{"id":3793,"date":"2005-03-22T11:59:10","date_gmt":"2005-03-22T16:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3793.html"},"modified":"2005-03-22T11:59:10","modified_gmt":"2005-03-22T16:59:10","slug":"tuesdays-political-round-up-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/tuesdays-political-round-up-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday&#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>* In Pennsylvania, a new poll shows state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. (D) leading Rick &#8220;Man on Dog&#8221; Santorum (R) by the narrowest of margins &#8212; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pennlive.com\/news\/patriotnews\/index.ssf?\/base\/news\/1111487079138000.xml\">44% to 43%<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>* Also in Pennsylvania, re-election looks far safer for Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, who <a href=\"http:\/\/pittsburghlive.com\/x\/tribune-review\/trib\/regional\/s_315859.html\">leads all of his potential Republican rivals<\/a>, including former Pittsburgh Steelers&#8217; receiver Lynn Swann, former Lt. Gov. Bill Scranton, and Senate Majority Whip Jeffrey Piccola. Scranton is the most competitive, but he&#8217;s still trailing by 10 points (47% to 37%).<\/p>\n<p>* Former state Attorney General Jerry Kilgore (R) <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A54825-2005Mar21.html\">kicked off<\/a> his gubernatorial campaign in Virginia yesterday. He&#8217;ll be hitting the trail with more popular state Republicans, including Sen. John Warner and former Gov. Jim Gilmore, this morning for a daylong, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.roanoke.com\/news\/roanoke\\20551.html\">statewide tour<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>* Speaking of Virginia, Kilgore&#8217;s rival, Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine (D), started running radio ads yesterday. It&#8217;s a pitch that should resonate in this conservative state: &#8220;I&#8217;m Tim Kaine. I&#8217;m running for Governor, and I&#8217;d like to tell you about myself. My family and Christian faith are the core values that guide me. I&#8217;m tight with a dollar; my own dollar and the public&#8217;s dollar. I&#8217;m a dedicated husband who holds his marriage vows sacred and I&#8217;m the father of three great kids. As a young man, I served for a year as a Christian missionary teaching religion, carpentry and welding to poor children in Honduras, to help them improve their lives and expand their opportunities. From that experience I learned that every individual can make a difference. The Bible teaches us that we accomplish great things when we work together. As governor, I will bring people together &#8212; Republicans, Democrats, working people, business and community leaders &#8212; to keep us on the right track and bring economic opportunity to all areas of Virginia. These are my values and that&#8217;s what I believe.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>* Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R), the target of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/news\/articles\/0321AzinDC21.html\">recent attention by the DSCC<\/a>, must be at least a little nervous about his re-election chances. After all, he&#8217;s calling in the big guns: <a href=\"http:\/\/phoenix.bizjournals.com\/phoenix\/stories\/2005\/03\/21\/daily13.html\">Karl Rove and Bill Frist<\/a> will be hosting fund raisers for Kyl over the next few weeks.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\n* The tension between the seven Republicans vying for the GOP nod in this year&#8217;s gubernatorial race in New Jersey was ratcheted up a bit yesterday. A consultant for businessman Doug Forrester, one of the seven, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/22\/nyregion\/22jersey.html\">contacted state party activists<\/a> saying that nominating former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler would be a &#8220;recipe for disaster.&#8221; He also asked Republicans not to &#8220;support any candidate who supports the destruction of the party.&#8221; For some reason, Schundler&#8217;s camp was less than pleased by the missive.<\/p>\n<p>* New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (R) appears to have a real fight on his hands for re-election. According to two polls out yesterday, Fernando Ferrer (D), the Democratic former Bronx borough president, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2005\/03\/22\/nyregion\/22mayor.html?pagewanted=all\">leading the race<\/a> by a fairly comfortable margin. One of the polls, taken for NY1 News and Newsday, shows Ferrer leading Bloomberg 49% to 35%. The other, a WNBC\/Marist College Institute poll, showed things a little closer, with Ferrer leading 49% to 42%.<\/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: * In Pennsylvania, a new poll shows state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. (D) leading Rick &#8220;Man on Dog&#8221; Santorum (R) by the narrowest of margins &#8212; 44% to 43%. * [&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-3793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793","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=3793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3793\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}