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Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele “is weighing a run for Maryland governor, a move that could put him back into the realm of electoral politics,” Huffington Post reports.
Said Steele: “We’re looking at it. You’re gonna take a look at the numbers. Maryland’s a tough state, there are a lot of challenges there.”
The New York Times reviews Jonathan Alter’s “highly informed, energetically reported but often tiresomely familiar new book,” The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies.
“Read today, much of the material here feels like reheated news.”
Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura (I), “who rarely returns to the Capitol offices he occupied from 1999 to 2003, took the opportunity to say that an independent fellow like him would make an excellent candidate for president in 2016,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
Said Ventura: “”I said that 2016 is an opportune moment because there’ll be no incumbent. I believe one issue that would carry me to victory … I would give the people of America to their first opportunity to elect a president who doesn’t belong to either party, since George Washington.”
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New Jersey voters will have a chance to vote for a successor to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) — who passed away today — “on Election Day this November, though Gov. Chris Christie could schedule a special election earlier if it is deemed ‘advisable,’ according to New Jersey law,” BuzzFeed reports.
“That will kick New Jersey’s Senate race into high gear in the coming days, particularly on the Democratic side where Newark Mayor Cory Booker and Rep. Frank Pallone, who has not announced his campaign, have for months been prepping for a potentially bruising primary battle.”
Christie is likely to make an interim appointment and, as the Washington Post notes, “could, as is often the case in situations like these, choose to nominate a close ally from his own party.
The College Republican National Committee released a new postmortem on the November elections which offers a searing indictment of the GOP “brand” and the major challenges the party faces in wooing young voters, Politico reports.
“It’s not a pretty picture. In fact, it’s a ‘dismal present situation,’ the report says.”
First Read: “Beginning the sixth month of his second term in office, President Obama today hosts — along with Vice President Biden — a daylong White House conference on mental health. This comes after Friday’s event on student loans, last Tuesday’s trip to New Jersey to talk about rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy, and the even earlier national-security speech at the National Defense University. And these different events raise this question: What is the White House’s overall message? Because right now it’s all over the place. The above events are all worthy, don’t get us wrong. But they seem disconnected from whatever larger narrative the president offered up in January during his inaugural and State of the Union.”
Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) died at age 89, the New York Times reports.
Lautenberg “died as a result of complications from viral pneumonia at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell, his office said. He had decided not to run for another term next year.”
McKay Coppins has a fascinating look at the collapse of the political consulting firm behind the rise of Rep. Michele Bachmann, Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz.
“This is the headquarters of the largest, most combative, and perhaps
most controversial band of messaging warriors in Republican politics.
Their blandly named company, Strategy Group for Media, has spent a
decade developing a slashing formula for turning the party’s right-wing
rejects into members of Congress. Now there are at least 40 Republicans
in Congress who have worked with the Strategy Group, which serves as a
campaign and strategy clearing house for the uncompromisingly
conservative wing of the congressional caucus that has been at the
center of American politics since 2010.”
Wall Street Journal: “Shrinking near-term federal deficits, slowing health-care cost increases and partisan gridlock have all but wiped out the likelihood for a deal this year to reduce long-term U.S. deficits, perhaps delaying a compromise until after the 2014 midterm elections, White House officials and congressional lawmakers said.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) “is cashing in donations from top Democratic fundraisers and other traditionally liberal donors across the country, even nabbing the support of a handful of rainmakers aligned with President Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel,” the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
“The checks are flying into the Republican governor’s war chest from all sorts of unlikely places — the hedge fund run by liberal billionaire George Soros, for example, and the politically progressive halls of the University of California, Berkeley.”
“To screw up a U.S. Senate special election isn’t a theory for us. We’ve done it, so nobody is taking anything for granted.”
— Massachusetts Democratic Party chairman John Walsh, quoted by the Boston Globe.
Maureen McDonnell “was paid $36,000 last year to attend a handful of meetings as a consultant to the philanthropic arm of one of the state’s major coal companies,” the Washington Post reports.
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) “indicated on his annual financial disclosure forms for 2011 and 2012 that his wife served as a paid trustee of a family charity, the Frances G. and James W. McGlothlin Foundation. But in an interview, James McGlothlin said the $21 million family foundation never named McDonnell to its board.”
National Journal: “Republicans scheming to take back control of the Senate next year are walking a delicate line between the politically pragmatic decisions they need to make to win and an activist base that sees a nefarious, hidden agenda in Washington’s meddling.”
An update to the paperback version of The Amateur by Edward Klein claims President Obama “made a secret deal to support Hillary Clinton when she runs for president in 2016, campaign sources say, payback for the support her husband gave him in 2012,” the New York Post reports.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) called White House press secretary Jay Carney a “paid liar” who is not being truthful about the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, Politico reports.
Said Issa: “Their paid liar, their spokesperson… he’s still making up things about what happened and calling this a local rogue.”
Mitt Romney’s transition organization published a 138-page report detailing how it had prepared for a potential Romney victory in the 2012 presidential election, Time reports.
“It is the product of a team of nearly 500, who labored in Washington and around the country to be ready to help Romney assume the reins of power on January 20th, 2013, in accordance with the Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act of 2010.”
New York Times: “Over the course of four and a half years, no other member of President Obama’s cabinet has been at the center of so many polarizing episodes or the target of so much criticism. While the White House publicly backed Mr. Holder as he tried to smooth over the latest uproar amid new speculation about his future, some in the West Wing privately tell associates they wish he would step down, viewing him as politically maladroit. But the latest attacks may stiffen the administration’s resistance in the near term to a change for fear of emboldening critics.”
Leon Panetta, the former defense secretary and director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has struck a $3 million deal to write a memoir of his life and career, the New York Times reports.
Said Panetta: “I have seen Washington at its best and at its worst. My goal is to give readers the opportunity to go behind the scenes and learn the lessons of how our democracy works, and sometimes how it fails to work.”
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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