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Leading Off:
• FL-13: Many groups issue endorsements that are worth little more than the time it takes to type up a press release, but the National Association of Realtors is not one of them. When they support a candidate, they often go big, frequently putting six and sometimes even seven figures behind their preferred horses. Last cycle, they spent most of their dough on Republicans, but they also backed some Democrats, and that could mean a lot for their newest endorsee, Alex Sink. Sink, of course, is running in the March special election to replace the late Bill Young, and if the Realtors shell out real money on her behalf, it'll give her a meaningful boost against her GOP opposition.
Senate:
• HI-Sen: Democratic Rep. Colleen Hanabusa just picked up the endorsement of the 18,000-strong International Longshore and Warehouse Union in her primary challenge to Sen. Brian Schatz. Schatz, though, has still earned much more labor support overall.
• MT-Sen: Sen. Max Baucus' nomination as U.S. ambassador to China is now official, but since the Senate is on vacation, he can't be confirmed until next year.
• NH-Sen: State Rep. Al Baldasaro says he's looking at a bid for Senate, but he may not exactly be what the GOP is hoping for. He's a birther, he thinks the U.N. is trying to ban fishing, and he claims that the state "sold" adopted kids to "a homosexual couple that's not married for $10,000." In other words, he's a Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.
• OR-Sen: Hah! Check out the Obama-Romney split on this new Oregon poll from Republican pollster Magellan Strategies. Their sample went for Romney—and by 6 points! I seem to recall Obama carrying the Beaver State by a dozen last year. If there's been an 18-point turnaround in presidential preference in this country, it's time to head for the hills.
• SD-Sen: Former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler, who started mooting a comeback bid as an independent last month, has some kind of announcement tour scheduled for Dec. 30, so it sure sounds like he's gonna go through with it. When Pressler's quixotic hopes first surfaced, we wondered whether he'd be more apt to pull votes from the likely GOP nominee, ex-Gov. Mike Rounds, since they share a party, or from Democrat Rick Weiland, since Pressler's migrated decidedly to the left since getting turned out of office in 1996.
Who knows if he'll pull any votes at all, but based on the themes Pressler's highlighting, it sure sounds like he's headed more in Weiland's direction than Rounds'. According to the Rapid City Journal, Pressler wants to "reform the tax code, raise taxes on the wealthy, and bring home American soldiers." Maybe item number one could qualify as a GOP priority on its own, but definitely not when coupled with item number two.
House:
• FL-19: So yep, Trey Radel is out of rehab and says he plans to get back to work, though lucky for him, Congress is on vacation for the next two weeks. Radel still isn't saying whether he'll seek re-election, though if he does, there's a very good chance he'll face some serious opposition in the GOP primary.
Other Races:
• VA State Senate: While a date for the special election to fill Attorney General-elect Mark Herring's state Senate seat hasn't been set yet, it sounds like it might be scheduled to coincide with the Jan. 7 special for Lt. Gov.-elect Ralph Northam's district. That would yield a very short official election window, but both parties have already picked candidates (and one Republican delegate is running as an independent). Also of note, the DLCC has already spent $150,000 across both Senate races so far. Democrats are trying to hold both seats to preserve the chamber's 20-20 balance, because Northam would be able to break ties.
Grab Bag:
• Campaigns: Republican operative Patrick Ruffini engages with a new set of data published by the New Organizing Institute compiling salary information for federal campaign staff who worked during the 2012 cycle. NOI's focus is on the pay disparity between men and women, and between whites and minorities, but Ruffini concentrates on something I noticed immediately when I saw NOI's Ethan Roeder first deliver this presentation at RootsCamp a week ago: There were apparently far more Democratic staffers than Republican ones, by a huge margin.
In fact, NOI identified almost 16,000 people who worked for Democrats but just 6,000 for Republicans. (And a fifth of those were in the employ of Linda McMahon's lavish Senate bid.) Roeder acknowledged that there were data collection difficulties, and anyone who's ever examined FEC reports knows just how inconsistent and unstructured they are. But one thing neither Roeder nor Ruffini mention is that it's easy to obfuscate just how large a campaign's staff is by hiring outside consulting firms, especially for things like field work. The check to your consultant will appear on your report, but no outsider will ever know how many people were paid as a result.
So it's very possible that Republicans have made up at least some of this gap with a greater reliance on outsourcing, especially given the more top-down, hierarchical nature of GOP campaigns. Confirming this, though, would require a further study of expenditures made to consulting firms, something that's not easy to do. And Ruffini offers some data from LinkedIn that suggests the "staff gap" may indeed be real. But it may not be quite so large as it looks at first glance.
• Fundraising: The DSCC outraised the NRSC once again in November, $5.1 million to $3.2 million, and has almost double the cash-on-hand, $12 million to $6.4 million. Year to date, the Democrats' Senate committee has taken in $48.6 million to just $32.7 million for the GOP.
Meanwhile, the DCCC also beat its GOP counterpart, $5 million to $4 million, and they have $27.6 million in cash-on-hand versus $19.6 million for the NRCC. Considering Republicans hold the majority in the House, this continued disparity is really something, though Democrats will need every penny.
• Resignations: This is pretty funny: Ballotpedia has put together a list of all the top-level state executives who resigned in 2013, and there are some serious doozies in here. Four were lieutenant governors (sucky job much?), including one mixed up with illegal gambling businesses (Florida), one busted for carrying on with multiple not-his-wife women on a state cell phone (Nebraska), and one who just wanted to bail in order to earn more money (Utah). The best, though, might be Arkansas' former treasurer—click through to enjoy!
• Site News: Daily Kos Elections will be going on a modified schedule for the final two weeks of the year. We'll be back to publishing the Digest regularly in 2014. Happy holidays!