special elections

Rocky Holcomb (R) and Cheryl Turpin (D)Virginia has a Democratic Governor, Terry McAuliffe, an overwhelmingly Republican House of Delegates (66 Republicans to 34 Democrats) and an almost evenly split state Senate (21 Republicans to 19 Democrats).

In 2008, when Aaron Schock declared his leadership PAC-- the GOP Generation Y Fund-- was open for business, Schock was the youngest Member of Congress and he claimed the PAC was meant to help elect more young Republican Members. Last cycle Schock raised $782,233 and distributed 510,404 to Republicans to House seats. Electing "young" Republicans, however, doesn't seem to have been on his mind. Among recipients of his largesse were elderly conservatives like, to whom he handed out checks in $5 and $10 thousand increments:

A week from tomorrow there's a crucial primary in central Illinois' swingy 13th congressional district. It pits progressive physics professor George Gollin against a Machine-backed run-of-the-mill hack, Ann Callis. Tomorrow, however, there's a special election in the 13th congressional district of another state, Florida.

Because the Cook Report is slightly skewered towards conservatives, their PVIs are generally a full point or two more Republican. Or, pout another way, the PVI are as much as 12-18 months behind demographic changes in districts. Always a rearview mirror operation rather than a forward-looking predictor, Cook rarely gets anything right-- until the day after an election. FL-13, entirely within Pinellas County, was gerrymandered in 2010 to make it safer for Republicans by taking out the African-American areas of south St Petersburg and dumping them into FL-14 (D+13).

The big news in Florida this morning wasn't exactly a surprise. After Florida's former chief financial officer and Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Alex Sink, expressed interest in running for the open congressional seat in Pinellas County (FL-13), she became the focus of all Democratic attention.

C.W. Bill Young's friends and family have been speculating for years about when he would retire from Congress. Very ill, finally on October 9 he announced he would... in 2015-- and then died about a week or so later.

You never know what's going to actually happen in a low turn out, late summer primary special election. Who will even show up at the polls? Polling shows a big preference among New Jersey Democrats for the much-hyped Newark Mayor, Cory Booker. Last week Monmouth University released a poll that confirms what all the other polls show-- Booker leads his opponents.