Former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards (D), who spent eight years in federal prison after being convicted of racketeering and extortion, is considering a bid for Congress in Louisiana’s 6th district, the Hay Ride reports.
Edwards, 86, is mulling a bid for the seat being vacated by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) because he believes the field is weak.
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford “wants to frame the mayoral election as a referendum on his fiscal management. And he doesn’t want to talk about his conduct,” the Toronto Star reports.
“As he had promised, Ford was the first candidate to register for the 2014 race. Immediately after he filed his nomination papers at city hall Thursday morning, he revealed his early communications strategy: a relentless focus on money matters, a refusal to address questions about his behavior while in office.”
Said Ford: “I’ve got the strongest track record. I’ve been the best mayor that this city’s ever had. My record speaks for itself.”
“Congress didn’t get much of anything done last year, but you wouldn’t know it looking down K Street,” Politico reports.
“Washington Inc. experienced only a minor squeeze, continuing to hum along even as Congress failed to pass the kind of bills that lobbyists are paid top dollar by corporate clients and other special interests to influence — like an overhaul of the Tax Code, immigration reform or a major deficit package.”
“The fact that big business is just barely scaling back on its spending for hired guns in a year when Congress is expected to do even less and a year after the economy was still weak is a testament to the resilience of Washington — and the firms that have thrived in the economy around it.”
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“House Republicans will kick off the second session of the 113th Congress next week by voting on another bill to undercut the president’s health care law,” Roll Call reports.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) told potential donors that he would do a push up for every dollar donated to his campaign in the last two days of 2013, the Denver Post reports.
Said Coffman: “This coming election is going to be the toughest of my career and I need your help to get fit for the fight.”
In a hectic first full day as New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio introduced himself to a wary police force on Thursday, navigated unfamiliar hallways with a skeletal staff and confronted an imminent winter storm that might have rattled even the most experienced municipal manager,” the New York Times reports.
“As he rushed between tours and televised briefings, the new mayor also had to contend with a growing political headache: lingering questions over the treatment afforded to his predecessor at the inaugural ceremony the day before.”
“Climate change and energy will be a major policy battleground in the 2014 midterms, advocates on both sides of the issue promise,” The Hill reports.
“Energy and environmental issues are expected to take a front seat in dozens of races across the country, from coal country in West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, where Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) faces a tough reelection race just as she prepares to take up the chairmanship of the Senate Energy Committee.”
New York Times: “Behind the scenes, Secretary of State John Kerry has initiated a push to focus on global warming.”
“I think there’s an increased level of people wanting an alternative to the Republican-Democrat thing.”
— Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD), quoted by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, announcing he’ll run for Senate as an independent.
“After a highly contentious, hugely unproductive session, members of the most unpopular Congress in history will face voters this year and, very likely, win reelection in overwhelming numbers,” notes the Los Angeles Times.
“It is a paradox of these discontented times… Public opinion surveys show contempt for Congress reaching unprecedented levels. But as much as they dislike their own representatives, Democrats and Republicans hold members of the opposite party in even lower regard.”
“That selective outrage works against the sort of throw-the-bums-out election that would produce wholesale, across-the-board upheaval in the House.”
Dan Balz: “The former president was clearly mindful that the Democratic Party of 2014 and of Barack Obama is not quite the same as the one he led in the 1990s — and that one potential obstacle in the path of Hillary Clinton’s possible presidential ambitions is a primary challenge from the left. His embrace of de Blasio’s message was a deliberate step in the positioning of the Clintons as they look to a possible campaign.”
Meanwhile, TPM notes Obama adviser David Axelrod suggested ” that Clinton’s participation in the inauguration ceremony may provide
reassurances to the left ahead of the 2016 presidential race and ‘signal
to elite’ that de Blasio’s ‘agenda is not ‘radical.'”
Speaker John Boehner “has signaled he may embrace a series of limited changes to the nation’s immigration laws in the coming months, giving advocates for change new hope that 2014 might be the year that a bitterly divided Congress reaches a political compromise to overhaul the sprawling system,” the New York Times reports.
“Although the legislation would fall far short of the demands being made by immigration activists, it could provide the beginnings of a deal.”
A New York Times editorial on NSA leaker Edward Snowden:
“Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) earned the distinction of logging the most speaking time on the Senate floor in 2013, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Sessions spoke for more than 33 hours last year year, “just a few more hours than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), who clocked in at roughly 30 hours in 2013.”
“That’s an impressive distinction considering that Reid opens and closes the Senate most days that it is in session, often making extended opening remarks, while Sessions is a member of the minority party without a formal leadership position.”
Former Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ) “has asked a judge to let him wait until Jan. 13 to report to prison to begin serving a sentence for his convictions on public corruption, money laundering and other charges,” the AP reports.
“The former Arizona congressman has been ordered to report to prison Monday, but his lawyers have asked for a one-week extension to give the judge a chance to rule on Renzi’s pending request to remain free on bail while he appeals his convictions.”
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) “had a deathbed wish: that Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) would appoint his protegee, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D), to replace him in the Senate. But Abercrombie upended this island state’s political order by tapping the younger Brian Schatz, then the lieutenant governor,” the Washington Post reports.
“Now, a year after Inouye’s death, the former senator’s ghost lingers large over a bitter feud that is dividing Democrats along ethnic and generational lines here in President Obama’s birthplace. With the outspoken support of Inouye’s widow, Hanabusa is giving up her House seat to challenge Schatz in the 2014 primary.”
“In a historic swirl of commerce and cannabis, the world’s first licensed stores able to sell marijuana legally to anyone over 21 opened in Colorado on Wednesday,” the Denver Post reports.
“Thousands of people from Telluride to Denver cheerfully stood in lines that took hours to navigate for the chance to buy legal marijuana after presenting nothing more than an I.D. Marijuana activists hailed the day as a watershed in their effort to overturn anti-cannabis laws. Store owners — several of whom said the turnout exceeded even their own ambitious expectations — feared running out of supply.”
New York Times: “While about 20 states allow medical marijuana, voters in Colorado and Washington State decided last year to go one step further, becoming the first in the nation to legalize small amounts of the plant for recreational use and regulate it like alcohol.”
“Bill de Blasio, whose fiery populism propelled his rise from obscure neighborhood official to the 109th mayor of New York, was sworn into office on Wednesday, pledging that his ambition for a more humane and equal metropolis would remain undimmed,” the New York Times reports.
“In his inaugural address, Mayor de Blasio described social inequality as a ‘quiet crisis’ on a par with the other urban cataclysms of the city’s last half-century, from fiscal collapse to crime waves to terrorist attacks, and said income disparity was a struggle no less urgent to confront.”
Thanks to Political Wire readers for another great year!
We have some amazing things coming in 2014 — including a site redesign, new shows for the podcast and an expanded Prime newsletter. Stay tuned…
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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