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:
* News consumers who feel like Hillary Clinton is dominating the media’s coverage of the presidential campaign happen to be right: “Hillary Clinton has drawn nearly twice as much media coverage as any Republican presidential candidate, making her the dominant figure in the race. But that coverage is more negative than positive, a new study says, in part because the former first lady is such an object of revulsion on conservative talk radio. In the first five months of the year, says the Project for Excellence in Journalism, 17 percent of the stories were about Clinton, followed by Barack Obama (14 percent), Rudy Giuliani (9 percent), John McCain (7 percent) and Mitt Romney (5 percent). Everyone else was a relative blip.”
* You can write this in your calendars, but use a pencil: “Iowa Democrats voted to move their caucuses from Jan. 14 to Jan. 3, the date the state’s Republicans decided on earlier this month. And what about New Hampshire’s primary? Secretary of State William Gardner has said he is determined to maintain the state’s first-in-the-nation status. Last week he said he was leaning toward Jan. 8.”
* Chris Dodd became the second senator to announce that he will oppose Michael Mukasey’s nomination as Attorney General.
* Mitt Romney, hoping to shore up additional support in New Hampshire, will get a bit of a boost with an endorsement from Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) today. As CNN noted, “Gregg is the Granite State’s senior U.S. senator, and served as governor before heading to Capitol Hill.”
* On CNN yesterday, Mike Huckabee stood by his previous comments, describing legalized abortion as the equivalent of a Holocaust. “I think it is,” Huckabee said. “I don’t know what else you can call it.”
* John Edwards yesterday described a proposal whereby prescription drug companies would wait two years before advertising new products to consumers: “Outlining a plan to regulate what he views as misleading drug ads, Edwards noted that annual spending on such ads nearly has quadrupled to $4 billion in the decade since the government relaxed rules on advertising directly to consumers.”
* The Florida Democratic Party hosted its annual convention yesterday, but because of its fight with the DNC over the primary calendar, Mike Gravel was the only candidate who showed up.
* Last week, after John McCain used Fox News footage in a campaign ad, the Republican network asked him to stop. TPM noticed that the network didn’t say a word when Rudy Giuliani used Fox News footage in his ads, prompting the network to announce that from now on, no candidate can use footage without permission.
* Rep. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) has said he will not run for New Mexico’s open U.S. Senate seat next year, but he’s apparently under “increasing pressure to reconsider that decision as Democrats have yet to come up with a candidate that can bring the party together.” Asked about the possibility, Udall spokeswoman Marissa Padilla said that “nothing has changed, and Tom Udall is not reconsidering.”
* In one of the more offensive campaigns in recent memory, Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) defeated former Sen. Max Cleland (D), thanks in part to ads comparing the heroic Democratic senator to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. But might there be some buyer’s remorse? An InsiderAdvantage/Majority Opinion poll found that Cleland, should he seek a rematch, would be pretty competitive with the incumbent. Chambliss still leads a hypothetical match-up, 36% to 24%, but a whopping 40% would be undecided.
* And in South Carolina over the weekend, John Edwards and comedian Stephen Colbert got into a mock-argument over who was the real “favorite son.” In a statement to reporters, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, the Edwards campaign said, “Stephen Colbert claims to represent a new kind of politics, but today we see he’s participating in the slash and burn politics that has no place in American discourse. The truthiness is, as the candidate of Doritos, Colbert’s hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese. John Edwards has never taken a dime from salty food lobbyists and America deserves a President who isn’t in the pocket of the snack food special interests.”