For some Republicans with a vested interest in what happened in the ongoing Minnesota Senate race, a rejection by the state Supreme Court was not necessarily going to be the last word. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was reportedly behind a move to get Norm Coleman -- who had already been rebuffed by a special three-judge panel of state justices -- to take his case to the federal courts in the event the state Supreme Court turned him down. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele also endorsed that strategy.

But all that changed today. The court, in a unanimous decision, rejected Coleman's argument that previously rejected absentee ballots should be counted. The justices said Al Franken (D) won the election, and that the 238-day saga needed to come to an end.

Coleman agreed, conceding the election and congratulating Franken.

Continue reading "It's Over. It Really Is Over. Republicans Even Agree." >

Norm Coleman (R) has conceded the Minnesota Senate race.

Al Franken (D) wins.

It's over.

I've been wrong before, starting with predicting Coleman over Franken back in November -- an election that took place 238 days ago.

But I say Norm Coleman concedes the election to Al Franken at his 3 p.m. Central/4 p.m. Eastern news conference.

Anyone think otherwise?

Early reactions to the Minnesota Supreme Court's unanimous decision that Al Franken should be the next U.S. senator show that Democrats who live on Twitter are thrilled, many Minnesotans appear relieved, and the White House, according to press secretary Roberts Gibbs, is "pleased."

But no word yet from Norm Coleman (R), who has been thwarted once again by another legal ruling. Late word says he will have a statement at 3 p.m. Central time (4 p.m. Eastern).

Continue reading "Reax To Minnesota Court: WH 'Pleased,' Coleman Talks At 4 ET" >

Love him or hate him, Al Franken will be the next senator from Minnesota.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that Al Franken, the Democrat, is the rightful winner of the protracted Senate race that was held last November.

The court, in a 5-0 ruling, rejected the case made by Norm Coleman, the Republican and former incumbent, that thousands of rejected absentee votes should be counted.

By rejecting the appeal, the court says that Franken's 312-vote lead holds and he should be certified as the winner -- giving the Democrats a 60th vote in the chamber. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, has said in the past that if the court directed him to do so, he would certify Franken.

The office of Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) says the 91-year-old Democrat, the longest-serving senator in history, has been released from the hospital after a prolonged stay because of a staph infection.

The statement from Byrd's office says he

is resting comfortably at home, where he will continue his recuperation and physical therapy following a bout with a staph infection, which he contracted during his stay in the hospital for a minor infection.

"I am pleased to be home in anticipation of celebrating our Nation's birthday with my loving family. I also thank everyone who sent me their good wishes and prayers."

Yesterday's meeting at the White House between hundreds of gay and lesbian leaders and President Obama was history in the making, regardless of the debate over whether the president has fulfilled his promises on the issue or whether he's moved too slowly, etc.

Just compare what happened on Tuesday with what's happened in the past. The other day, Adam Nagourney of the New York Times reminded us about the first time gay leaders were invited to the White House, in March 1977, where "they met a midlevel aide on a Saturday when the press and President Jimmy Carter were nowhere in sight."

Still, there remains a sense of unease in the gay community, as "Don't Ask Don't Tell" is still the law, the Defense of Marriage Act is still on the books, and Obama still says he opposes same-sex marriage.

Of course, it's hard to support same-sex marriage while at the same time you're filing legal briefs on behalf of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Continue reading "Gays, Obama, And The 1996 Defense Of Marriage Act" >

June 30, 1958:

The Senate, on a 64-20 vote, passes a bill making Alaska the 49th state of the union. President Eisenhower will sign it into law a week later.

It's the first state added since 1912, when New Mexico and Arizona became Nos. 47 and 48. Hawaii will become the 50th state a year later.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Conservatives trace court confirmation battles back to Robert Bork in 1987. But there was also the Fortas filibuster in '68.

A very good piece in Friday's New York Times by Neil Lewis about the opposition to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor by conservatives. Putting aside for a moment the arguments to her being confirmed, Lewis writes that "the fervor with which some of those criticisms have been hurled may not be just about Judge Sotomayor":

Those emotions, say people who have followed the confirmation wars, are often fueled by the sense of grievance among conservatives and Republicans who say their judicial nominees have been treated unfairly and, sometimes, disrespectfully.

Lewis quotes conservative scholar Richard Epstein at the University of Chicago who says "he had concluded that the case against Judge Sotomayor was thin but that it was energized by the anger over the treatment of past conservative nominees like Robert H. Bork, who lost his confirmation battle in 1987, and Clarence Thomas, who was narrowly confirmed four years later.

Continue reading "Opposing Sotomayor: The Revenge Of Bork?" >

With today being the last day of the current session of the U.S. Supreme Court, the expectation was that there would be a decision in Citizens United v. FEC.

This is the case about a documentary totally critical of Hillary Clinton (Hillary: The Movie) that was made by a conservative group and shown last year during her presidential bid, and whether it should be regulated as if it were a campaign ad or expenditure. The group, Citizens United, wanted to make the movie available to cable TV viewers without having to comply with federal campaign finance laws. The Federal Election Commission, among others, insisted that it had to do so.

As it turned out, the court failed to reach a decision and instead said it would hear arguments about the case once again, in a special session of the court on Sept. 9.

NPR's Peter Overby reports that while the court had been expected to address whether such funding for the movie "should be allowed and secretive," instead, the justices "zeroed in on a question that didn't even come up in the oral arguments":

Whether to overturn a 23-year-old decision that controls corporate political money more broadly. In that case, the court said in 1986 that corporate money cannot be used for independent campaign ads. It's been reaffirmed as recently as 2003.

Here are some more details about the case from the Cornell University Law School.

Repeating our post from June 3:

A reminder that it's not to late to enter our Sonia Sotomayor Senate Vote Contest.

The first person with the exact accurate Senate tally on Sotomayor's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court will win a Jimmy Carter for President bumper sticker -- I'm picking Carter because he's the only president who served a full term but never had the opportunity to nominate someone to the Supreme Court.

Send your prediction to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Monica Conyers, the Detroit City Council president pro tempore who was convicted on Friday of taking bribes in a sludge deal, submitted her resignation today, effective July 6.

Conyers, the wife of John Conyers, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, had asked for more time to decide her future in the wake of her conviction. But City Council President Ken Cockrell Jr. told her that the council "would begin procedures to remove her from office if she does not quit immediately," according to the Detroit Free Press.

The Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in the Ricci case -- which favored white firefighters in a racial discrimination case -- not only has the potential to affect employment practices nationwide but could also give ammunition to opponents of Sonia Sotomayor, who is President Obama's nominee to fill a court vacancy.

Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, that dismissed the firefighters' claim of discrimination in their suit against the city of New Haven, Conn. Both supporters and opponents of Sotomayor's nomination were closely watching today's court decision to see how -- or if -- the ruling would play out in the confirmation battle.

The guess here: not too much. The 5-4 decision was not unexpected. But I suspect it emboldens some of her opponents to argue the case to be made against her ... as opposed to the silly stuff we saw earlier, such as the "she's a reverse racist" mouthings from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Tom Tancredo and Newt Gingrich (though Newt did back away from some of his comments).

Continue reading "Political Fallout Over Ricci Decision On Sotomayor?" >

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this morning that the city of New Haven, Conn., unfairly denied promotions to white firefighters because of their race.

The 5-4 ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano overturns a decision by a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit, a panel that included Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

Voting in the majority were Justices Anthony Kennedy, Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Voting in the minority were Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. Souter is retiring after this session, and Sotomayor has been nominated to replace him.

Kennedy wrote the majority opinion and Ginsburg wrote the minority opinion.

The entire decision can be found here.

Today is the last day of the Supreme Court's session, and all eyes -- well, many eyes -- will be on Ricci v. DeStefano. That's the lawsuit brought against the city of New Haven, Conn., by white firefighters alleging reverse discrimination regarding promotions.

It's being especially closely watched because of the role played in the rejection of the firefighters' claims by a three-judge panel of the the U.S. Court of Appeals, 2nd Circuit -- a panel that included Sonia Sotomayor, who is President Obama's nominee to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Both pro- and anti-Sotomayor advocacy groups are ready to interpret whatever the Supreme Court decides. Some, like the liberal People For the American Way, are not even waiting for the decision (which is expected to overturn the three-judge panel).

Marge Baker, the executive VP for PFAW, who seems to be expecting a reversal, issued a statement this morning that said whatever the court rules today, it "will not reflect upon Sotomayor's jurisprudence."

Sotomayor and her panel colleagues were bound by longstanding precedent and federal law. They applied the law without regard to their personal views and unanimously affirmed the district court ruling. To do anything but would have been judicial activism.

The full Second Circuit backed up the panel, which came as no surprise. Nearly ten years earlier a Second Circuit panel -- consisting of three GOP nominees -- reached the same conclusion in a similar case (Hayden v. County of Nassau).

When a case virtually identical to Ricci came before the Sixth Circuit -- Oakley v. Memphis -- a panel rejected the plaintiffs' claims and affirmed the district court ruling. Notably, they did so in an unpublished summary order, and one of the three judges was conservative Bush nominee Richard Allen Griffin.

In other words, Sotomayor is anything but an outlier. She and the seven other federal judges who decided Ricci and Oakley at the district and circuit levels were unanimous in determining that precedent and federal law required the rejection of the suits.

The other political case many are watching is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which will decide whether Hillary The Movie is subject to regulation.

June 29, 1968:

The Arkansas Republican Party awards its delegates to its presidential favorite son, Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller.

The expectation that most, if not all, of the delegates will switch to Winthrop's brother, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, never happens. The delegates stick with WinRock on the first roll call vote at the GOP convention in Miami Beach, but they soon switch to ultimate nominee Richard Nixon, who wins it before a second ballot is taken.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

We had Jesse, Scoop and Andrew. But never a presidential candidate named Michael Jackson.

We're taking the rest of the day off.

ScuttleButton is up. The desk is clean. And we wanted to leave you with this Michael Jackson button ... a spoof, of course, put out in 1983-84 as a response to the Jesse Jackson for president campaign.

What a week. See you Monday.

We welcomed in the first week of summer by watching a potential presidential candidate implode right before our eyes. And we saw a true national icon leave us well before his time.

For those of you who are weary, disheartened and exhausted on this can't-come-soon-enough Friday, I only have three words for you:

ScuttleButton!

And here's how to play the game, which is featured every Friday on the Political Junkie blog.

It's a rebus. Simply take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and, hopefully, you will arrive at a famous name or a familiar expression. (And seriously, by familiar, I mean it's something that more than one person on Earth would recognize.)

And don't focus on a political answer. It doesn't necessarily have to be political, though it could be.

A correct answer chosen at random gets his or her name in this column. Personally, I can't imagine a greater honor.

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state -- you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Here's the answer to last week's puzzle.

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be the first on your block to receive notice when a new puzzle goes up on the blog. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy Friday!

June 26, 1954:

Former Rep. Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut is designated the Democratic nominee for governor at the state party convention in Hartford.

Ribicoff left the House to run for the Senate in 1952, when he was defeated by incumbent Republican Prescott Bush.

In November, Ribicoff will unseat GOP Gov. John Davis Lodge. He will be re-elected in 1958, then leave in midterm to become President Kennedy's secretary of health, education and welfare. In 1962, he will win the first of three Senate terms.

His signature moment in the national spotlight will come at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago where, in nominating Sen. George McGovern (D-SD) for the presidency, he blasts Mayor Richard Daley for "Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago."

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Another career derailed by marital infidelity. Tapes from the beyond. And, of course, the New York State Senate.

Sounds like another episode of our "It's All Politics" podcast, which you can hear here:

Credits --
Nonstop talkers: Ron Elving and Ken Rudin
Producer: Evie Stone

Wanna subscribe to the podcast? You can do it through iTunes.

Wanna hear previous episodes? Click here.

Wanna be on my weekly mailing list? Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Wanna follow my rantings on Twitter? Go to http://twitter.com/kenrudin.

You don't need me to tell you that the Republican brand has not been doing so well lately. They've lost more than 50 House and 14 Senate seats in the last two election cycles, and polls show the public souring on the GOP like never before ... at least in recent political history.

There is a widely expressed feeling that, far more so than with congressional Republicans, the party needs to look to its 22 governors to find its future.

One person on the list, Mark Sanford, didn't do his chances much good this week. That leaves 21 others.

I've decided, in a completely unscientific, data-free exercise, to rate the GOP governors in terms of their likelihood of ever reaching the White House (not necessarily in 2012, but sometime in the future).

I readily concede that my list will not universally be agreed on. You may completely dismiss it. I confess I don't share the optimism about the national future of Alaska's Sarah Palin as many Republicans do. And note that I have Nevada's Jim Gibbons last on the list -- even below Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is constitutionally ineligible.

Here it is. Let me know where you agree or disagree.

1. Tim Pawlenty (MN)
2. Jon Huntsman (UT)
3. Haley Barbour (MS)
4. Bobby Jindal (LA)
5. Charlie Crist (FL)
6. Mitch Daniels (IN)
7. Sarah Palin (AK)
8. Rick Perry (TX)
9. Mark Sanford (SC)
10. Jodi Rell (CT)
11. Bob Riley (AL)
12. Sonny Perdue (GA)
13. Mike Rounds (SD)
14. John Hoeven (ND)
15. Butch Otter (ID)
16. Dave Heineman (NE)
17. Jim Douglas (VT)
18. Don Carcieri (RI)
19. Linda Lingle (HI)
20. Jan Brewer (AZ)
21. Arnold Schwarzenegger (CA)
22. Jim Gibbons (NV)

In the wake of my post yesterday about political sex scandals, Andy Toomey of New York City writes:

In your recap you forgot two obvious ones, Clinton/Lewinsky and Gary Hart/Donna Rice.

It's impossible to forget these scandals, but yesterday's post only went back to 2001 and Gary Condit. In 1998, when my Political Junkie column ran on the Washington Post Web site, I compiled a Congressional Sex Scandals in History feature, designed to appear during the Clinton/Lewinsky investigation.

Thursday is the day when the Minnesota state Supreme Court usually releases its decisions. Well, its rulings came and went this morning, and there's nothing to report regarding the still unresolved Senate race between Norm Coleman (R) and Al Franken (D).

Franken, as you all know, leads Coleman, the former incumbent, by 312 votes. A three-judge panel has turned down Coleman's challenges, and the Republican took his case to the entire state court.

A rumor last week that a decision was imminent got everyone -- including most of us at Political Junkie -- quite excited. But alas, nothing came of it.

Doesn't look like it will happen this week either.

Elizabeth Stawicki, a reporter for Minnesota Public Radio who follows this closer than anyone, says that the court usually lets the attorneys on both sides know in advance when a decision is coming, and had that been the case this week, "the campaigns would have been going nuts on this. I suspect that if a decision was about to come down, it would have already been leaked by at least one of the campaigns."

President Obama didn't mention it during his news conference earlier this week, though he had time to take a planted question.

Gov. Mark Sanford didn't mention it during his news conference yesterday, though he did mention his kids' dinosaur bedsheets.

Sigh. So I'm here to announce this week's ScuttleButton puzzle winner.

Continue reading "We Have A ScuttleButton Winner!" >

June 25, 1948:

At their national convention in Philadelphia, Republicans nominate New York Gov. Thomas Dewey for president and California Gov. Earl Warren for vice president.

Dewey defeats Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio and former Minnesota Gov. Harold Stassen, among others, to win the nomination on the third ballot. Dewey was also the GOP presidential nominee in 1944, losing to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In a surprise, he will go on to lose this year's election as well, to President Harry Truman.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

It's the end of the day, a long day, a chance to reflect on what exactly happened on this surreal Wednesday.

When the Mark Sanford story broke, I was sitting across from Neal Conan, the host of NPR's Talk of the Nation. We were on the air, live. It was our regular Wednesday Political Junkie segment on TOTN. As the segment began, we learned that the governor's news conference, which was scheduled to begin just as the show was starting, would be delayed a half hour.

That gave us more time. So we discussed the bizarre nature of the situation, I did the obligatory bad jokes ("He was actually in Argentina? He's so pampas"). And then we went on to the other political subjects of the week. Villaraigosa's not running for governor of California. What in tarnation is going on in Albany? How 'bout those Nixon tapes!

NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea then came on the show to talk about behind-the-scenes stuff during a presidential press conference. The callers were great, and Don was, as always, superb.

And then Neal's face dramatically changed.

He had the wires up on his screen, as he always does in the event of breaking news, and he motioned to me in a dramatic gesture. I got up and looked at the screen. I couldn't believe my eyes:

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - SC Gov. Mark Sanford says he's been unfaithful to his wife with friend from Argentina

Of course, on sober second thought, it made complete sense. Missing for a week, including Father's Day. His wife hadn't heard from him. His staff kept announcing suspiciously different reasons for why no one could find him. Something was up.

Neal and I talked about it for the remainder of the segment, half in shock, and then I raced back to my desk to watch the remainder of the news conference.

It was painful. The governor revealed more details than I ever thought a smart politician should. But a smart politician wouldn't betray his wife and family or lie to his staff and the voters who elected him.

And that in a nutshell was the mixed emotion that hit me as I was watching him. Wow, he's so honest about his feelings, I thought. Wait, what am I thinking, he's lied to everyone close to him! How can "honesty" belong in the same thought? I don't believe I blinked for some 15 minutes.

When I finally exhaled, people were coming by, asking if I had seen the e-mails between Sanford and his girlfriend. I read them, and felt dirty.

It's hard to find sympathy for the Mark Sanfords of the world, or the John Ensigns or the Kwame Kilpatricks or the John Edwardses. And yet, when you read these expressions of personal feelings and emotion, you can't help -- or at least I can't help -- but feel sad. Not sad for the betrayers necessarily. Just sad. People are hurt, badly hurt, by foolish actions. Careers are ruined, and lives are ruined. And I don't know what else to say. It's not that I've suddenly lost faith in Mark Sanford. It's ... I don't know.

Will he stay on as governor? What's next for the GOP? That's for tomorrow.

I feel deflated, and I'm leaving the office.

The stunning admission of an extramarital affair by South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, an early favorite of many conservatives for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, is just the latest sex scandal to rock the Republican Party.

Just last week, Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, the No. 4 Republican in the Senate, confessed to a similar transgression. While Ensign wasn't on as many White House wannabe lists as Sanford, he had recently visited the early caucus state of Iowa, a sign that he may have had more than a passing interest.

A fellow Nevada Republican, Gov. Jim Gibbons, has been in hot water over salacious details regarding his ongoing divorce proceedings from his wife.

And in recent years, we have watched the spectacle of Sen. David Vitter (LA) appearing on the "D.C. Madam's" clientele list, and lurid e-mails between Rep. Mark Foley (FL) and underage congressional pages. Foley resigned in disgrace; Vitter remains in office and is seeking re-election next year.

Of course, sexual indiscretions are hardly the property of one party. New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) resigned in disgrace last year in a prostitution scandal, and New Jersey's Jim McGreevey (D) resigned as governor following his declaration that he is a "gay American." And John Edwards was carrying on an affair with a videographer as he was simultaneously campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination last year -- and as his wife was suffering from inoperable breast cancer.

What follows is a chronological list of political sex scandals during the current decade. It does not claim to be complete. Lumping them all together on one list is not to equate them; all sex scandals are, after all, not created equal. But all had political ramifications:

Continue reading "Sanford The Latest In A Series Of Political Sex Scandals" >

Speechless. Stunned. Incredulous.

And yet, should I be?

Yes, he was missing for six days. Yes, his staff kept giving conflicting stories as to where he was. And yes, such circumstances certainly suggested some kind of tomfoolery was going on.

But when Mark Sanford, the governor of South Carolina widely seen as a Republican presidential hopeful for 2012, stood before the cameras today in Columbia and confessed to an ongoing affair with a woman in Argentina, we could have fallen off our chairs. He was not, as he apparently told his staff, hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

In a surreal press conference, where for some inexplicable reason his aides allowed him to show up without a prepared text and even take questions from the media (!), Sanford apologized to his wife and family, to his staff and his state and his party, and resigned as chair of the Republican Governors Association.

He is term limited for 2010 and he only has a year and a half left as governor. But it's hard to imagine him staying in office much longer. Members of both parties have fought with him for much of his term, and many will be pushing him to leave.

He said he's known this woman for eight years but it became romantic about a year ago.

Sanford had made national headlines months ago when he refused to take stimulus money for South Carolina out of principle.

When it comes to Mark Sanford, stimulus now has a new meaning.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford is holding a news conference today at 2 p.m. ET at his office in Columbia.

The two-term Republican has been in the news and the tabloids in the past week over his unknown whereabouts. He surfaced this morning at an Atlanta airport, telling a reporter that he had spent the past week unwinding in Argentina -- and not, as his staff had said, hiking along the Appalachian Trail.

Should be fun.

The folks here at NPR are pretty serious when it comes to covering the news. But then, sometimes, well, stuff happens. And just in time for this week's Political Junkie segment on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Rod Blagojevich and Roland Burris gave us some enjoyable moments. Sarah Palin and Bill Jefferson did their best too.

And now we have Mark Sanford. The South Carolina governor, missing for six days, apparently hiked down the Appalachian Trail all the way to Argentina. Before we talk about 2012, what in the world is going on in 2009?

Plus, there's the Obama news conference, the Nixon tapes, the Villaraigosa withdrawal, the Albany zoo, and the Ensign apology.

Join host Neal Conan and me every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for the Junkie segment on TOTN, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes. And you can win a Political Junkie T-shirt!

Last week's segment can be heard here.

If your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

We may turn our nose up at Reality TV, but we can't get enough of Mark Sanford.

And, to be fair, the South Carolina governor continues to cooperate.

Last night the Palmetto Scoop Web site breathlessly reported that Sanford, a Republican who has been widely mentioned as a potential presidential candidate in 2012, may not have been hiking along the Appalachian Trail during his six-day disappearance, as his staff had claimed -- as "new evidence cast further doubt onto the governor's 'hiking' alibi":

CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby tracked down Sanford's state-issued black Chevy Suburban at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

That information would seem to further contradict Sanford's spokesman's claim that the governor spent the weekend hiking along the Appalachian Trail -- which is roughly a two hour drive north of Atlanta. ...

Something just doesn't add up here. Anyone who has taken high school philosophy knows the "Occam's razor" principle and understands that, more often than not, the simplest explanation is often the correct explanation; and folks, the "hiking" explanation is about the farthest from that.

At last, the truth has come out!

Continue reading "Jon + Kate + 8 + Mark Sanford" >

June 24, 1950:

In a campaign that will long be remembered as one of the nastiest in history, Sen. Frank Porter Graham of North Carolina is defeated in the Democratic primary runoff by Willis Smith, an attorney and strong segregationist. Smith, who had trailed Graham in the initial May primary by 53,000 votes, wins the runoff by 20,000.

Graham, considered a strong ally of President Truman, was accused by Smith of being "pro-Negro" and "pro-Communist." Graham had been appointed to the Senate seat last year following the death of J.M. Broughton (D).

Smith will easily win the seat in November but he won't hold it for long; he dies on June 26, 1953 of coronary thrombosis.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Listening to Nixon on tape since 1974.

I guess it's an arguable point, but in my mind what ultimately took down Richard Nixon was the decision by the 37th president not to destroy "the tapes" -- secret recordings, authorized by Nixon, of his White House conversations.

It was these recordings that revealed the extent of the coverup by which he and his aides were involved in the Watergate conspiracy.

Nixon is long gone, but his voice lives on. Today the Nixon Library -- via the National Archives -- released the latest batch of tapes -- more than 150 hours -- recorded in January of February 1973 ... a time period that includes not only Nixon's second inauguration but the early discussions about Watergate.

Here's where to find some good stuff:

Los Angeles Times: Nixon negotiating an end to the Vietnam War.

NPR's Nina Totenberg: Nixon's views on abortion and the Roe decision.

New York Times: More on Nixon and abortion.

For the record, the best Web site on what's on the Nixon tapes is, appropriately, nixontapes.org. It's run by Luke Nichter, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M, with help from Richard Moss, a government consultant. It is thorough and invaluable.

In the bizarre and often surreal world of politics -- where we like to say we've seen it all -- the strange situation involving South Carolina's Mark Sanford seems to have touched a nerve.

Sanford, for those who haven't heard (or who got lost hiking in the woods), is the two-term Republican governor who disappeared on Thursday and hadn't been heard from for four days -- and that includes last Sunday, Father's Day. His wife Jenny said she has not been in contact with him either, which led to a whole assortment of rumors.

Continue reading "Sanford Takes A Hike; Blogosphere Has Answers" >

President Obama held a midday news conference today in the White House briefing room, and the questions, as expected, dealt with the situation in Iran, prospects for health care legislation, and the state of the economy.

Obama led off with a statement about Iran, where he said the U.S. and the international community

have been appalled and outraged by the threats, beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions, and I join with the American people in mourning each and every innocent life that is lost.

The president has said in the past that he has deliberately avoided making confrontational comments about what's happening in Iran in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election there because he didn't want his words to be used by the ruling clergy as proof that the U.S. is interfering in Tehran's affairs. He stressed that again today.

I have made it clear that the United States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is not interfering in Iran's affairs. But we must also bear witness to the courage and dignity of the Iranian people, and to a remarkable opening within Iranian society. And we deplore the violence against innocent civilians anywhere that it takes place.

Continue reading "Obama Press Conference Tackles Iran, Health Care, Economy" >

June 23, 1947:

The Republican Congress' override of President Truman's veto of the anti-union Taft-Hartley Act is complete. The Senate vote today is 68-25, which followed by three days the House vote of 331-83.

The act, named for Sen. Robert Taft (R-OH) and Rep. Fred Hartley (R-NJ), was passed in the wake of public outrage over widespread labor strikes following World War II.

Truman will use the act to his benefit as part of his surprise re-election victory in 1948.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

There are some politicians who can go missing for days and no one will notice.

That's not the case with Mark Sanford. The South Carolina governor, a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate, has apparently been missing for four days, since Thursday. First lady Jenny Sanford told the Associated Press that she had no idea where he was.

Continue reading "Lost And (Apparently) Found: The Strange Case Of Mark Sanford" >

In a surprise announcement, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said today he will not seek the governorship of California next year.

Villaraigosa has long been considering the race. With the other two major Democrats, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General/ex-Oakland Mayor/ex-Gov. Jerry Brown hailing from the north, Villaraigosa was thought to have a decent shot at the nomination.

Continue reading "Villaraigosa Says He Won't Seek California Governorship In 2010" >

Earlier today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on a challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act; it said that states with a history of discrimination in voting must get advance approval if they are to make changes in the way elections are conducted. But the court seemed to sidestep the bigger issue of whether there have been enough gains in civil rights that let states make changes in the '65 act without such advance approval.

That leaves just two more decision days by the court before the current term ends. Barbara Campbell, NPR's editor on all things Supreme Court, lists the remaining major cases to be decided:

07-591 Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts: Tests whether lab analysts have to appear in court and be cross-examined when their reports are entered as evidence against a defendant. Does the defendant have a right to confront his accuser? Argued Nov. 10, 2008.

08-205 Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: This further challenge to the campaign reform act tests whether Hillary the Movie is subject to regulation since it doesn't urge a vote against her, except by implication. Argued Mar 24.

08-289 Horne v. Flores: Tests whether Arizona is providing enough English learner programs under federal law. Argued April 20.

08-479 Safford Unified School v. Redding: Tests whether Arizona school officials violated a 13-year-old girl's constitutional rights when they strip-searched her looking for ibuprofen. Argued April 21.

07-1428 Ricci v. Destefano: Tests whether the New Haven, Conn., fire department discriminated against top-scoring white firefighters by canceling promotions to look at revamping the test to help minorities. A panel of federal appeals court judges (including Sonia Sotomayor) ruled for the city. Argued April 22.

08-453 Cuomo v. Clearing House: Tests whether the New York attorney general is allowed to investigate whether banks engage in racially discriminatory mortgage lending practices, or if that is solely federal jurisdiction. The larger issue is federal pre-emption of state power regarding banks. Argued April 28.

June 22, 1996:

Rep. Bill Emerson dies from complications due to lung cancer. The eight-term Missouri Republican was 58.

He will be succeeded in the November election by his wife, Jo Ann, but it won't be easy. She will be forced to run as an independent because state election officials refused to extend the filing deadline for candidates. Meanwhile, Richard Kline, a political nonentity, had already been on the ballot when Emerson died and thus won the August Republican primary to become the GOP nominee.

But state and national Republican officials will back the campaign of Mrs. Emerson, who still serves.

For the record, Bill Emerson was a great guy and a good friend.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

If you've been following our conversation about the effect of the 22nd Amendment on President Reagan, you'll know that there is a difference of opinion as to whether The Gipper (1) could have won a third term had he been eligible and (2) would have run if he could.

Lou Cannon, the gold standard of Reagan biographers, weighs in:

Reagan's mid-November Gallup rating in 1988 was 57 percent and his December rating 63. He was higher in other polls, notably CBS-NY Times. When he left office, he had higher ratings than any predecessor except those who died in office and Eisenhower. But I think poll ratings are beside the point in answering this question.

Reagan never had an intention of seeking a third term. He believed that two terms were enough for president--or in any office if we're talking about four-year terms.

When Gov. Reagan finished his second term in California in 1974, some members of his kitchen cabinet wanted him to go for a third term; others favored a run for the Senate against a vulnerable , Democratic incumbent [Alan Cranston]. Reagan turned them down. He was on record as saying that two terms should be the limit for a governor or a president. I know he said it to me but he also said it publicly.

Your questioner is probably right in saying that Reagan could have won a third term. Indeed, I think one of the reasons that George H.W. Bush ran into trouble was that he didn't realize that a number of the people who voted for him were in effect voting for a third Reagan term. But Reagan would never have sought a third term. He was a few weeks away from his 78th birthday when he finished his second and he was eager to get home to California. I was one of a handful of reporters who accompanied him on his flight home on Jan. 20, 1989, and he was a happy man, not at all reluctant to relinquish presidential power.

Unable to defeat FDR in his third-term bid, they changed the Constitution to get back at him, albeit posthumously. There were some who wanted a repeal of the 22nd Amendment to give Reagan a third term.

In a Monday post, I dealt with a question about the effect on the presidency of the Twenty-Second Amendment, which limited presidents to two terms. I wrote that, in my opinion, the only incumbent truly affected by the constitutional amendment was Bill Clinton.

That brought this question from Mary Peterson of Spokane, Wash.:

I think you are off in your analysis. Ronald Reagan was very popular and he would have won a third term in 1988 if he were eligible to run.

Reagan, the nation's 40th president, was indeed very popular, but his polling numbers tailed off in the latter years of his administration. His average job approval rating in the Gallup Poll for 1987 was 48 percent, and in 1988, his last year in office, it was 53 percent. Better, of course, than his three immediate predecessors -- Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon -- but not exceptional numbers.

Continue reading "Ronald Reagan And The 22nd Amendment" >

On Tuesday, June 23, the Nixon Library -- officially, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum -- will be releasing approximately 154 hours of additional Nixon White House tape recordings, as well as about 30,000 pages of text.

The recordings are from some 994 White House conversations that took place in January and February 1973. According to the public affairs staff at the National Archives, the topics include

the conclusion of a peace settlement between the United States and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the return of American POWs, President Nixon's second inauguration, the U.S. and Europe, the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, energy policy, the reorganization of the executive branch, and the first Watergate trial.

The recordings will be made available at the Nixon library in Yorba Linda, Calif., and the National Archives in College Park, Md. You can also find them at www.nixonlibrary.gov.

Hundreds of thousands of people are marching in Tehran, demanding tougher ScuttleButton puzzles. Hopefully, this week's will fit the bill.

I keep hearing from people who still have no idea how to play the weekly ScuttleButton game.

Simply take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and, hopefully, you will arrive at a famous name or a familiar expression. And don't focus on a political answer. It doesn't necessarily have to be political, though it could be.

A correct answer chosen at random gets his or her name in this column. Personally, I can't imagine a greater honor.

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state -- you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

ScuttleButton is a regular Friday feature on the Political Junkie blog. Here's the answer to last week's puzzle.

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be the first on your block to receive notice when a new puzzle goes up on the blog. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy Friday!

One of the funniest people in the world is the satirist Andy Borowitz. His missives that reach my in-box each day more often than not elicit a laugh-out-loud reaction.

Like today's:

In a nationally televised speech in Iran today, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei ordered his countrymen not to stage further protests, warning the nation, "I am following you all on Twitter."

To back up his words, the Supreme Leader then displayed his Twitter account page, showing that he was indeed following 65,875,224 people, but had only one follower, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Ayatollah's announcement sent a chill up the spines of opposition leaders, most of whom assumed that the Supreme Leader did not have a Twitter account.

"You mean he's been reading all my tweets?" said opposition organizer Mohsen Sobhi. "Oh, s***."

They're still marching in Tehran, refusing the accept the results of the Iranian presidential election. But what does it mean for the U.S.? And while some want this to be the signature issue that separates the Republican Party from the Obama administration, the sense is that the GOP is going to have to iron out its own divisions first.

Closer to home, does the White House have a favorite in the Illinois Senate race? What does the Ensign affair say about the future of the Nevada GOP? And what does the situation with the New York state Senate say about people from Earth?

All this and, unfortunately, more, in this week's episode of our "It's All Politics" podcast, which you can hear here:

Credits --
Nonstop talkers: Ron Elving and Ken Rudin
Producer: Evie Stone

Wanna subscribe to the podcast? You can do it through iTunes.

Wanna hear previous episodes? Click here.

Wanna be on my weekly mailing list? Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Wanna follow my rantings on Twitter? Go to http://twitter.com/kenrudin.

June 19, 2001:

The GOP wins the seat of the late Rep. Sisisky (D-VA) in a special election.

Republicans pick up a House seat with a victory in a special congressional election in Virginia to replace the late Rep. Norm Sisisky, a nine-term Democrat who died in March. The GOP candidate, former state party chairman Randy Forbes, defeats his Democratic opponent by a 52 to 48 percent margin.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

We all got a jolt this morning over the widespread speculation that the Minnesota Supreme Court was going to announce a decision regarding the still-inconclusive Senate race between Norm Coleman (R) and Al Franken (D).

It may have been premature. Or not. Here's a very good read from The Plum Line, a blog by Greg Sargent:

The rumor out of Minnesota is that the Supreme Court is going to hand down a decision on the Norm Coleman-Al Franken mess today, which would be a huge deal.

But I just spoke with a spokesperson for the Minnesota Supreme Court, and she told me that no notification has gone out to either side that a decision is coming. That makes it less likely, though not impossible, that the court is ruling today.

The basis for the rumor is a local blog posting that claimed that a decision was coming today, according to "two sources on different sides of the Minnesota U.S. Senate race recount scene."

According to Minnesota Supreme Court spokesperson Lissa Finne, there are two ways the court indicates a decision. Either it notifies counsel on both sides early in the week that a decision is coming on Thursday, or, in time sensitive cases, notification goes out right before a decision is released.

Finne tells me that no notification has gone out from the court to counsel on either side, which makes it unclear how it is that the blog's sources would have heard this. "I don't know where they got that from," Finne says.

That said, it's still possible that the court will issue sudden notification that a ruling is coming. But if this is going to happen, there's no way anyone would know about it. At any rate, stay tuned.

In a Junkie post yesterday, we talked about how Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D), who has long coveted the governorship, is being urged by Democrats to instead run for the Senate.

The reasons are clear. With the corrupt Rod Blagojevich gone, replaced by the apparently clean Pat Quinn, the argument for her to challenge a fellow Democrat for the governorship would be harder to defend. Meanwhile, the presence of Roland Burris occupying Barack Obama's Senate seat remains galling to many Dems.

But there is one major obstacle to a Madigan Senate bid, and it's not Burris. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D) has been organizing a Senate bid for months and shows no sign of backing off.

So where do things stand?

Continue reading "Is The White House Sweet On Senate Run For Lisa Madigan?" >

A decision today?

 

Politics in Minnesota, the excellent political Web site covering the Gopher State, has now "heard from two sources" that the Minnesota Supreme Court may announce its decision TODAY on the stalemated Norm Coleman-Al Franken Senate race. PIM says an announcement today is "likely to happen."

The timing is less than certain. PIM says the ruling could arrive any time between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. Central.

The state court is hearing an appeal by Coleman, the one-time Republican incumbent whose argument that absentee ballots that could have given him a second term were wrongly rejected was turned down by a three-judge panel. The way things stand now, Coleman trails Democrat Franken by 312 votes. The expectation from the beginning was that the full court would verify the panel's decision.

What happens next is anyone's guess. Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has said that if the court rules he should certify Franken as the winner, he will do so. Some Republicans, like RNC chair Michael Steele, have suggested that Coleman, in the event of an unfavorable ruling, should fight the decision in the federal courts. My gut is telling me that if the court rules against Coleman, he may very well take a day or two and then concede the election.

More to come.

June 18, 2002:

Jesse Ventura, a former pro wrestler who shocked the world -- or at least Minnesota -- when he was elected governor in 1998 as a candidate of the Reform Party, announces he won't seek a second term.

Ventura's term has been marked by clashes with Democrats, Republicans and the media, and recently his popularity among the electorate has declined.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

We've known for quite some time now that Lisa Madigan, the two-term state attorney general in Illinois, covets the governor's chair. There was little question that she was planning on challenging Gov. Rod Blagojevich in next year's Democratic primary.

The governor, however, spoiled the plans by getting himself enmeshed in a scandal involving his efforts to sell the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama to the highest bidder. Blago was subsequently arrested, impeached and removed from office. Before he was finally run out of town, he appointed Roland Burris to the Senate seat.

Blagojevich's departure elevated Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn to the governorship. And now, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's McDermott & Lambrecht, Madigan is "under pressure from top Democrats to abandon" her gov. campaign and instead run for the Senate -- "a switch she's seriously considering":

Continue reading "More Musical Chairs In Ill.? AG Madigan Urged For Senate" >

Robert Siegel is, as many of you know, the host of NPR's All Things Considered.

He is also a graduate of Stuyvesant High School in New York City, Class of 1964.

Robert may be one of the more famous graduates in Stuyvesant history -- unless you think James Cagney is more famous. But Robert sends along a page of the current Alumni Spectator -- the Stuyvesant newsletter -- that features some other famous graduates who are in the news.

It's worth a look!

 

You might have done a double-take when you read what happened on the House floor yesterday during a vote on the $106 billion bill to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The measure passed by a vote of 226 to 202. But it was the "anti-war" Democrats who voted for it, and the "pro-war" Republicans who voted against it.

Of course, this was less a vote about ideology than it was a vote about President Obama. He wanted it passed. And the main reason why the GOP voted against it was the sweetener Obama threw in to woo wavering Democrats -- $5 billion to the International Monetary Fund. Only 32 Democrats voted against the measure -- 19 fewer than a month ago. Republicans, save for five members, all said no to make a point that they had had enough with bailouts.

Here are the 32 Democrats who voted against the bill: Baldwin (WI), Capuano (MA), Conyers (MI), Doggett (TX), Edwards (MD), Ellison (MN), Farr (CA), Filner (CA), Grayson (FL), Grijalva (AZ), Honda (CA), Kaptur (OH), Kucinich (OH), Lee (CA), Lofgren (CA), Massa (NY), McGovern (MA), Michaud (ME), Payne (NJ), Pingree (ME), Polis (CO), Serrano (NY), Shea-Porter (NH), Sherman (CA), Speier (CA), Stark (CA), Tierney (MA), Tsongas (MA), Waters (CA), Watson (CA), Welch (VT), Woolsey (CA).

And here are the five Republicans who voted in favor: Cao (LA), King (NY), Kirk (IL), McHugh (NY), Miller (MI).

As you know, it was 37 years ago today that a break-in at the Democratic National Committee -- then located in the Watergate office building -- began the unraveling of a president.

A year later, the Senate Watergate Committee was established to get to the bottom of the story, and a year after that, the House Judiciary Committee began hearings to weigh the impeachment of President Nixon.

The question: Name the still-serving members of Congress who were on those committees.

(You can use the comments field below.)

I have long expressed my ambivalence about reporting on the private behavior of elected officials, whether it's sexual preference or sexual dalliances. There is a public life and there is a private, personal life, and I think there is a line that should be respected. And I don't deal in rumors, which have somehow permeated the mainstream media in ways I find deeply troubling.

For the same reason, I'm strongly opposed to "outing," the seemingly vigilante practice of exposing who is gay -- especially those officials who are accused of hypocrisy: being gay while voting against issues important to the gay community.

At the same time, there comes a moment when something happens and the issue can no longer be ignored.

Continue reading "The Ensign Affair -- Morality, Privacy & The Media " >

A busy Political Junkie segment on today's Talk of the Nation.

Haley Barbour goes to Iowa and New Hampshire, Sarah Palin won't go on Letterman, and John Ensign goes to confession.

Plus: opening arguments in the Bill Jefferson trial. Talking about succession in West Virginia. And Illinois Democrats want Lisa Madigan to drop plans to run for governor and instead challenge Sen. Roland Burris.

Join host Neal Conan and me every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for the Junkie segment on TOTN, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes. And you can win a Political Junkie T-shirt!

Last week's segment, with special guest Richard Wolffe -- author of the new Obama book Renegade: The Making of a President -- can be heard here.

If your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

June 17, 2008:

Attorney Donna Edwards (D) wins the special election held in Maryland's 4th Congressional District vacated by incumbent Democrat Albert Wynn.

Wynn, who was handily defeated by Edwards in the February Democratic primary, decided to take a lobbying job, causing the vacancy. In beating Republican Peter James in the special election, Edwards becomes the first black woman to represent Maryland in Congress.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Missouri's Jim Symington will moderate today's meeting of the Former Members of Congress.

I've told this story once before, but it bears repeating.

Many, many years ago, when I was growing up in a small town called the Bronx, there was a knock on my door. It was a bunch of my friends, and they wanted me to come out with them, but I was having none of it.

"Sorry," I said, even though I wasn't really sorry. "I need to stay home and watch Wayne Thornton fight Jose Torres." I was a big boxing fan back then, and Wayne Thornton vs. Jose Torres was going to be a doozy.

And why do I, to this day, remember Wayne Thornton vs. Jose Torres?

"Are you sure you can't come?" my friends asked. "We're going to Shea Stadium to buy tickets to see The Beatles."

"Some other time," I said. "I'm really excited about seeing Wayne Thornton vs. Jose Torres."

And now you know why to this day I remember Wayne Thornton vs. Jose Torres.

I bring up this sad, pathetic tale not to remind you of the errors of my ways -- regrets? I've made a few -- but to tell you that, as an adult, there are some things in life I will never miss.

And that's the annual meeting of the U.S. Association of Former Members of Congress.

For political junkies like myself, for those of us who cherish Congress (the good and the bad), it's an opportunity to gab with former senators and representatives about their past lives, their campaigns, their memories, their ups and downs, their victories and heartbreaks. Even a conversation or two about their, um, campaign buttons.

As a baseball fan, I find that you can't talk about Pujols and Jeter and Halladay without talking about Spahn and Mantle and Mays. Similarly, you can't talk about the campaigns of today without talking about those of yesterday. And that's what happens at these meetings.

Later this afternoon, I will once again be a panelist at a meeting of the FMC. I will dutifully report my observations in a forthcoming post. But only after I've calmed down.

Hundreds of thousands of people are marching in Tehran, demanding the results of the Iranian presidential election be put aside.

We know the pressures of having to decide winners and losers. We do that each week with ScuttleButton.

But we don't shirk our responsibility.

Continue reading "We Have A ScuttleButton Winner!" >

June 16, 1999:

Vice President Al Gore officially launches his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in his Tennessee hometown of Carthage.

Polls show Gore with a clear lead over his only Democratic rival, former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey. But they also show him badly trailing the Republican front-runner, Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

As a first-term senator, Gore also ran for president in 1988, but he withdrew from the race after a poor showing in the New York primary.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Sen. Robert Byrd, the 91-year-old West Virginia Democrat who has been a senator longer than anyone in history, has been hospitalized the past month for an infection. His office has not returned calls asking for specifics about his health.

But Democrats back home are discussing what-ifs.

Continue reading "With Byrd Still In Hospital, W.Va. Dems Talk About Succession " >

Matt Kuhns of Lakewood, Ohio, says the decision by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to discard term limits led to this question:

Would American politics be significantly different if the presidency had never been term-limited? Or would inevitable moods for change, plus the toll which the office seems to take, have generally held administrations to two terms anyway?

Term limits on the president have had less of an impact than you'd think. They didn't exist until the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1951. Taking a posthumous shot at FDR, who was elected four times, a Republican Congress pushed through the amendment that limited a president to two terms.

Continue reading "The Effects Of Term Limits: Which Presidents Paid The Price?" >

The bizarre saga of the New York state Senate just got bizarrer.

State Sen. Hiram Monserrate, the Queens Democrat who joined the Bronx's Pedro Espada last week to give the GOP control of the state Senate, is returning to the Democratic fold.

Continue reading "N.Y. Defector Returns To Dems, Leaving State Senate Tied At 31" >

Any list of potential Republican presidential hopefuls for 2012 invariably includes Haley Barbour.

The 61-year-old governor of Mississippi is enormously popular among GOP rank and file. His aw shucks charm and good ol' boy demeanor win over audiences, and many remember his stewardship of the RNC during Bill Clinton's first term -- when Republicans won control of both the House and Senate for the first time since 1952.

Barbour will be headlining party fundraisers later this month in both Iowa and New Hampshire, early states on the nominating calendar. He insists that the visits are tied to his role as the incoming chairman of the Republican Governors Association, but everyone knows that 2012 is a major subtext to the visits.

The obvious question, as asked by The Associated Press' Pettus and Fouhy:

If the Republican Party is in danger of being marginalized as a conservative, white male Southern enclave, is Haley Barbour the best person to turn things around?

Continue reading "Haley Barbour To Visit Iowa & N.H. This Month" >

June 15, 1984:

Rep. George Hansen (R-ID) is sentenced to up to 15 months in prison following his conviction in April for filing false financial disclosure statements. He is the first member of Congress convicted under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act.

Hansen, a seven-term conservative, will be reprimanded by the full House on July 31 and defeated by Democrat Richard Stallings in November.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Throughout the day, every day, we in the media are sent remarks made by the president and vice president. They are sent courtesy the Office of the Press Secretary.

This is the header of one release that arrived in our in-box moments ago:

REMARKS BY PRESIDENT BUSH

AND PRIME MINISTER TSVANGIRAI OF ZIMBABWE
AFTER MEETING

Oval Office

P.S. When contacted by NPR, someone in the White House press office said, "Slight typo. We'll fix it."

Every now and then we hear stories that need to be repeated. We just love the tale told by Time reporter Karen Tumulty that appears in the magazine's Swampland blog.

The Washington bureau of Time magazine is moving to a new locale, and Karen is trying to decide what to keep and what to toss. Her notes from the '96 Bob Dole campaign? A Lyndon LaRouche pamphlet?

But there are some artifacts that you come to realize are real treasures. Like my favorite press release of all time. It is dated July 19, 1994, and was issued by then-Senator Howell Heflin's office. That morning, the Senator had been dining in the Capitol with some Alabama reporters, and suddenly felt a sniffle coming on. The reporters were aghast when the Senator reached into his pocket, pulled out a bit of fabric and began to wipe his nose with ... a pair of ladies underwear. Hence the following:

STATEMENT OF SEN. HOWELL HEFLIN
HANDKERCHIEF
JULY 19, 1994

I mistakenly picked up a pair of my wife's white panties and put them in my pocket while I was rushing out the door to go to work.

Rather than take a chance on being embarrassed again, I'm going to start buying colored handkerchiefs.

Yep, that's one press release that I'm hanging on to.

With so many people now unable to get TV service because the stations began cutting their analog signals this morning, I'm here to remind you that there's still one opportunity for entertainment in this country: ScuttleButton.

The new puzzle is up.

You may have forgotten to get your digital converter boxes, but you shouldn't forget how to play the game. Simply take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and, hopefully, you will arrive at a famous name or a familiar expression. And don't focus on a political answer. It doesn't necessarily have to be political, though it could be.

A correct answer chosen at random gets his or her name in this column. Personally, I can't imagine a greater honor.

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state -- you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

ScuttleButton is a regular Friday feature on the Political Junkie blog. Here's the answer to last week's puzzle.

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be the first on your block to receive notice when a new puzzle goes up on the blog. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy Friday!

It's clearly been a week where everyone is not happy.

Judiciary Committee chair Pat Leahy announces that the Sotomayor confirmation hearings will begin on July 13 -- without conferring with Republicans, who are not happy.

Republicans stage a coup in the New York state Senate -- which has made Democrats not happy.

Creigh Deeds wins big in Virginia -- making Terry McAuliffe and Brian Moran (and maybe even the Republicans) not happy.

And George Bush prepares to jump out of an airplane on his 85th birthday -- making Barbara Bush not happy.

How can we make people happy? By listening to this week's episode of our "It's All Politics" podcast, which you can hear here:

Credits --
Nonstop talkers: Ron Elving and Ken Rudin
Producer: Evie Stone

Wanna subscribe to the podcast? You can do it through iTunes.

Wanna hear previous episodes? Click here.

Wanna be on my weekly mailing list? Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Wanna follow my rantings on Twitter? Go to http://twitter.com/kenrudin.

June 12, 1996:

In a battle between two Mississippians, Trent Lott defeats Thad Cochran to succeed Bob Dole to lead the Senate.

One day after Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole resigns to focus on his presidential bid, Senate Republicans elect Trent Lott as the new leader. He easily defeats his Mississippi colleague, Thad Cochran, on a 44-8 vote.

Don Nickles of Oklahoma is elected majority whip. Cochran will remain as the number three in the party leadership, retaining his post as Republican Conference chair. And Larry Craig of Idaho is elected chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

On Tuesday, I wrote about an effort in Maine to abolish separate branches of the state Legislature -- the House and Senate -- and instead move to a unicameral legislature, the way Nebraska does it.

Well, it ain't happening.

Keith Shortall, the public affairs director at the Maine Public Broadcasting Network, reports that the Maine state Senate has killed the bill:

Senators on Wednesday stuck by their earlier vote against the bill. That kills it for the session, even though the House had endorsed the plan. The proposed constitutional amendment would reduce the Legislature to one, 151-member body. The present Legislature has a 151-member House of Representatives and 35-member Senate. The change would have been subject to voter approval.

One of the reasons the 2010 Senate race in Delaware has given Republicans hope is that Mike Castle, the state's at-large House member, is considering running.

Castle is extremely popular with members of both parties. He won a ninth term last year with 61 percent of the vote -- not his best showing ever, but remember, it was a year when Joe Biden was on the Democratic national ticket as well as seeking a seventh Senate term.

Biden, of course, was victorious in both of his races. When he resigned his Senate seat, he was succeeded by longtime aide Ted Kaufman, who immediately said he wouldn't run to hold the seat in the 2010 special election.

Of course he wouldn't. Kaufman, as everyone knows, is keeping the seat warm for state Attorney General Beau Biden, son of Joe, who is currently serving with the Delaware National Guard in Iraq. It's never been expressly said that young Biden will run for the Senate, but few doubt that's what's in the cards.

Continue reading "The House Is My Castle? Delaware GOP-er In Tough Decision" >

A lot of comments, some on the blog and mostly via e-mail, about my earlier posting today regarding yesterday's murder at the Holocaust museum in Washington and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's explanation of why he hasn't spoken with President Obama ... because of the Jews.

This was not -- or at least, my blog posting was not -- about Gaza, or the Israeli settlements, or how AIPAC or for that matter the Learned Elders of Zion control the U.S. government.

And I was not, and am not, saying there is linkage between Wright's remarks to the murder of a security guard at the Holocaust museum yesterday by James von Brunn, a white supremacist and anti-Semite, or the murder of abortion doctor George Tiller last month by anti-abortion extremist Scott Roeder.

All I'm saying -- and this is all I'm saying -- is that hate speech is hate speech, and it should be condemned whenever and wherever possible. When Wright is asked about whether he spoke to the president, and the first words out of his mouth are to blame the Jews, to me, that's hate speech. This has nothing to do with justifying Israeli foreign policy or what's happening to the plight of Palestinians or anything of the sort. The question to Wright wasn't, "What do you think of Israeli foreign policy?" Blaming "the Jews" for keeping him from talking to Obama was not an adult critique of what's going on in the Mideast.

We can argue this all day if we want. All I'm saying is that, to me anyway, if the first response out of someone's mouth to a seemingly innocuous question is that it's the Jews' fault -- or the blacks' fault, or the Muslims', or the Hispanics', or the Palestinians', or the Eskimos' -- then there has to be an element of hate somewhere that provokes such an answer.

Just as the nation was horrified at the recent murder of abortion doctor George Tiller, the same reaction was felt yesterday over the news about a self-styled white supremacist, James von Brunn, who walked into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington armed with a rifle and began shooting.

Von Brunn apparently has spent much of his 88 years filled with hate, mostly against blacks and Jews. A recent e-mail message from von Brunn read, "It's time to kill all the Jews."

One person, a 39-year-old security guard, was killed. Von Brunn was shot and critically wounded by guards.

Now here's another bit of hate that got less play.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Obama's former minister who was attending the Hampton University Ministers' Conference in Virginia, was asked by a reporter from the Hampton Daily Press the last time he spoke with the president. Here was his answer, recorded on tape, which you can watch on the link:

Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. ... Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing [by] the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel.

Wright goes on to talk about how "the Jewish vote, the AIPAC vote" is "controlling" Obama.

Is what Wright has to say news? Not sure. I think the bigger issue is that hate and bigotry, no matter where it comes from, should not be ignored. It's a disease, and it spreads.

June 11, 1990:

The court's decision led to congressional attempts to protect the flag from desecration.

In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court strikes down a law that protects the flag, saying it violates the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee.

Voting in the majority were William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

The minority was comprised of Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Byron White, John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O'Connor.

Almost immediately, Congress begins to rewrite language on protecting the flag that would pass constitutional muster.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

The political media were fairly breathless this week about a Republican fundraising dinner held in Washington and whether Sarah Palin would show up or not. Would the Alaska governor upstage keynote speaker Newt Gingrich? Would she be allowed to speak? Would she see Mitt Romney from her kitchen window?

While this American Idol-esque silliness was going on, Mike Huckabee was in Iowa -- his third trip to the Hawkeye State since he won the presidential caucuses there last year.

Continue reading "While Newt & Sarah Make Headlines, Huck Works Iowa" >

A busy Political Junkie segment on today's Talk of the Nation.

A big win for Creigh Deeds in yesterday's Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary. What to make of the November matchup with Republican Bob McDonnell?

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Pat Leahy says the Sotomayor confirmation hearings begin July 13; Republicans lump it.

Plus: trying to make sense of what's going on in the New York state Senate, Roland Burris loses a challenger in Illinois, a former New Hampshire senator tries his luck in Florida, and William "Deep Freeze" Jefferson finally goes to trial.

Today's special guest: Richard Wolffe, author of Renegade: The Making of a President.

Join host Neal Conan and me every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for the Junkie segment on TOTN, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes. And you can win a Political Junkie T-shirt!

Last week's segment, with special guest Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog, can be heard here.

If your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

I'm long since past the point of outrage -- or even surprise -- when a big money-giver to a presidential candidate gets a plum ambassadorship somewhere.

It's the way of Washington. But somehow, in listening to his "change" campaign for president, I wondered if Barack Obama would be somewhat different from some of his predecessors.

Well, according to a great piece this morning by The Washington Post's Al Kamen, Obama has in many ways gone much further than Bill Clinton, who appointed some Dem moneybags to ambassadorships. It's not even close.

Kamen outlines the differences between the two presidents' approach:

Clinton tended to pick people with experience in public policy -- if not international policy -- for the important embassies. His big donors were generally given jobs in smaller countries in eastern or northern Europe where they could do little lasting harm.

There are, of course, no hard rules on these matters. There is no consensus that just being rich is necessarily a bad thing, though most observers suggest that complete cluelessness is to be avoided, if possible.

A chart that accompanies his column -- which is somehow not available on the Web site -- illustrates the difference.

For ambassador to Great Britain, Clinton chose Adm. William Crowe, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who gave no money to the Clinton campaign. Obama picked businessman Louis Susman, an Obama fundraiser who either raised or contributed $735,000 for Democratic candidates during the previous three election cycles.

For France, Clinton chose legendary Democratic fundraiser Pamela Harriman, who raised/contributed $99,000 in the three-year period. Obama picked one of his fundraisers, Charles Rivkin, who raised/contributed $883,000.

For Japan, Clinton chose former Vice President Walter Mondale. Obama picked another fundraiser, John Roos, a Silicon Valley attorney, who raised/contributed $545,000.

For South Africa, Clinton chose James Joseph, a former undersecretary of interior whose total was $700. Obama picked communications executive Donald Gips (total: $553,000).

For Spain, Clinton chose Richard Gardner, a former ambassador to Italy ($6,300). Obama picked Boston financier Alan Solomont (total: $1.4 million).

Change you can believe in? That sure is a lot of change.

June 10, 1978:

Virginia Democrats nominate former state Attorney General Andrew Miller as their Senate candidate to succeed retiring one-term Republican William Scott.

The move comes four days after Republicans chose their nominee, conservative activist Richard Obenshain, a favorite of the party's grass roots. Obenshain won the GOP nomination on the sixth ballot over former Navy Secretary John Warner, who was seen as more moderate.

On Aug. 2, Obenshain, 42, will be killed in a light plane crash near Richmond following a campaign event. The state Republican committee will then select Warner as the replacement nominee, and he will go on to defeat Democrat Miller in November for the first of his five terms.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

State Sen. R. Creigh Deeds won the three-way Democratic primary for governor of Virginia, an impressive showing for the candidate who was the least well-funded in the race. And while the momentum was clearly heading in his direction, his capturing of nearly 50 percent of the vote was the big headline of the night. Trailing well behind were former DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe and former state Delegate Brian Moran.

Results with nearly all precincts reporting:

Deeds 159,284 49.73%
McAuliffe 84,588 26.41
Moran 76,376 23.84

Deeds will face former state Attorney General Bob McDonnell (R) in November. The winner will succeed Democrat Tim Kaine, who is barred by state law from succeeding himself. Four years ago, McDonnell defeated Deeds for the AG post by just 323 votes.

Deeds raised about $3.7 million for his campaign, less than Moran and far less than McAuliffe, who entered the race as the favorite, despite this being his first bid as a candidate. McAuliffe had long been associated with the Clintons, having raised money for both Bill and Hillary and having headed her presidential bid in 2008.

Deeds also benefited from sharp attacks aimed at each other by McAuliffe and Moran; Deeds mostly stayed out of the fray. Hailing from rural Bath County, near the West Virginia border, he was clearly the most conservative of the three Dems, supporting a loophole in state law that exempts gun show sales from background checks.

They are still pointing fingers and shaking heads in New York, one day after a legislative coup in which two renegade Democrats voted with Republicans to give the GOP control of the state Senate -- control it lost last November after four decades.

But if you listen to what Democrats are saying today, the fight ain't over yet.

Continue reading "Winners & Losers In New York Coup; Dems Not Giving Up" >

Former President George Bush -- we're talking 41, not 43 -- turns 85 on Friday. And he plans to celebrate his birthday by making a parachute jump in Kennebunkport, Maine, where he has his summer home.

The Associated Press says Bush "will make a tandem jump with a member of the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team onto a landing zone near St. Ann's by the Sea Church in Kennebunkport," according to Bush aide Jim Appleby. The AP report continues:

Bush's most recent jump was in November 2007 at the reopening of his library at Texas A&M University in College Station. He made his first jump as a Navy pilot when his plane was shot down over the Pacific during World War II. He also made two jumps apiece on his 75th and 80th birthdays.

According to the World Almanac, only six former presidents have had a longer life than Bush, who was born on June 12, 1924. They are/were:

Gerald Ford (93 years, 165 days)
Ronald Reagan (93 years, 120 days)
John Adams (90 years, 247 days)
Herbert Hoover (90 years, 71 days)
Harry Truman (88 years, 232 days)
James Madison (85 years, 104 days)

The Maine House of Representatives is backing a plan that would establish a unicameral (one house) legislature -- combining members of the state House (current number: 151) and the state Senate (35) into one body of 151 members.

Of all the states, only Nebraska has that system, which it adopted in 1937.

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network reports that it's not a done deal: "The measure requires more votes in both the House and Senate. Today's vote in the House fell short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed for final passage."

And why would Maine do this? "Supporters say the constitutional change would save the state millions of dollars during a typical, two-year legislative session, and improve the Legislature's efficiency. But opponents say a unicameral Legislature lacks checks and balances."

Check out the Maine Unicameral Legislature blog, especially -- as the blogger, Rep. Linda Valentino, states -- "if you are ready for a REAL CHANGE, and ready to achieve a TRANSPARENT, EFFICIENT, and ACCOUNTABLE State legislature."

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said that confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, will begin July 13.

We're less than eight hours away from the closing of the polls in Virginia, where we'll find out the winner of the Democratic gubernatorial primary.

But we already have a winner from last week's ScuttleButton contest.

Continue reading "We Have A ScuttleButton Winner!" >

Not really.

But we, the political cognoscenti, have this ingrained and annoying habit of over-interpreting elections. That's especially true of off-year elections, like this year's gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, or special elections, like the one earlier this year in New York's 20th CD to replace Kirsten Gillibrand.

Sometimes what happens does have repercussions. In 1991, for example, Harris Wofford (D) upset former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh (R) in the special Pennsylvania Senate election following the death of incumbent Republican John Heinz. Wofford was appointed to fill the seat, but few thought he could beat Thornburgh, who had been a popular two-term governor. But Wofford, with the help of Dem strategists James Carville and Paul Begala, effectively used the issue of health care to upset Thornburgh. The following year, Bill Clinton used health care as one of his issues to win the White House.

In the off-year elections of 1993, it was a clean sweep for the GOP. Republicans took governorships in New Jersey, where Christie Whitman ousted Gov. Jim Florio, and Virginia, where George Allen won easily. Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York City, hardly a bastion of Republicanism, and they kept a congressional seat on Staten Island. The following year, Republicans won control of both houses of Congress for the first time since 1952.

So sometimes we do learn something in these isolated elections. But for the most part, attempts at reading tea leaves and extrapolating results into a BIG MESSAGE are often just silly.

Continue reading "How The Va. Primary Will Affect The 2016 Presidential Race" >

June 9, 1987:

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware declares his candidacy for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination.

Biden, the 44-year old chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, will play a leading role in the defeat of Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork later in the year. But his White House hopes will evaporate over accusations of plagiarism and that he embellished his academic record. He will withdraw from the race on Sept. 23.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Regarding the shocking takeover of the New York state Senate by the Republican Party with the support of two Democrats from NYC:

Some are wondering what this does to the prospects of passing same-sex marriage legislation, which is supported by Gov. David Paterson (D) and already passed by the state Assembly.

Here's the take from Jeremy Peters and Danny Hakim of the New York Times:

Why Mr. Espada and Mr. Monserrate suddenly defected on Monday afternoon was not immediately clear.

One source of contention among Democrats recently has been Mr. Smith's support for same-sex marriage. Senator Ruben Diaz Sr., a Democrat from the Bronx, has been outspoken in his insistence that legislation allowing gay couples to marry not be allowed to come to a vote. Some had speculated he might leave the Democratic Party if Mr. Smith were to allow a vote.

But Mr. Diaz did not join Mr. Espada and Mr. Monserrate in the leadership vote on Monday. It was not immediately clear whether the same-sex marriage legislation played any role in the leadership dispute.

It's Jim Jeffords all over again, though on a smaller scale.

It looks like Republicans have managed to win back control of the New York state Senate.

They have apparently gotten two Democratic members, Hiram Monserrate of Queens and Pedro Espada of the Bronx, to vote with them. That gives Senate Republicans the 32 votes they would need to switch control ... thus electing Dean Skelos (R) as the new majority leader and ending Malcolm Smith's (D) leadership after just six months.

North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports that both Espada and Monserrate are "socially conservative" Dems who have "bristled" at Smith's leadership.

Democrats won control of the New York state Senate (by one vote) in 2008 for the first time since the 1960s, and thus giving the party complete control over state government.

The Albany Times-Union's Irene Jay Liu and Rick Karlin call it a "stunning move that could change the nature of electoral politics." Indeed.

Virginia Democrats will choose their gubernatorial nominee in a primary tomorrow for the first time since 1977. The reason you are reading so much about Virginia is not that it's the state (commonwealth) with the most interesting race for governor. It's that, like New Jersey, it's the only game in town this year.

And that happens every four years. We watch Virginia, and New Jersey, closer than most, because they are the only two gubernatorial contests in the year after the presidential election.

There's a lot happening in the Old Dominion. I previewed the race on Thursday. Here's the latest.

Continue reading "Bloggers, Polls Weigh In On Virginia Democratic Gov Primary" >

This just in, courtesy The Associated Press:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has broken her ankle in an "airport stumble en route to Senate meetings." Sotomayor, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals who has been nominated by President Obama to succeed retiring Justice David Souter, fractured her ankle at New York's LaGuardia Airport before taking the shuttle to Washington, where she had a busy schedule of meetings with senators.

The White House says she will keep her six appointments, according to the AP report.

Earlier today, on ABC's Good Morning America, former first lady Laura Bush said of Sotomayor, "I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee. ... As a woman, I'm proud that there might be another woman on the court. I wish her well."

A blogger on the Gawker Web site rakes Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) over the coals this morning for a recent tweet on Twitter.

The Cajun Boy, the blogger's nom de plume, writes that Grassley made a "Herculean ass of himself by ragin incoherently on Twitter": "Seriously, it looks as though these rants were composed by a third grader:"

There's no reason to insult Grassley or third-graders here, so we'll let you see one of the senator's tweets yourself. I type, you decide:

Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us 'time to deliver' on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.

New Jersey is one of the few states in the country without a lieutenant governor; in fact, other than U.S. senators, the governor is the only person elected statewide in the Garden State. That is one reason New Jersey's governor is among the most powerful in the nation.

This year, however, comes a change. For the first time ever, this year's election in N.J. will bring in a lieutenant governor.

But who will it be? On Friday, state Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr. said he's not interested in becoming Chris Christie's (R) running mate. Kean, the unsuccessful Republican nominee for the Senate in 2006 against Bob Menendez and the son of a former two-term GOP governor, said he is focusing on the state budget, and a statewide run would be too distracting.

Claire Heininger of the Newark Star-Ledger says other Republicans, such as Bergen County Clerk Kathleen Donovan and state Sens. Diane Allen and Jennifer Beck, remain possibles.

One Democrat, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, has already taken himself out of contention to be Gov. Jon Corzine's running mate.

You remember Roland Burris, don't you?

He's the guy who was appointed to the Senate by then-Gov. (but the already-disgraced then-Gov.) Rod Blagojevich to fill the seat vacated by Barack Obama.

For an assortment of reasons -- everything from his ties to Blagojevich to, well, his ties to Blagojevich, he was seen as a certain lame duck, if not a dead duck, for 2010. His fundraising has been anemic, his polling numbers are weak, and there was no shortage of Democrats drooling at the thought of taking him on in next February's primary.

There's no reason to think that his situation has improved in the least. But one Democrat who had been mulling over a primary challenge, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, from Chicago's North Side, now says she won't run.

Continue reading "Schakowsky Won't Challenge Burris In 2010 Illinois Primary" >

June 8, 1976:

Jimmy Carter wins the Ohio Democratic primary, a victory that essentially sews up his party's presidential nomination.

The former Georgia governor receives 52 percent of the vote, easily topping his closest competitor, Rep. Mo Udall of Arizona, by 31 percentage points. Carter's victory in Ohio begins a parade of endorsements, from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley to erstwhile rivals George Wallace and Henry Jackson. It is thought to be the earliest time a candidate won his party's presidential nomination in advance of the national convention.

The California presidential primaries, held the same day, do not garner the same attention. Gov. Jerry Brown, as expected, easily wins the Democratic contest. Brown, an extremely popular governor, won 59 percent of the vote. Ronald Reagan, another California favorite son, wins the Republican primary by nearly two to one over President Gerald Ford. Reagan and Ford will continue to battle it out up until the GOP convention in Kansas City.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

President Obama speaks for 55 minutes to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and guess how many times he mentioned the word "ScuttleButton."

Precisely.

Well, it's Friday, and a new puzzle is up -- it's tougher than usual -- and I'm here to remind you of the rules. Take one word (or concept) per button, add 'em up, and whaddaya get? Usually the answer to the rebus is a famous name or a familiar expression. And don't focus on a political answer. It doesn't necessarily have to be political, though it could be.

A correct answer chosen at random gets his or her name in this column. Personally, I can't imagine a greater honor.

You can't use the comments box at the bottom of the page for your answer. Send submission (plus your name and city/state -- you won't win without that) to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

ScuttleButton is a regular Friday feature on the Political Junkie blog. Here's the answer to last week's puzzle.

And, by adding your name to the Political Junkie mailing list, you will be the first on your block to receive notice when a new puzzle goes up on the blog. Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org. Or you can make sure to get an automatic RSS feed whenever a new Junkie post goes up by clicking here.

Good luck, have fun, and happy Friday!

We taped this week's episode of our "It's All Politics" podcast minutes after President Obama's address to the world's Muslims from Cairo -- we do our best with analysis and comment.

We also delve into the situation in Minnesota, where Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) announced he won't run for a third term. How does that affect the deadlocked Senate race? And what about 2012?

Plus: Chris Christie wins in NJ and John McHugh joins the Army. And ... just as we were about to talk Virginia gov politics, we lost our studio time. Thank goodness we here at Political Junkie had the foresight to write about the Old Domnion yesterday.

You can hear the new podcast here:

Credits --
Nonstop talkers: Ron Elving and Ken Rudin
Producer: Evie Stone

Wanna subscribe to the podcast? You can do it through iTunes.

Wanna hear previous episodes? Click here.

Wanna be on my weekly mailing list? Sign up at politicaljunkie@npr.org.

Wanna follow my rantings on Twitter? Go to http://twitter.com/kenrudin.

June 5, 1968:

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY), moments after declaring victory in Tuesday's Democratic presidential primary in California, is shot three times by Sirhan Sirhan, a Jordanian immigrant, at Los Angeles' Ambassador Hotel.

Kennedy, who never regains consciousness, dies 25 hours later, on June 6.

Kennedy had won a hard-fought primary over Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-MN), who had defeated him the week before in Oregon. He received 46 percent of the vote to McCarthy's 42 percent. An unpledged slate favorable to the Johnson-Humphrey administration, headed by state Attorney General Thomas Lynch, finished third with 12 percent.

In California's Republican Senate primary, liberal incumbent Thomas Kuchel is upset by Max Rafferty, the state superintendent of public instruction and a staunch conservative. The Democrats nominate former state Controller Alan Cranston, who will defeat Rafferty in November.

At some point, we'll be talking about the race for governor of Virginia in larger political terms.

As in ... Is this the place where Republicans begin their long trek back? Will they win on the home turf of Gov. Tim Kaine, the Democratic National chairman? If so, will it portend vulnerability for the Democrats in 2010?

Or will Virginia continue the string of Democratic advances in the Old Dominion? Barack Obama won Virginia in 2008, the first Democratic presidential candidate to do so since LBJ in '64. Democrats have won back-to-back Senate and gubernatorial contests. Will that trend continue?

But it's too early for such lofty thoughts.

Right now, the focus is on the Democratic primary next Tuesday, June 9, where three candidates are running: former Democratic National Committee chair Terry McAuliffe, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, and ex-state Delegate Brian Moran. (Bob McDonnell, who resigned as state attorney general back in February in order to focus full time on the race for governor, has already been selected as the Republican nominee.)

And for most of the primary campaign, of the three Dems running to succeed the term-limited Kaine, the spotlight has been on one man: McAuliffe.

Continue reading "Hare & Tortoises In Virginia Democratic Gov Primary" >

Here's the complete text of President Obama's speech at Cairo University in Egypt earlier today to the world's one-point-five billion Muslims.

Trying to predict the results of the 2010 Senate races in June of 2009 is probably a fool's errand, but I thought this might be a good time to do a ratings chart. And while many of you like to point out all the times I've been wrong in predictions -- as you should -- let the record show that I called every 2008 Senate race correctly (except Minnesota, assuming Al Franken is declared the winner).

Each party holds 18 seats that are up next year. But Republicans may have a tougher challenge, as five incumbents are retiring, compared with only one (the appointed Ted Kaufman of Delaware) on the Democratic side. And we still don't know if more retirements are in the making, if some surprise candidates may emerge, or how the public will view the Obama administration.

Having said that, here's a chart of all 36 Senate seats up in 2010:

Continue reading "Earlybird Ratings Of 2010 Senate Races" >

I'm as excited about this year's New Jersey gubernatorial race as much as anyone, maybe more. I can't wait to see how the two candidates define the contest and each other.

But I have to admit, I smiled at this breathless line in Associated Press reporter Angela Delli Santi's otherwise excellent analysis of the race:

Republican Christopher J. Christie and Gov. Jon S. Corzine are set to do battle in the only governor's race in the country to feature an incumbent Democrat [emphasis mine].

Sounds like a big deal -- the only gov race with an incumbent Democrat! But wait: There are all of two gov races in the country this year, New Jersey and Virginia!

That must mean there's more history in the making: Virginia is the only governor's race in the country without an incumbent running!

June 4, 1974:

California Secretary of State Jerry Brown, son of a former governor, wins his state's Democratic gubernatorial primary in a large field that includes San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto, Rep. Jerry Waldie and state Assembly Speaker Bob Moretti.

In November Brown, who is 36, will face the Republican primary winner, Houston Flournoy, the state controller. Flournoy easily defeats Lt. Gov. Ed Reinecke for the GOP nomination.

Brown will defeat Flournoy in the general election and in doing so will succeed Ronald Reagan (R), who is retiring after two terms. Reagan had defeated Brown's father, Pat Brown, in 1966.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

A reminder that it's not to late to enter our Sonia Sotomayor Senate Vote Contest.

The first person with the exact accurate Senate tally on Sotomayor's confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court will win a Jimmy Carter for President bumper sticker -- I'm picking Carter because he's the only president who served a full term but never had the opportunity to nominate someone to the Supreme Court.

Send your prediction to politicaljunkie@npr.org.

(Thanks to Custom Buttons USA of Malverne, N.Y., for the hot-off-the-presses Sotomayor button.)

Or at least that's how it appeared to Gus Sperrazza of Washington, D.C.:

Wow, how do you think Jimmy Carter took Obama's comments about Ronald Reagan -- that Reagan "restored a sense of optimism ... that the American people sorely needed....during a difficult period"?

Wow is right.

Yesterday at the White House, President Obama, with former first lady Nancy Reagan at his side, announced the creation of a commission that will honor Ronald Reagan on Feb. 6, 2011, which would have been the late president's 100th birthday. Signing the bill, Obama said, "President Reagan helped as much as any president to restore a sense of optimism in our country. ... It was this optimism that the American people sorely needed during a difficult period -- a period of economic and global challenges that tested us in unprecedented ways."

Hmm. If Reagan brought in a "sense of optimism" during a "difficult period," does that mean the bad times were the fault of his predecessor, the Hon. James Earl Carter? That's a delicious question that I'm sure will be discussed.

Reminds me of what George Bush said at the 1988 Republican convention, that he would offer a "kinder and gentler" path. Kinder and gentler than whom? His predecessor, Ronald Reagan?

Love to hear what you think.

A busy Political Junkie segment on today's Talk of the Nation.

Republicans have a nominee for governor in New Jersey, but they lose a congressman from New York. How does Tim Pawlenty's decision to rule out running again for governor of Minnesota affect the stalemated Franken-Coleman Senate race? Plus, the latest on the Sonia Sotomayor Senate Magical Mystery Tour.

Join host Neal Conan and me every Wednesday at 2 p.m. ET for the Junkie segment on TOTN, where you can often, but not always, find interesting conversation, useless trivia questions and sparkling jokes. And you can win a Political Junkie T-shirt!

Last week's segment, with special guest Ken Duberstein, can be heard here.

If your local NPR station doesn't carry TOTN, you can hear the program on the Web or on HD Radio. And if you are a subscriber to XM/Sirius radio, you can find the show there as well (siriusly).

June 3, 1969:

In a close race that reflects the ideological split in the New Jersey GOP, Rep. Bill Cahill defeats fellow congressman Charles Sandman for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Cahill, a moderate, runs just three percentage points better than Sandman, who is backed by conservatives.

On the Democratic side, former Gov. Robert Meyner is a comfortable winner in a six-candidate field. Meyner served two terms from 1954-61.

In November, Cahill will easily defeat Meyner, becoming the state's first Republican governor to be elected since the 1949 election.

Four years later, Cahill will be defeated by Sandman in a primary rematch.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, a conservative backed by the party establishment, won the Republican gubernatorial primary in New Jersey, defeating an even more conservative candidate, ex-Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. Another conservative candidate, state Assemblyman Richard Merkt, finished a poor third.

Christie, who touts his crime-busting record, goes into the November general election a favorite over Gov. Jon Corzine (D), whose popularity declined along with the state's economy.

Click here for more on the GOP primary.

Since New Jersey governors have been allowed to run for a second term starting in the late 1940s, only two incumbents have gone down to defeat: Bill Cahill (R), in the 1973 GOP primary, and Jim Florio (D), in the 1993 general election.

President Obama made it official today. He nominated Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) to be secretary of the Army.

And that means only one thing, at least for political junkies: There will be a ferocious fight in New York's 23rd Congressional District to pick a successor to McHugh.

Continue reading "Do Dems Have A Shot At McHugh's Soon-To-Be-Open NY 23?" >

Just five hours to go in today's Republican gubernatorial primary in New Jersey between former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie and ex-Bogota Mayor Steve Lonegan. The winner takes on Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine in November. (A review of the primary here.)

Here's the latest look at our 2009 political calendar:

June 9 -- Virginia Democratic gubernatorial primary. Gov. Tim Kaine (D) is barred from seeking re-election; Virginia is the only state that limits governors to one consecutive term. Democratic candidates: former DNC Chair Terry McAuliffe, ex-state Del. Brian Moran and state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds. Bob McDonnell, the former state attorney general, is the Republican nominee.

July 14 -- Runoff in CA 32, between Judy Chu (D) and Betty Chu (R). Christopher Agrella, the Libertarian Party candidate, is also on the ballot. The winner succeeds Hilda Solis (D), who resigned to become secretary of Labor.

Aug. 4 -- Detroit mayoral primary. Dave Bing, who won a special election on May 5 to fill the remainder of the term of Kwame Kilpatrick, is expected to seek a full term.

Sept. 15 -- New York City mayoral primaries. The City Council waived term limits to allow Michael Bloomberg, elected twice as a Republican but now an independent, to run again. He will most likely be on the GOP line again. William Thompson, the city comptroller, is the likely Democratic nominee.

Nov. 3 -- ELECTION DAY.

While Minnesota residents are still awaiting the results of the Nov. 4 Senate race -- only 210 days ago, if you're keeping score at home -- at least they now know something about their governor.

Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, is to announce this afternoon he will not seek re-election.

Pawlenty, who was on John McCain's short list for VP last year -- he was, for the record, my personal prediction -- is thought to be looking at a 2012 presidential run. And no one wants to go into a presidential effort with a defeat back home. Yet that might have been the case had Pawlenty sought a third term.

Continue reading "Pawlenty To Skip 3rd Term Gov Bid; An Eye For WH In 2012?" >

President Obama's interview yesterday with NPR covered a wide range of topics. But neither the president, nor NPR's Michele Norris nor Steve Inskeep, managed to mention last week's ScuttleButton puzzle.

Is it because, once again, so many people found it ridiculously easy?

Continue reading "We Have A ScuttleButton Winner!" >

The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama will nominate Rep. John McHugh (R-NY) as secretary of the Army. An announcement could come as soon as this morning.

McHugh, first elected to the House in 1992, is the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee. He was re-elected to a ninth term last year with 65 percent of the vote.

McHugh is one of just three Republicans in the 29-member New York House delegation -- the fewest number of Republicans in state history.

June 2, 1970:

Brewer's "Full Time" slogan was a dig at Wallace's White House ambitions.

In a Democratic primary runoff closely watched by the Nixon White House, former Gov. George Wallace, who ran for president as an independent in 1968, wins back his old job as governor of Alabama. (There is no Republican candidate.)

Wallace defeats his one-time protege, incumbent Albert Brewer, who became governor in '68 following the death of Wallace's wife Lurleen. (She was elected governor in 1966 as a stand-in for her husband, who was term-limited.) George Wallace's margin over Brewer is about three percentage points.

Back in May, Brewer led Wallace by about 12,000 votes, but neither candidate received a majority, which forced the runoff.

The Nixon administration is thought to be worried over another Wallace presidential bid in 1972, fearing he could win the Southern states that Nixon was counting on.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.

Yesterday, NPR hosts Michele Norris and Steve Inskeep interviewed President Obama at the
White House.

Excerpts of the interview were played yesterday on All Things Considered and this morning on, well, Morning Edition.

You can hear the complete interview and read the complete transcript here.

The New Jersey Republican Party has a golden opportunity this year to do something it hasn't done in awhile: elect a candidate to statewide office. Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, who left the Senate to become governor in 2005, has seen his numbers, along with the economy, tank, and he has responded by raising taxes and cutting services. The GOP would love to take advantage by ousting him in November.

But first the party will have to unite following today's contentious primary where, as Garden State Republicans have experienced before, the preferred candidate of the party establishment is being challenged by a conservative outsider.

Continue reading "Jersey GOP Needs To Sort Self Out Before It Faces Gov. Corzine" >

NPR hosts Michele Norris and Steve Inskeep interview President Obama this afternoon.

The focus will be on foreign policy, and the interview will appear in two parts: Today on All Things Considered and tomorrow on Morning Edition.

Full transcript and audio will be available at approximately 7 pm ET.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor in Washington, D.C., on June 1, 2009. Alex Wong/Getty Images

Here's a rare moment of personal privilege. What follows is a list of things that feel, to me, relevant, and less so, regarding the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

First, and foremost: Was this an affirmative action choice? Was this the dreaded "identity politics" at its worst? I'm not going to pretend that Sotomayor's gender and heritage had nothing to do with her being selected. I'm well aware that of the nine potential court picks President Obama was reviewing, only one was a white male.

Continue reading "Your Sotomayor Scorecard" >

June 1, 1965:

Elliott Roosevelt, the son of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is elected mayor of Miami Beach, Fla.

He defeats the incumbent, Melvin Richard, in a nonpartisan election.

Roosevelt became a Miami Beach resident in 1963, when he moved there with his fifth wife.

Today in Campaign History is a daily feature on Political Junkie.