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:
* The extremely narrow race in Florida’s 13th congressional district is now heading to court. Local election officials declared Vern Buchanan (R) the winner by a 369-vote margin yesterday, prompting Christine Jennings (D) to file a lawsuit alleging “pervasive malfunctioning” in the district’s touch-screen voting machines. In all, 18,000 votes appear to have gone missing. (Buchanan’s explanation for his unearned victory, by the way, is particularly amusing.)
* In North Carolina’s 8th congressional district, a recount is underway, with Rep. Robin Hayes’ (R) lead over challenger Larry Kissell (D) shrinking to less than 350 votes, as of now. As the AP reported, Hayes saw his already-slim margin narrow by almost 120 votes after hundreds of provisional ballots were counted late last week.
* And in more undecided news, Rep. Jean Schmidt (R) still leads Victoria Wulsin (D) in Ohio’s 2nd congressional district, and the margin grew slightly after provisional and remaining absentee ballots were added to mix. Schmidt’s margin is now just over 2,900 votes in unofficial returns.
* When it comes to gender diversity, 2006 was a good year, but change is slow. The good news: the House will have its first female speaker, and there will be a record number of women lawmakers at the federal and state level. The bad news: at this rate, there still won’t be parity between men in women in Congress for several decades.
* And in 2008 news, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told CNN yesterday that he’s confident that voters would be ready to elect an African-American candidate as president. “I think the American people at their core are a decent people,” Obama said. “I think we still have prejudice in our midst, but I think the vast majority of Americans are willing to judge people on the basis of, you know, their ideas and their character.”