Campaign Diaries

The Minnesota Senate race continues to be one of the most entertaining of the cycle. Just last night, Jesse Ventura announced he would not run for Senate. Now, Franken has to worry about something else: a primary challenge from Priscilla Lord Faris, an attorney the AP describes as coming from “a well-known family in Minnesota legal circles.” A lot of Democrats are expressing discontent at Franken’s candidacy and some are openly suggesting that Franken cannot win. That’s the rationale Faris embraced in her candidacy announcement: “I feel like we need a change in Minnesota in our senator, and I’m not sure that our endorsed candidate is going to be able to do it.”

Keep in mind that Franken won the DFL’s endorsement in early June; that endorsement is usually enough to guarantee a candidate an easy primary and it is unlikely that Faris will be able to mount a strong challenge. But there are still rumors that Mike Ciresi could jump back in, and depending on how much doubts people have about Franken he might at least have to spend resources and time to ensure all goes smoothly in the Democratic primary. All in all, it’s hard to really follow what’s going on in the MN Senate race at this point.

Back in early June, I asked: Who will beat Don Young first in AK-AL? The question still stands. Plagued by corruption scandals, mocked by fellow Republicans (starting with McCain) for his attachment to earnmarks and trailing in polls against his Democratic challenger, Young looks certain to not be back in the next Congress. The question is whether he will lose in the Republican primary or make it to the general election. The answer could determine whether Democrats pick up this conservative district: If Young loses in the primary, the GOP nominee would be in a good position to beat Ethan Berkowitz in November and it is in the Democrats’ interest that Young win the primary.

That had started to look increasingly improbable. Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell is mounting a strong challenge to Young, and he is helped by the Club for Growth who has vowed to defeat the Alaska congressman. But now has emerged another challenger, state Rep. Gabrielle LeDoux. She has been running for a while, but she just announced that she was launching a $100,000 advertisment campaign (based on her self-funding abilities). That is a significant investment that puts LeDoux on the radar screen and will allow her to be a force in the high-profile Young-Parnell match-up.

This is good news for Don Young as multiple primary challengers to an incumbent tend to contest over the same voters and divide the anti-incumbent vote, allowing the sitting congressman to squeak by. There are only so many voters who would reject an incumbent and a three-way race lowers the percentage of the vote Young needs to win. Note, however, that even this might not be enough: In their gubernatorial primary in 2006, Alaska Republicans left the incumbent governor third.

Another House campaign that is making news is NC-11. This is a conservative district picked-up in 2006 by Heath Shuler. Republicans vowed to take back this seat and make it one of their top priorities, but never managed to recruit a top-tier contender. Asheville City Councilman Carl Mumpower became the Republican nominee, leaving the GOP some hope it could pull an upset if the winds blew its way. But now, Mumpower has suspended his campaign to protest the Republican Party’s abandoning its conservative principles!

He will not campaign again, he says, “until at least half of the Republican leaders in the 15 counties in the 11th Congressional District commit to core party principles.” Since Mumpower is not withdrawing and the primary has passed, NC Republicans are stuck with him and cannot even replace him, as they normally could if a candidate dropped out. However unlikely this would have seemed in December 2006, NC-11 has become one of the safest seats in the country!

Finally, some news from the Mississippi Senate race. Despite the results in MS-01 last month and the polls numbers showing a toss-up, this race is regularly ignored by pundits and by Sens. Ensign and Schumer. The latter, whose job it is to be upbeat about Democratic chances, rated MS as a third-tier race last month. Well, it looks like Democrats have finally decided to pay attention to the Musgrove-Wicker race: the DSCC is now set to start running ads on Musgrove’s behalf. Wicker has already gone up but Musgrove has not, and national Democrats will help keep him afloat.