House and Senate Roundup: Weekend Update

Due to the holiday yesterday (and the resultant slow news day), we did not do a roundup on Friday, instead saving the news for today. House and Senate Roundup will be returning to its regularly scheduled...uh, schedule, on Monday - brownsox

Senate Races

MS-Sen: MSNBC reports on the Mississippi race between Republican Senator Roger Wicker and former Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove, noting that it will be the first competitive Senate race in the state for decades.

But the fact that a Democrat is able to seriously challenge a Magnolia state Republican in a GOP stronghold for a seat in the Senate is almost heresy in Mississippi, which hasn't had a close Senate race in two decades. It could bode ill for Republicans all around the South and maybe the nation.

"We're concerned in the South. We've lost some Republican seats and that can't help but worry all of us who are interested in keeping good Republicans in office," said Lucedale Mayor and town doctor Dayton Whites, who perched Wicker atop a fire engine in front of Town Hall for a campaign appearance.

Wicker is fairly well-liked in the areas where he is known, though as a recently appointed Senator, he still has somewhat less name recognition than Musgrove does, leading to humorous anecdotes like this one:

After finishing a 13-mile bike ride through the Civil War battlefield where Union forces laid siege to Vicksburg, 70-year-old Alan Lessem continually calls Wicker "Sen. Licker" before being corrected by a reporter.

I'll be very interested to see how Musgrove's fundraising went in the second quarter.

TX-Sen: Rick Noriega raised $930,000 in Q2. The good news is that this is Noriega's best haul yet. Nearly half of that -  $454,000 - came via ActBlue, a testament to the netroots' commitment to this race and the Texas blogosphere's effectiveness.

The bad news is, well, the same thing. Texas is the most expensive state this cycle in which to advertise, and Noriega's total haul is a patch on Cornyn's take (Big Bad John, sad to say, is a top-notch fundraiser).

We don't know what Cornyn raised last quarter, but he was sitting on $8.7 million previously to Noriega's $328K on hand. Adding %930,000 to that five months before the election is a disappointing take, I'm afraid.

NC-Sen: Elizabeth Dole wants to drill for oil off the coast of North Carolina.

But she also wants to protect North Carolina's coral reefs from the kind of damage that could ensue from drilling for oil off the coast of North Carolina.

Color me confused.

Elizabeth Dole’s campaign this week touted the letter she sent to President Bush asking him to protect the deep sea coral wilderness off the coast of North Carolina, designating it as a marine monument. Dole wrote that the corals may contain "new biomedical breakthroughs" urging its protection because it "cannot be replaced once disturbed and damaged."

Last week, Elizabeth Dole’s campaign touted the bill she cosponsored which would allow drilling off the coast of states, including North Carolina, where part of the deep sea coral wilderness is located.

Today, the Charlotte Observer’s Bruce Henderson wrote that the corals off of North Carolina’s coast, "could potentially be damaged by offshore drilling and deep-sea trawling."

"You can’t have it both ways," said Hagan Campaign Communications Director Colleen Flanagan. "Elizabeth Dole wants President Bush to protect the same coral reefs she wants to drill into for more oil – that is completely hypocritical. Dole wants us to believe she’s in favor of protecting North Carolina’s coral reefs but what she’s really in favor of is protecting Big Oil and Gas’ bottom line. Offshore drilling continues to pad their profits while doing nothing to help middle class North Carolinians, and nothing to help us invest in renewable energy on the path to true energy independence."

House Races

AZ-08: Well, this is embarrassing for one of the GOP's top recruits, Arizona Senate President Tim Bee.

The district's former Rep, moderate Republican Jim Kolbe, has pulled his support for Bee's campaign, as Bee seeks to unseat freshman Democrat Gabrielle Giffords.

"I will not be actively campaigning for Bee," the former Republican congressman said during a telephone interview with the Herald/Review on Thursday. Kolbe, whose district included Cochise County and whose seat in Congress is now held by Democrat Gabrielle Giffords, hosted a fundraiser recently for fellow Republican Bee at his Washington, D.C., home.

Kolbe's spokesman cited "personal reasons" for Kolbe's decision. He declined to elaborate, but the Sierra Daily Herald speculates that it may have something to do with Bee's support of a constitutional marriage amendment in Arizona (Kolbe is openly gay).

When asked if Bee’s vote in support of putting a potential gay marriage ban in Arizona on the ballot had anything to do with the issue, Dunn also refused to cite what Kolbe’s personal reasons were.

Kolbe has been openly gay since the early 1990s.

Last Friday, the Arizona Senate placed a constitutional marriage amendment on the November ballot.

Whatever the reason for Kolbe's decision, it certainly doesn't make Bee look like a moderate in Kolbe's mold, an image he needs to cultivate to unseat Giffords this year.

VA-01: We weren't running very hard here anyway, but still, this is disappointing; the lone Democrat in the race to face freshman Republican Rob Wittman has suspended his campaign.

Dr. Keith Hummel, a Democrat from Montross, has suspended his campaign for the 1st District congressional seat, leaving the Democratic Party potentially without a candidate to run against first-year Republican Rep. Robert J. Wittman.

Hummel said discussions about past financial difficulties have become a "distraction from the real issues at stake in this election." Those difficulties include a bankruptcy, campaign manager Stephen Pierce said.

Hummel, an emergency room doctor, said he had made no secret of his financial problems.

"I have always said that I am an imperfect candidate," Hummel said. "Unfortunately, our elections today revolve around narrow and simplistic assessments of viability."

Well, I do think that it's rather critical to be a decent fundraiser in a district which gave Bush 60% of the vote, and where the last Democratic candidate (Phil Forgit) actually underperformed Kerry in his December special-election bid. So perhaps Hummel was not the ideal candidate, anyway.

The First District Democratic Party will be able to pick a successor, if they want to, should Hummel officially drop out.

FL-21, FL-25: The Florida Democratic Party has sent out a press release noting that Miami-area foreclosures have more than doubled in the second quarter of 2008, in the face of action by the Diaz-Balart brothers. The New York Times reported on the Miami housing crisis in March:

But as Congress returns from a two-week recess on Monday for a furious debate over whether to help homeowners on the brink of default, Mr. Diaz-Balart is caught in a crunch of his own.

On one side, Democrats emboldened by the Federal Reserve’s intervention in the collapse of Bear Stearns are demanding help for "everyday Americans." On the other, Republicans including Senator John McCain, the party’s presumptive nominee, are urging restraint, reluctant to commit taxpayer funds to what they say is simply a bailout for greedy lenders and reckless buyers.

On the ground, Miami residents appear to be angry:

For constituents like Mr. Carpio, that is not enough. "I’m very lukewarm about him nowadays," said Mr. Carpio, who like his congressman is a lifelong Republican of Cuban heritage.

Others were less subtle. "He says a lot of about foreign policy, mainly toward Cuba, which makes no difference here," said David Carbonell, a former computer programmer and gas station manager now on disability with a heart ailment. "You have people living here at the edge of poverty and he has done nothing to bring anything back to Hialeah or Miami Lakes. He is a party hack. He will vote the way his party votes."

Ouch. I can't imagine that after the apparent second-quarter fiasco, things are any better for the Diaz-Balarts at home.