Voinovich Out. 2010 Battle.

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress, Ohio
• Date: Jan 11,2009

Well if there was ever a reason update a basically defunct Ohio political blog, this would probably be it. Looks like we got our answer on whether Senator Voinovich will run for a third term in 2010.

Politico: Ohio Republican George Voinovich is expected to announce Monday that he won't seek reelection to the Senate in 2010.

His retirement would give Democrats a shot at an open Senate seat in a battleground state that voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 elections and elected Democrat Sherrod Brown to the Senate in 2006.

After the last couple of days, I am not surprised. But overall, yes, I am surprised. It was always a foregone conclusion he was running. Until something happened.

Let the speculation of who will run begin. I don't know any names you don't – Rob Portman is the likely GOP candidate. Democrats will be fun to watch, as there are about 85 of them who A) want the nomination and B) think they are entitled to it. Lee Fisher, Tim Ryan, Peter Lawson Jones, Marcy Kaptur are names that are bouncing around. Hell, even Zach Space is.

New York Calamity

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress
• Date: Dec 15,2008

Story: Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of an American political dynasty, has decided to pursue the United States Senate seat being vacated by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a person told of her decision said on Monday.

How pissed off would be if you were serving in the U.S. House from New York and you wanted to be a senator? You wait around and wait around and hope the chance comes your way at some point – knowing even then it would be a dogfight for the nomination. Then in 2000, it did. Moynihan decided to retire. A lot of Democrats in New York were waiting that one out, but unfortunately for them some First Lady came in and decided to move there because she wanted it.

Well, that seat is now open again……and the same people kept their mouth shut and stepped aside the first time…….and now someone with no history of holding elected office wants to replace HRC. Sounds like the criticism the left leveled at Sarah Palin, minus the whole she was a governor part. One would have to think New York Governor David Paterson will give Kennedy a long look. I don't think all of the contenders (former Rep. Nita Lowey, Reps. Steve Israel, Greg Meeks, Nydia Velasquez, Brian Higgins just to name a few) will keep quiet this time.

(Note: "Rep." is short for "representative" not "Republican." The media was fond of only referring to Gary Condit as "Rep. Gary Condit" back in 2001 to try and confuse people into thinking he was not a Democrat.)

For Republicans, it is fun to watch, but that is about as close as we will get to ever winning this seat. Giuliani would have an outside chance to win it, but he would never run again (after dropping out in 2000). Peter King would have a glimmer of hope, but not much.

For the latest on Coleman – Franken in Minnesota, this post by Powerline has some good information. It is going to be close, and one side is not going to be happy with the end result.

OH-15: Slowly Crawling Towards Conclusion

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress, Ohio 2008
• Date: Dec 5,2008

Columbus Dispatch: About 1,000 disputed ballots that could decide the outcome of a hotly contested central Ohio congressional race won't be counted, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today.

The state's highest court ordered the Franklin County Board of Elections to throw out about 1,000 provisional ballots cast in the Nov. 4 election that contained flaws such as a lack of a signature and identifying information.

The race they are talking about is the only yet to be decided race in the House: Republican Steve Stivers and Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy in the 15th. Stivers currently leads by 594 votes. All the votes from Madison and Union Counties are in, and 37,298 ballots are yet to be counted from the part of the district that is in Franklin. Today's ruling only affects around 1,000 of that number – and none of them could be counted until the dispute was settled, which now it has been.

From what I have heard, the Stivers people aren't feeling all that confident about what is left. The ruling also affects an Ohio House race I don't care about. If you look at the Ohio SoS site, the Franklin vote that is in and tallied: Kilroy 118,212, Stivers 106,267, with 21,369 being split between two other candidates. You can do the math and ascertain yourself that it is probably going to be still close when these votes are counted……which means…..good additional news that if the race is within 0.5% after the remaining ballots are counted……recount!

Now for some quick math. Assuming that exactly 1,000 votes are not counted I broke it down using 27,298 minus 1000 to get 26,298 as what is left to be counted (Dispatch has a typo saying it is 37,298 that is left, thanks to Justin Miller for the clarification there).

However, according to most people and Democrat blogger DPotts of BSB, about 40% of provisonals are from the part of Franklin County part that is part of the 15th, though no one can be sure. We'll say that it is 50% and none of the others are rejected. So that brings the number down from 26,298 to 13,149.

Using the numbers right from the SoS site, and also assuming the provisionals in Franklin break the way in percentage the regular vote went (not a safe assumption, this is just for arguments sake – Kilroy got 48.08% and Stivers 43.22%), here is what I got as Franklin County results:

Kilroy: 6,322 more Franklin votes = total Franklin votes = 124,534 total three county vote including Madison and Union = 136,025

Stivers: 5,683 more Franklin votes = total Franklin votes = 111,950 total three county vote including Madison and Union = 135,535*

* – The SoS site does not seem to reflect the latest numbers that have Stivers up 594 (finalized from Madison and Union Counties); they show him up 149. So add the difference of 445 to Stivers and you get 135,980 three county vote for him – a difference of 45 votes.

All a guess. And if anything the votes yet to be counted, you would think, would skew Kilroy (which is one reason I chose to say 50% of the votes will be from the 15th) by more than her percentage margin of those already counted. So check my math (I am bad at it) or do your own if you think you have a better way. Or if any of my basic numbers are wrong let me know.

MSNBC's Senator Matthews?

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress
• Date: Dec 1,2008

Saw this on Hot Air: According to multiple sources, who confirmed the Tip O’Neill staffer-cum-MSNBC host has negotiated with veteran Obama staffers to enlist in his campaign, Chris Matthews is likely to run for United States Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010. Matthews, 62, would run as a Democrat.

This would be a setback for Obama, as he would lose one of his main television cheerleaders. I still have doubts as to whether Specter will run again…he will be 80 in 2010…but he must be hoping that if he does run to face Matthews. I always used to watch his show on MSNBC, but he just became too much of a shill for me to handle.

I'll believe Matthews is going to run when I see it….these rumors have been floating around forever. Tough to see him run if he wasn't confident he would win and things really can't get worse for the GOP. Also, I think some of the Congresspeople from Pennsylvania would primary him anyways (Allyson Schwartz?). He won't get the same "everyone out of the way" treatment that Franken got in Minnesota.

Prediction: Saxby Chambliss win the Georgia runoff with 53.8% on Tuesday.

Surprise! Coleman Lead Keeps Shrinking

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress
• Date: Nov 20,2008

(Red) Star Tribune: By day's end, with about 18 percent of the vote recounted, Coleman continued to lead Franken — but by only 174 votes, notably narrower than the unofficial gap of 215 votes at which the recount had begun. Franken's gain owed much to a swing of 23 votes in the Democratic stronghold of St. Louis County — the result of faintly marked ballots and older optical scanners that failed to read the marks.

Coleman's campaign is challenging the first pictured ballot that was counted for Franken. Franken is challenging the 2nd saying it doesn't show "intent" to vote for Coleman, a usual favorite argument the other way for Democrats. Pictures of other disputed ballots can be seen here. At this point, that is what it might come down to now – challenged ballots.

Franken gained many votes before the recount even started – ballots from a select few Democratic counties that were statistically improbable if not impossible. I don't think there is any "fix in" at this point – the actual recount should be fair. There is a lot of oversight on both sides. But the race is closer than it should be because of the Franken votes he got in the period between November 4 and Wednesday. Currently comedian Franken is only getting names and addresses and challenging rejected absentees in Ramsey County, a stronghold for him. If he is successful at that, Coleman will probably follow up with a similar challenge of rejected absentees in some of his stronger counties. He won't have a choice.

This race seems like it is going to come down to a small handful of disputed votes from a small Minnesota county – maybe in Rock or Scott Counties that won't even start their recounts until Dec. 3. From what I can tell looking from looking at the maps, both sides have counties that "should" be favorable to them; Franken has more to go in Hennepin County (only 6% counted), St. Louis County (42% counted), and Ramsey (15% counted) and some of the outlying counties outside the Minn//St. Paul region that tilted Coleman didn't even begin the process yet. An elections page of the StarTrib has a good interactive map that shows which counties have done what so far and here is their county by county running total. Still a lot of small counties that start Thursday or Friday that leaned Coleman. That said, don't be surprised at all if Franken takes a lead at some point Friday. The question then is whether or not it holds. I'll update this Thursday as events warrant, and we should know a lot more by late tonight.

Everyone keeps talking about the Dec. 2 runoff in Georgia as the one that may decide the 60th seat. That will almost assuredly be settled before Minnesota. Unless of course that race goes into a recount also.

Secretary of State: Hillary?

• Author: Ben Keeler
• Filed under: Congress
• Date: Nov 14,2008

Washington Post: There's increasing chatter in political circles that the Obama camp is not overly happy with the usual suspects for secretary of state these days and that the field might be expanding somewhat beyond Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and maybe former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia.

There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.

Well, someone has to answer that phone at 3 AM right? Not a lifetime job like the Supreme Court, but still pretty prestigious. I'd take her over John "Global Test" Kerry though; we'd be lucky to have her over some of the others he might name and she would keep the tradition of undermining POTUS alive and well at State. Did Jimmy Carter take himself out of the running? Which reminds me, now that Obama won, Carter is finally off the hook. Sad to say, that line of attack officially died. Unfortunately, Democrats will have a Jimmy Carter they will try to use against Republican candidates for the next 20 years: George W. Bush. Just because this campaign is over, I don't think his name will go away for awhile on the Democratic candidate trail.

Nah….this can only be a trial balloon. He couldn't appoint someone who is far more experienced than he is to this post. Unless he wants someone to blame when his foreign policy goes bad?