{"id":3733,"date":"2005-03-14T12:01:41","date_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3733.html"},"modified":"2005-03-14T12:01:41","modified_gmt":"2005-03-14T17:01:41","slug":"mondays-political-round-up-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mondays-political-round-up-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday&#8217;s political round-up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My new <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/003667.html\">daily feature<\/a> about campaign-related news items that wouldn&#8217;t generate a post of their own, but may nevertheless be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n<p>* Asa Hutchinson (R) surprised absolutely no one over the weekend by announcing that <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/wireStory?id=574765\">he will run<\/a> for Arkansas governor next year. Hutchinson, a former congressman and former undersecretary of Homeland Security, will face Lt. Gov. Win Rockefeller in a GOP primary. The leading Dem candidate, at this point, is Arkansas Attorney General Mike Beebe.<\/p>\n<p>* After entirely too much speculation, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/nationworld\/nation\/la-na-rice14mar14,1,781006.story?coll=la-headlines-nation\">ruled out<\/a> a White House run in 2008. Since Rice describes herself as &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A30282-2005Mar12.html\">mildly pro-choice<\/a>,&#8221; it&#8217;s hard to see how she&#8217;d get the nomination anyway.<\/p>\n<p>* In some GOP circles, speculation about a possible presidential bid by Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.startribune.com\/stories\/587\/5288988.html\">increasingly common<\/a>. Grover Norquist said Pawlenty has caught the eye of elite conservative decision makers and described him as being &#8220;right up there&#8221; among the top 12 leading candidates for 2008.<\/p>\n<p>* With Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) having announced his retirement, a veritable legion of Dems are openly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rollcall.com\/issues\/50_86\/news\/8494-1.html\">considering the race<\/a>, including five of the state&#8217;s six Democratic House Members (Cummings, Cardin, Ruppersberger, Van Hollen, and Wynn) and former NAACP President Kweisi Mfume. Also in the mix is Prince George&#8217;s County States Attorney Glenn Ivey (D), a former Sarbanes aide. (<em>Update<\/em>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A33725-2005Mar14.html\">Mfume is officially in the race<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>* The flap surrounding DNC Chairman Howard Dean&#8217;s sealed gubernatorial papers &#8212; a controversy Dean has been dealing with for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/politicselections\/nation\/2003-12-02-dean-under-fire_x.htm\">very<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3606100\/\">long<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tnr.com\/primary\/index.mhtml?pid=1020\">time<\/a> &#8212; will go before Vermont&#8217;s Supreme Court <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/vermont\/articles\/2005\/03\/13\/vermont_high_court_set_to_hear_dispute_over_access_to_deans_records\/\">this week<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My new daily feature about campaign-related news items that wouldn&#8217;t generate a post of their own, but may nevertheless be of interest to political observers: * Asa Hutchinson (R) surprised absolutely no one over the weekend by announcing that he will run for Arkansas governor next year. Hutchinson, a former congressman and former undersecretary of [&hellip;]<\/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-3733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733","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=3733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}