Meek and Obama are playing nice

If a president is to help make Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.) the next senator from Florida, it’s more likely to be President Clinton than President Obama. But that doesn’t mean Meek can’t play nice with the man he opposed in the Democratic presidential primary.

Well, sort of.

Meek will be among a select few members of Congress to accompany Obama to the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad this week. It makes sense, given that he represents the Miami area and has a big stake in U.S.-Cuba policy.

But it could also be seen as a nod from Obama’s team to Meek’s blossoming Senate candidacy. And for Meek, that’s huge.

Meek was one of the earliest and most vocal backers of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 presidential race and has so far parlayed that into a pair of fundraisers with Bill Clinton. The speculation has been that Obama might be cool to Meek’s candidacy because of the presidential race.

Meek has emerged as an early front-runner on the Democratic side in Florida’s Senate race, but he’s going to need help if, as expected, Gov. Charlie Crist (R) gets in.

But even as Meek and Obama join up, Obama’s people are unlikely to be thrilled with Meek’s stated opposition to Obama’s Cuba policy. Specifically, Meek told The Miami Herald that Obama’s pledge to lift limits on remittances “could be counterproductive to our mission in Cuba to turn it toward democracy the way we’d like to see it.”

It’s not a surprising position for a man who represents Miami, but it probably doesn’t help matters.

—A.B.

Senate campaign chiefs hit the trail

Their candidates are at home laying groundwork for next year’s elections, but the heads of the Democratic and Republican Senate campaign arms are spending their recesses logging frequent flyer miles and raking in dough.

Actually, National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) chief Robert Menendez (N.J.) probably should have just traveled together, given the overlap in their recess voyages.

Both senators headed to New York for fundraisers, followed by stops in Seattle, San Francisco and Texas, with Cornyn making additional stops in Silicon Valley and Menendez also hitting up donors in Chicago, Los Angeles and Florida.

On Monday, Cornyn hit Seattle, where Sen.  Patty Murray (D-Wash.) faces reelection, and then, on Tuesday, he toured the Facebook headquarters in California.

Republicans have a notably weak bench in Washington state, where no major candidate has stepped up to take on Murray. And in California, the GOP is trying to recruit former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina to take on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer next year; Fiorina has said she is interested in making a bid. It may be a tough row for Republicans to hoe, however, as both incumbent senators won by wide margins in 2004.

Menendez scooped up money in Murray’s and Boxer’s home states, then traveled to Texas, where Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) is considering stepping down in advance of a possible run for Texas governor in 2010.

The New Jersey Democrat also stopped in Florida, where Sen. Mel Martinez (R) is vacating his seat, and in Illinois, where embattled Sen. Roland Burris (D) will face a primary challenge next year if he chooses to run.

—R.W.

Challenge gap in N.Y. special may be exaggerated

There seems to be some conventional wisdom blossoming that Republicans might be losing more ground than it appears in the absentee ballot-counting in New York’s special election, because they are challenging more ballots.

It’s tempting to think so after something similar happened in Minnesota’s Senate race, with Norm Coleman’s (R) side having basically inflated his totals during the recount by challenging more ballots than Al Franken (D). By challenging more ballots, you take more of your opponent’s votes out of the current totals and give your side the early edge.

But it’s not that simple in New York.

Democrat Scott Murphy’s campaign told the Albany Times Union that the Republicans are responsible for about 60 percent of the challenges, while GOPer Jim Tedisco’s campaign put the breakdown at 50-50.

But even if one side was challenging more, what does that mean?

Unlike in Coleman-Franken, Murphy’s and Tedisco’s campaigns don’t necessarily know who won each ballot they are challenging.

Ballots can be challenged both before they are opened and afterward. In the before stage, ballots can be challenged based on certain evidence on the envelope. In the after stage, each side is actually looking at the ballot.

We don’t know how many challenges are coming from each stage and which side is challenging more in which phase. But we do know that each side has conducted lots of research and will only challenge ballots it thinks probably went for the other side.

Also, the universe of challengeable ballots (about 6,700) is much smaller in the Murphy-Tedisco race than it was in the statewide Minnesota contest, leaving less room for a decisive swing once they are thrown back into the pool of votes.

In recent days, there has been some grumbling about Tedisco’s camp challenging absentees from New York City with Jewish surnames. But a well-connected official noted that it’s not necessarily an underhanded practice.

The official said that when the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) made New York go to one statewide voting list, it was discovered that many people were registered in the city and also at their summer home in the Hamptons or in Columbia County, which is in the 20th district.

That means there is a good reason to challenge New York City ballots: Many of them could be invalid for a variety of reasons. Of course, it follows that many of them will also come from Jewish people and liberal Democrats.

—A.B.