{"id":3784,"date":"2005-03-21T11:56:44","date_gmt":"2005-03-21T16:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3784.html"},"modified":"2005-03-21T11:56:44","modified_gmt":"2005-03-21T16:56:44","slug":"mondays-political-round-up-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mondays-political-round-up-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday’s political round-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

My new daily feature<\/a> about campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n

* In Rhode Island, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) took a pass late last year on challenging Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.) in 2006, and endorsed Rep. James Langevin (D), the current Dem front-runner, who’s leading Chafee in state polls. Apparently, however, Kennedy’s interest is not yet completely gone. Roll Call reported<\/a> today that people close to Kennedy are “encouraging him to rethink his decision.” All the relevant players are, at this point, non-committal.<\/p>\n

* Illinois State Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, the state’s only Republican to hold statewide office, demurred when party leaders asked her to run for the Senate last year, but Topinka’s interest in a promotion is still on track. Word is, she will announce<\/a> a campaign to take on Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) in next year’s gubernatorial race after the legislative session ends.<\/p>\n

* The New York Post (hardly the media’s most reliable source) is reporting that Rudy Giuliani is going to hold a hold a summit of top advisers within a month to “set the direction<\/a>” for his political future. If the article is accurate, Giuliani is still considering next year’s gubernatorial race, which he’ll pursue with more enthusiasm if he concludes he can’t win the GOP presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

* When Gov. Jim McGreevey (D) left office last year, New Jersey Republicans thought they were poised for a major comeback in the state. That was before the party “descended into months of chaos<\/a>” and disarray, which give the Dems an upper-hand going into this year’s election. At this point, polls show Jon Corzine (D) with a big lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n

* In an unusual move for a first-term senator in his rookie year, Sen. Barak Obama (D-Ill.) is starting a political action committee<\/a>. The PAC will be called the Hope Fund.<\/p>\n

* Speaking of PACs, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack (D), a possible presidential candidate in 2008, is also setting up his own<\/a> action committee and has snared B.J. Thornberry, who until recently served as executive director of the Democratic Governors’ Association, to run it. Vilsack’s PAC will reportedly focus on Dem gubernatorial candidates in the 2006 cycle.
\n
\n* Arizona Dems don’t yet have a leading candidate, but the party is nevertheless going after Sen. Jon Kyl (R) with increased vigor<\/a> lately. Kyl was supposed to be a vulnerable incumbent in 2000, but Dems didn’t even a field a candidate. This year, State Democratic Party Chairman Jim Pederson has been mentioned as a possible rival for Kyl.<\/p>\n

* Howard Dean may be helping<\/a> the DNC raise money, but Dems have a ways to go to catch up to the Republicans. The RNC has jumped out to a big lead<\/a> in the fundraising race — it announced last week that it has raised more than $21 million since the beginning of the year, which is more than double the DNC fundraising over the same months.<\/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 be of interest to political observers: * In Rhode Island, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D) took a pass late last year on challenging Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R.) in 2006, and endorsed Rep. James Langevin (D), the current Dem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784","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=3784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}