Madigan takes a pass

It’s becoming a familiar refrain: The White House nudges someone in one direction and they go the other way.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan (D) is the latest to rebuff overtures from President Obama’s political team, officially ruling out a bid for Senate on Wednesday. Madigan had met with the president and his top political team in mid-June to discuss a potential candidacy for Sen. Roland Burris’s (D-Ill.) seat.

Madigan joins a growing club. Already, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper (D) has said no to a Senate race. Meanwhile, Reps. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) and Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) are ready to run against incumbent senators despite White House pressure that they stay out of the race.

{mosads}And in both Kentucky and Ohio, Democrats face competitive primaries. In the Bluegrass State, Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo (D) and Attorney General Jack Conway (D) are already throwing fists, while Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner (D) has resisted pressure to get out of the race against Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D).

Democrats could still clear both fields, and the national party has made little secret of its interest in Conway and Fisher over Mongiardo and Brunner. But that makes quite a number of candidates who have refused to go along with the political wishes of their popular president.

These scenarios would not likely have happened under President Bush, when Republicans listened closely to White House political guru Karl Rove.

Rove became so involved, in fact, that his name became an attack line Democrats used against what they called his “handpicked” candidates. Not many Republicans are going to be able to call their Republican rivals the handpicked choice of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel or top political adviser David Axelrod.

Meanwhile, Madigan’s decision to run for reelection as attorney general takes pressure off state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias (D), who is already in the Senate race, and off Gov. Pat Quinn (D), who now has a much clearer shot at a full term.

Burris has not said whether he will run for a full term himself, but his anemic fundraising performance — he raised less than $1,000 in the first quarter — suggests he will not be a senator much longer.
— R.W.

DNC begins targeted counteroffensive on stimulus

The Democrats are fighting back on the GOP’s stimulus criticism.

The majority party is no longer content just to let the stimulus debate play out in the real world. With an eye toward 2010, it’s now mounting a public-relations offensive to assure voters that the package is working.

In the last two days, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has launched a cable ad buy against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and a Web ad against House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) for their criticism of the stimulus.

And the DNC isn’t stopping at leadership. It has also taken aim at some new Republican candidates who have criticized the package as they began their campaigns. In releases dubbed “Failure to Launch,” the DNC attacked former Ohio state Sen. Steve Stivers and Florida state Rep. Dorothy Hukill within a day of their entering their respective House races.

In each case, the party is pointing to specific projects benefiting from the stimulus — an airport and a college in Hukill’s district and renovation and public projects in Stivers’s — in an effort to shape the debate in a key House race.

Stivers is running in a rematch race against Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (D-Ohio), and Hukill is one of a few GOPers running against freshman Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-Fla.). Both are top targets for Republicans.

The first salvos are relatively small, as the McConnell ad buy is only five figures, but they are part of a larger campaign that will play out in races around the country. So any Republicans who come out of the gate attacking the stimulus should be prepared to have the DNC pulling on the local media’s ears.

It’s interesting that the Democrats are seemingly eager to take ownership of the stimulus package now. Perhaps they realize that they own it no matter what, and they might as well embrace it, mount a defense and hope for the best.

Welcome to the Stimulus Election.

— A.B.

RNC turns a corner

The past five months have not always been kind to Michael Steele, but now the once-embattled chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is getting credit for more effectively running the GOP’s operation.

The myriad critics who once chirped with dissatisfaction at virtually everything the chairman did or said have quieted, and Republicans on Capitol Hill are starting to pay more attention to the RNC.

The GOP thinks it is beginning to hit a stride now that top staffers are in place; a research department is dispensing daily shots at the White House and congressional Democrats; and Steele has nixed the inflammatory and sometimes bizarre rhetoric.

A morning conference call, held each day, is helping coordinate messages coming off of Capitol Hill and out of RNC headquarters. Among a chummy set of Republican press flacks, that harkens back to the heady days of the early Bush administration, when the party’s stars dispensed wisdom to younger spinmeisters, all of whom stayed on message until new orders emerged.

The RNC’s outreach to members of Congress has improved markedly as well. The committee has held a series of conference calls in recent weeks featuring members of Congress talking up issues near and dear to their hearts.

{mosads}So far, Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Tom Price (R-Ga.) and Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) have participated in the calls. On Thursday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) gets his first crack at holding court over the phone.

And no one is unhappy with the party’s fundraising. The RNC has consistently outraised the Democratic National Committee, save for a few months around Inauguration season, and the GOP holds a commanding cash advantage over Democrats. The RNC has even handed some of its cash to the House and Senate campaign committees — to the tune of $2 million each — paying off folks who might otherwise snipe behind their backs.

Republicans are still in the minority, and their party remains bereft of widely recognized figures who could take on President Obama one on one. But they have reason to be optimistic, as the party starts getting things right politically.

— R.W.