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
* Though Jeanine Pirro insists she’s in the New York Senate race against Hillary Clinton for the long haul, she’ll sit down today with Gov. George Pataki (R) to discuss whether to give up<\/a> and run for state attorney general. The NYT reports that the Pataki meeting may hint that the Pirro camp is “orchestrating a switch<\/a>” in races. One question that remains: if Pirro quits the Senate race, will anyone run against Clinton?<\/p>\n * Texas’ gubernatorial campaign is getting a little crowded with top-tier candidates from three different parties. Among Republicans, Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn (R) is taking on incumbent Gov. Rick Perry (R) in a GOP primary; independent candidate Kinky Friedman is generating fairly serious support; and former Texas Supreme Court justice Bob Gammage announced yesterday that he’s likely to seek the Democratic gubernatorial nomination<\/a>. Gammage, who served 25 years in public office, including stints in the Texas Legislature and in Congress, wants to take aim at the “incompetence and corruption” of Republicans in power. He’d likely face former Rep. Chris Bell (D), who was re-redistricted out of a job last year, in a Dem primary.<\/p>\n * After Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman (D) announced that he has dropped out of Ohio’s gubernatorial race, many Dems assumed Rep. Ted Strickland (D) would be able to run over the next year without the challenge and expense of a primary fight. Now that’s less likely. Ohio State Sen. Eric Fingerhut (D), who had backed Coleman, formed an exploratory committee<\/a> yesterday to gauge his chances in a gubernatorial campaign. Fingerhut ran unsuccessfully against Sen. George Voinovich (R) last year, losing by 28 points.<\/p>\n * The National Republican Senatorial Committee recently began airing attack ads against Cranston, R.I., Mayor Steve Laffey (R) as part of an effort to bolster incumbent Sen. Linc Chafee (R). They’re not working. According to Taegan Goddard<\/a>, a new National Research Inc. (R) poll finds that the ads may be backfiring — 61% of GOP respondents said they had seen the ads, and of those, 34% of them said they were now more likely to vote for Laffey.<\/p>\n * As if Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) didn’t have enough to worry about, the list of people hoping to challenge him in a Dem primary continues to grow. In September, State Sen. Rick Metsger (D), a former TV news anchor, said he’s likely to run. This week, State Sen. Vicki Walker (D) said she’s “highly likely<\/a>” to throw her hat in the ring and will formally announce her plan in a few weeks. Hanging over the race is former two-term Gov. John Kitzhaber (D), whom some party officials have contacted about returning to politics.<\/p>\n * Kalyn Free (D) may have come up short in her congressional campaign in Oklahoma last year, but she’s using the lessons she learned to create a new political group intended to boost Native Americans’ political clout. Patterned after EMILY’s List, Free has created the Indigenous Democratic Network<\/a> (INDN’s List), which will groom Democratic Native American leaders for political office.<\/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: * Though Jeanine Pirro insists she’s in the New York Senate race against Hillary Clinton for the long haul, she’ll sit down today with Gov. George Pataki (R) to discuss whether to give […]<\/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-5978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5978","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=5978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}