investor Sean Eldridge is already taking on GOP Rep. Chris Gibson. In explaining his reasons for wanting to run, Steinherr seems to parrot Republican talking points about Eldridge (calling him an "opportunist"), but oddly, he seems to share at least one of the biggest knocks against Eldridge: carpetbagging.
Steinherr is described as being from the town of Windham, which is indeed in the district, but his profile page says he works at his firm's Manhattan office. So unless he's making a 5-hour round-trip commute every day, then presumably he doesn't live in the 19th right now. Also, Steinherr isn't some big rainmaking partner but rather an associate, so that tends to place him closer toward the Some Dude end of the spectrum.
1:27 PM PT: NC-06: Former NASCAR driver and current TV commentator Kyle Petty says he won't run in the Republican primary for the seat that Rep. Howard Coble is leaving open due to his retirement.
2:08 PM PT: FL-13: Former Pinellas County Commissioner Neil Brickfield has become the latest Republican to say no to bid in the special election to replace the late Rep. Bill Young. So far, the only prominent candidate in the GOP primary is lobbyist David Jolly, a former attorney for Young.
2:18 PM PT: NJ-03: In Roll Call's latest Farm Team installment, Abby Livingston suggests a new possible name for New Jersey's suddenly open 3rd Congressional District: two-time All-Star pitcher Al Leiter, who spent seven seasons with the Mets but started and ended his career with the Yankees. Leiter's always been a Republican, but I swear I remember him starring in ads touting the "union carpenters and contractors" who maintained the old Shea Stadium and built the new Citi Field. (Third baseman David Wright has since taken over that role.) If my memory is correct, that sort of thing could harm Leiter in a GOP primary.
2:33 PM PT: AL-01: Businessman Dean Young, the conservative Christian tea partier who came very close to beating ex-state Sen. Bradley Byrne in Tuesday night's GOP runoff, hasn't ruled out run in the primary again next year. Young lost 52-48 against the establishment-backed Byrne, who garnered hefty outside support while the right-wing purity brigades were almost entirely absent. Conservative columnist Quin Hillyer (who finished fourth in the primary and supported Byrne) opines that Byrne actually was simpatico with tea party types and that Young emphasized his religious beliefs far more than his economic views, the latter of which are all that matters to groups like the Club for Growth.
There's also another, orthogonal explanation for Young's loss: It was meddling Democrats what did it. Alabama has open primaries, leading Young's campaign to claim that some Democratic voters cast ballots for Byrne—and it wouldn't have taken many to tip the election in his favor. (There was no Dem runoff.) However, there's no party registration in Alabama, so it's impossible to say how many Democrats might have actually shown up on Tuesday, and both Byrne and local Democrats dispute Young's argument.
2:39 PM PT: NH-Sen: So now the NRSC is formally urging former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown to run for Senate in New Hampshire, but some Republicans are growing impatient. That includes a former chair of the state GOP, Fergus Cullen, who says: "He's keeping everyone guessing, but at the expense of making people wonder whether he's serious or not." Cullen says that despite Brown's frequent visits to the state, he still hasn't reached out to party leaders and power brokers, something echoed by Mitt Romney's former chief advisor in the state, who adds: "It doesn't seem like there's been any rhyme or reason to his engagement in New Hampshire."