Roll Call: “Two longtime House Democrats — Reps. Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Carolyn McCarthy of New York — will not seek re-election in 2014, according to a Democratic aides.”

Jonathan Chait: “To this point, Chris Christie has treated the George Washington Bridge closure story as a joke, and national reporters have regarded it as a minor irritation. The public release of e-mails among his staff changes all that. The e-mails prove that Christie’s loyalists closed the bridge deliberately as political retribution, not as a ‘traffic study’ as claimed. They display an almost comical venality bordering on outright sociopathy. And they will probably destroy Christie’s chances in 2016.”

Chris Cillizza: “Molehills can grow into mountains in politics. This is now a serious problem for Christie.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce will step up its election-year efforts to challenge Tea Party candidates in Republican primaries and back candidates who favor trade, energy development and immigration reform, Bloomberg reports.

Bergen Record: “A cache of private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and his two top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create ‘traffic problems in Fort Lee,’ apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock, and insults used to refer to the borough’s mayor, who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election.”

“The documents obtained by The Record also raise serious doubts about months of claims by the Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor’s top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough’s access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta–a notion that Christie has publicly denied.”

First Read reports that more than half of the National Republican Campaign Committee’s “Young Gun” candidates “are locked in primaries… And about half of the most vulnerable House Democrats running for re-election in 2014 are facing Republican challengers locked in a GOP primary.”

However, the Cook Political Report‘s David Wasserman believes that these Republican primaries could ultimately influence just a handful of general-election contests: “It will only be a problem for Republicans if problematic candidates emerge — and so far there are only a few primaries brewing where there is a ‘problem’ on the horizon.”

The Hill
looks at the drama unfolding in Florida’s 13th congressional district special election:

“The GOP race to replace the late Rep. Bill Young (R-Fla.) has become a political soap opera that could jeopardize Republicans’ hold on the seat. It has all the makings of a daytime drama: a widow disavowing her son due to opposing primary allegiances and a secret family kept hidden for decades only to surface a week before the contentious primary. And with an important swing district at stake, it’s the messy, public family feud that’s another added worry for the party ahead of Tuesday’s Republican primary, for which GOP leaders, and the Young family, are far from unified.”

Ready for Hillary, a “super PAC” that is urging Hillary Clinton to run for president in 2016, announced that it raised more than $4 million last year, the Chicago Tribune reports.