My new daily feature about campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may nevertheless be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Doris Matsui, the widow of Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Calif.) is in a 12-way special election for her husband’s seat in Congress. She remains the odds-on favorite<\/a>, but with 11 opponents, breaking the 50% threshold may be tricky. The run-off race, should one be necessary, would by May 3.<\/p>\n * Also in California today is the Los Angeles mayoral race<\/a>.<\/p>\n * Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, the only Republican in West Virginia’s congressional delegation, has begun making noise<\/a> about taking on Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) next year. Byrd hasn’t had a competitive race in decades, but he hasn’t formally said whether he’ll seek re-election.<\/p>\n * House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and the Democratic staff of the House Rules Committee will release a detailed report today<\/a> called “Broken Promises: The Death of Deliberative Democracy.” It’s intended to document the unprecedented steps taken by the GOP majority in the 108th Congress to “stifle deliberation and quash dissent.”<\/p>\n * Dems have enjoyed a surprising resurgence in Montana of late, so much so that they think they might have a shot<\/a> at beating Sen. Conrad Burns’ (R) re-election bid next year. “This is one of the top races in the country,” said Brad Martin, executive director of the state Democratic Party. “Sen. Burns should be very concerned.”<\/p>\n * And, in a report I wish were a joke, Doug Friedline, who ran Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial campaign in 1998, is “working with a group of New Jersey residents urging actor and comedian Joe Piscopo to run for governor<\/a> of the Garden State.” Piscopo, for you younger Carpetbagger readers, hasn’t had a hit in a very, very long time<\/a>, but was on Saturday Night Live in the early ’80s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My new daily feature about campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may nevertheless be of interest to political observers: * Doris Matsui, the widow of Rep. Robert Matsui (D-Calif.) is in a 12-way special election for her husband’s seat in Congress. She remains the odds-on favorite, but with 11 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3691\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}