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
* The closely-watched Senate race in Ohio continues to be as competitive as expected. According to a new Rasmussen poll<\/a>, Sen. Mike DeWine (R) is ahead of both of his Dem rivals, but only by the slimmest of margins. According to Rasmussen, DeWine leads Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) 43% to 41%, and is ahead of Paul Hackett (D), 42% to 41%.<\/p>\n * In Colorado, former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter Jr. has been the only Dem running for governor in next year’s open-seat race, but party leaders have been quietly asking around, looking for a primary challenger. Late last week, State Rep. Gary Lindstrom (D) announced he, too, is running for governor<\/a>. While Ritter is considered a moderate who opposes abortion rights, Lindstrom is running as a solid progressive Dem, supporting universal health care, gay marriage, and a woman’s right to choose. The leading Republican candidates are Rep. Bob Beauprez and former University of Denver president Marc Holtzman.<\/p>\n * A new Rasmussen poll in Michigan shows good news for Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D), but even better news<\/a> for Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D). Granholm continues to lead Dick DeVos (R), 48% to 36%, though party leaders would feel more comfortable with her over the 50% threshold. In the Senate race, Stabenow leads Michael Bouchard, Keith Butler, and Jerry Zandstra by a minimum of 16 points.<\/p>\n * Former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) is apparently very serious<\/a> about possibly taking on incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D) in a primary fight. Kitzhaber personally called Kulongoski last week to tell him that he’s “seriously” considering the race and will announce a decision in January. Kitzhaber said he has come around to the view that being governor again might help him jump start a renewed debate over health care.<\/p>\n * The very crowded race to replace Rep. Ben Cardin (D) in Maryland just got more complicated. Veteran Baltimore TV newsman Andy Barth, who’s been a staple of the city’s TV news for 35 years, will announce today that he’s running in the Dem primary<\/a> and will enter as a top-tier candidate with wide name recognition. Barth joins John Sarbanes (Sen. Paul Sarbanes’ son), Iraq veteran Mishonda Baldwin, former Baltimore Health Commissioner Peter Beilenson, state Sen. Paula Hollinger, and lawyer Kevin O’Keeffe, all of whom have been running for months.<\/p>\n * And to repeat Taegan’s Goddard’s<\/a> joke of the day, I thought this was hilarious. “I’m a red-state governor, who failed at a couple of businesses, and I liked to party too much in college, and I recently got in a well-publicized bike accident. He’s a guy named George who’s done nothing more than live off his dad’s legacy. Together we wouldn’t just get elected president — together, we already are the president.” — Virginia Gov. Mark Warner (D), quoted by the Richmond Times-Dispatch<\/a>, joking about running for president with Sen. George Allen (R-VA) as his running mate.<\/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: * The closely-watched Senate race in Ohio continues to be as competitive as expected. According to a new Rasmussen poll, Sen. Mike DeWine (R) is ahead of both of his Dem rivals, but […]<\/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-5996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996","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=5996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}