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:<\/p>\n
* Richard Morrison (D), who had been gearing up to take on Tom DeLay again next year, withdrew suddenly<\/a> yesterday, citing family and financial obligations. Morrison’s mother has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and he is also expecting his fifth child in a few months. Former Rep. Nick Lampson (D), however, announced that he’ll take on DeLay, while Houston City Councilman Gordon Quan (D), who is term-limited, is still considering the campaign. Lampson’s first fundraiser will be held Thursday<\/a> in DC.<\/p>\n * Former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld’s (R) interest in the New York governor’s race is more than just idle speculation. Weld acknowledged yesterday that he is “seriously considering<\/a>” running if Gov. George Pataki (R) and Rudy Giuliani (R) do not.<\/p>\n * Now that all the big names have turned the Michigan GOP down, Jane Abraham, the wife of former Energy Secretary and Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.), will meet with party leaders in DC this week about next year’s Senate race and is leaning towards launching<\/a> a campaign against incumbent Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D). Abraham has never served in government, but she ran a group called the Susan B. Anthony List — a conservative counterpart to EMILY’s List.<\/p>\n * Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), a Dem target next year, will face State Auditor John Morrison (D), who announced his candidacy<\/a> yesterday. Burns barely held on for a victory in 2000, when he eked out a 51%-victory over Brian Schweitzer (D), now Montana’s governor.<\/p>\n * The race to take on Connecticut Rep. Nancy Johnson (R) is getting a little crowded. State Sen. Chris Murphy (D) will file papers later this week to formally start his campaign<\/a>, but Murphy, who’ll enjoy establishment backing, will face J. Paul Vance, president of the Waterbury Board of Aldermen, in a Dem primary.<\/p>\n * Before former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse can take on Sen. Linc Chafee (R), he’ll have to get by Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown in the Dem primary. This week, the leading Dem released a poll showing that shouldn’t be too big a problem — White House leads Brown by 26 points, 49% to 23%<\/a>.<\/p>\n * The field of candidates ready to succeed Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who’s been nominated to be Bush’s top trade negotiator, has reached an almost-silly size. As of now, there are 13<\/em> candidates vying for their party’s nod — six Dems<\/a> and seven Republicans<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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: * Richard Morrison (D), who had been gearing up to take on Tom DeLay again next year, withdrew suddenly yesterday, citing family and financial obligations. Morrison’s mother has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic […]<\/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-4063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063","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=4063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}