Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* Top Republican officials, including Karl Rove, pushed hard to get Louisiana Treasurer John Kennedy to leave the Dems and join the GOP, and yesterday, he did. The plan is apparently to have Kennedy run against Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) next year. (That’s fine, I suppose, but what would possess someone to join the GOP right now?)
* The Politco reported yesterday that Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) presidential campaign picked up a major boost by earning the endorsement of the International Association of Firefighters. As Ben Smith explained, “The firefighters carry a special cachet among organized labor for a couple of reasons. The post-9/11 symbolism of firefighters is powerful. And as the union proved in 2004, they are willing to come out in force for an underdog, and send members from around the country to early states to work hard. In 2004, the underdog was John Kerry, and Schaitberger was a prominent figure in his campaign.” I’ve heard this morning, however, that the IAFF has not yet formally backed anyone, and the Politico report may have been premature.
* Speaking of endorsements, Barack Obama picked up the support of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter. “There is a need for a fundamental rethinking of how we conduct world affairs, and Obama seems to me to have both the guts and the intelligence to address that issue and to change the nature of America’s relationship with the world,” Brzezinski said.
* The DNC has threatened Florida Dems, and said the state must move its primary to Feb. 5 (or later) or it will lose its convention delegates. Yesterday, Florida officials and representatives said they weren’t budging.
* And in response to the Louisiana Democratic Party’s controversial ad highlighting gubernatorial hopeful Bobby Jindal’s (R) decade-old, anti-Protestant articles, the conservative Republican candidate is threatening to sue television stations that air the ad. According to letters Jindal is sending station managers, the ad is defamatory and slanderous.