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
* In New Mexico’s closely-watched 1st congressional district, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) appears to have eked out a narrow victory<\/a> over state Attorney General Patricia Madrid (D) in one of the remaining undecided House races. According to the final tally, Wilson edged Madrid by about 900 votes.<\/p>\n * In Montana, state Sen. Sam Kitzenberg filed papers with the secretary of state’s office late last week to become a Democrat, and in the process, swung the chamber<\/a> from a 25-25 split to a 26-24 Dem majority. Kitzenberg, a former high school teacher who describes himself as a moderate, has been a Republican his entire adult life, including 12 years in the legislature, but no more. “It’s kind of like a family, it’s kind of hard to leave,” Kitzenberg said. “But I didn’t leave them — they left me.”<\/p>\n * Hoping to dispel rumors to the contrary, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), he of “bridge to nowhere” fame, announced late last week that he will run<\/a> for re-election in 2008, at the tender age of 84.<\/p>\n * Dems looking for a top-tier candidate to take on Sen. John Sununu (R) in New Hampshire in 2008 can scratch Gov. John Lynch (D) off their short list. Lynch, who was re-elected to a second term two weeks ago with 74% support, said he will not<\/a> take on Sununu in two years.<\/p>\n * In 2008 news, Sen. John Kerry said yesterday that he’s still considering<\/a> another presidential campaign. Asked if the “botched joke” would undermine him, Kerry said, “Not in the least. I am looking at it in the same way. The people that I have talked to across the country, my team’s confident and strong. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ve apologized and we have to move on to the real issues that face this country.”<\/p>\n * And in the funniest political story I’ve seen in a long while, Fairfield University professor John Orman contacted Connecticut’s secretary of state’s office and learned that the Connecticut for Lieberman party had no registered members in the state. As a result, Orman joined the “party” and went home to call a meeting of all registered Connecticut for Lieberman members (total number: one). He nominated himself chairman, seconded the nomination, cast his vote for himself and proceeded to establish party rules. Read the whole thing<\/a>.<\/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: * In New Mexico’s closely-watched 1st congressional district, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) appears to have eked out a narrow victory over state Attorney General Patricia Madrid (D) in one of the remaining undecided […]<\/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-9116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9116","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=9116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}