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
* Tomorrow is the big day in the New Jersey GOP gubernatorial primary and a new poll, out this morning, shows the race tightening<\/a>. Businessman Doug Forrester still leads former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, but by a much closer margin than other recent polls showed. The new Quinnipiac data has Forrester with 35%, Schundler with 33%, with none of the other candidates breaking single-digits.<\/p>\n * Bob Novak has heard rumors that former Secretary of Commerce William Daley (D) is considering a primary challenge<\/a> to incumbent Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) next year. Daley was considered a leading gubernatorial candidate in 2002, but skipped the race, clearing the way for Blagojevich. Daley, brother to Chicago’s mayor, is now back in Chicago after a business stint in Texas and weighing his options.<\/p>\n * After a better-than-expected showing<\/a> in 2004, businessman Joe Donnelly (D) is considering<\/a> another campaign against Rep. Chis Chocola (R-Ind.). Donnelly is hoping to take advantage of the controversy<\/a> surrounding Chocola’s position on Social Security — he’s against it — which has weakened his position with voters.<\/p>\n * As expected, Kelly Doran (D), a wealthy real-estate developer, has formally entered<\/a> Minnesota’s Senate race. Doran has not yet indicated how much of his personal wealth he’d be willing to use on the race, though he has an estimated worth of more than $50 million. Other Dem candidates include Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar, child safety advocate Patty Wetterling, and philanthropist Ford Bell, while Republicans have rallied behind Rep. Mark Kennedy.<\/p>\n * And in the round-up within the round-up, Evan Bayh<\/a> (D-Ind.) sounds like a presidential candidate but remains coy about it, ditto for John Edwards<\/a>, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson<\/a> (D) has a very busy schedule this week in New Hampshire, and Virginia Gov. Mark Warner<\/a> (D) is making his first trip to Iowa this month. The moral of the story: the 2008 race has already begun.<\/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: * Tomorrow is the big day in the New Jersey GOP gubernatorial primary and a new poll, out this morning, shows the race tightening. Businessman Doug Forrester still leads former Jersey City Mayor […]<\/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-4377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377","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=4377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4377\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}