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
* Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to cruise towards re-election, with the latest Siena College’s Research Institute poll<\/a> showing Clinton ahead of former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, 58% to 31%. State Republican leaders continue to pursue other potential candidates to take Clinton on, but no one seems interested. Clinton’s overall approval rating stands at 60%.<\/p>\n * A new poll commissioned by the Republican Party of Ohio shows Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell ahead of Attorney General Jim Petro in the state’s gubernatorial primary, 40% to 30%<\/a>. The same poll, however, showed both GOP candidates trailing Rep. Ted Strickland (D) in general election match-ups.<\/p>\n * In what may prove to be one of the key House races of 2006, Vanderburgh County Sheriff Brad Ellsworth formally kicked off<\/a> his congressional campaign against Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) yesterday. “I’m a sheriff. Not a politician,” Ellsworth said. “I swore an oath to protect this community. I intend to take that oath with me to Washington.” If fundraising is any indication, Hostettler has a problem — Ellsworth has already raised more money for the campaign than the incumbent.<\/p>\n * North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven’s (R) decision not to run for the Senate seems to have solidified Sen. Kent Conrad’s (D-N.D.) chances to win re-election. According to a new Rasmussen poll<\/a>, Conran enjoys double-digit leads over his GOP rivals, including a 13-point lead over Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem (R), 53% to 40%.<\/p>\n * Iowa’s gubernatorial race is slated to be one of the more competitive in the nation this year, but it’d be more exciting if more Iowans knew who was running. A new Iowa Poll showed that the race is “composed of a cast of relative unknowns<\/a>,” with most voters indicating that they’re not familiar with the major candidates.<\/p>\n * James Webb, a highly decorated Marine infantry officer in Vietnam and Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, was weighing a Senate campaign against Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) this year, but has reportedly decided not to run<\/a>. The most likely Dem candidate is Harris Miller, up until recently the president of the Information Technology Association of America, who officially announced his campaign<\/a> earlier this month.<\/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: * Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to cruise towards re-election, with the latest Siena College’s Research Institute poll showing Clinton ahead of former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, 58% to 31%. State Republican leaders continue […]<\/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-6489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489","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=6489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}