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
* Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) has obviously not ruled out<\/a> a presidential campaign in 2008, telling an audience of business executives yesterday, “I won’t decide until next year. I can’t make that decision yet, it’s a little premature to make it.”<\/p>\n * Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D) said yesterday he won’t take on Sen. George Allen (R) next year, but the popular governor did pledge<\/a> to help find a Dem who will. Warner also said that he’d consider “coming back and looking at a gubernatorial race again in 2009.” Virginia is the nation’s only state that does not allow incumbent governors to seek re-election.<\/p>\n * Lending support to the Bush gang’s concerns about Florida next year, a new Quinnipiac poll<\/a> shows Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) widening his lead over Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) in recent weeks. The latest data shows Nelson up, 57% to 33%. A plurality of self-identified Republicans in Florida said Nelson will win if Harris is the GOP candidate.<\/p>\n * On paper, Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) looks like a pretty safe incumbent representing a conservative “red” district, but pilot Steve Filson is poised to make it a race to watch<\/a> in 2006. Filson, who flew Navy attack bombers for eight years before becoming a United Airlines pilot in 1978, was heavily recruited by the DCCC, while Pombo is caught up in Tom DeLay’s scandals<\/a>.<\/p>\n * There may be some fluidity<\/a> to the field of Dems hoping to take on California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) next year, but Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) insisted yesterday that he won’t be in the race<\/a>. “I’m like a kid in a candy store right now — I love being mayor of the city that I was born in, raised in, that my grandpa came to 100 years ago,” Villaraigosa said. “I’m going to be mayor of the city of Los Angeles for the next four years.”<\/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: * Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) has obviously not ruled out a presidential campaign in 2008, telling an audience of business executives yesterday, “I won’t decide until next year. I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125","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=5125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}