TUESDAY’S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP…. Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* Nevada election officials announced yesterday the special election in the 2nd congressional district will be “open to all candidates and not just nominees selected by the state’s political party.” In other words, it’s going to be a free for all, and Republican officials won’t be able to keep Sharron Angle off the ballot.
* The first debate of the cycle for Republican presidential candidates is just two days away, and it appears the stage won’t have many credible contenders. Yesterday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he isn’t attending.
* In Wisconsin, Democrats and their allies hoped to force recall elections for eight state Senate Republicans, but it appears they’ll fall short of the goal. With the deadline having come and gone, petition signatures weren’t enough to force recalls of two GOP senators, leaving the total of vulnerable Republicans at six.
* Despite a recent poll showing Kathy Hochul (D) within striking distance in the upcoming New York special election in Buffalo, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee “has shown no signs of aiding Hochul, even though she has been an effective fundraiser who is running competitively in polling.”
* In Ohio, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) is likely to find that state policymakers have eliminated his district through the redistricting process. As hard as it seems to believe, the liberal Democrats is now reportedly running again anyway, only this time, he’d run in the state of Washington.
* Has reality-television show host Donald Trump already peaked? A new Fox News poll shows his support dropping in the field of GOP presidential hopefuls, slipping from 11% to 8%.
* It probably won’t matter, but former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer (R) has officially moved beyond the exploratory committee and is now a full-fledged Republican presidential candidate.
* And it was a big day for politics in Canada yesterday, with the Conservative Party winning a long-sought majority. It was also an election that “decimated the Bloc Quebecois and humbled the Liberals,” and made the New Democratic Party the Official Opposition for the first time ever.
