MA-Senate: Not surprising to me, but surprising to others, Boston Mayor Tom Menino intends to stay neutral in the upcoming US Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren. In a sign of Democratic unity being endanger, Menino refuses to endorse or say who he is voting for. This further reiterates Warren's problems with some of the Democratic establishment in Massachusetts.
WI-Governor: Scott Walker remains in a tight race to keep his job as Governor. He leads Democratic challengers Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk by 2 and 4 points respectively. In case you did not know, this race will be close.
WI-GOP Primary: The same Marquette Law School poll places Mitt Romney up by 8, 39-31, over Rick Santorum in the Republican primary. This poll shows movement towards Romney like a Rasmussen poll released earlier this week. President Obama leads Romney by 5 in the general election matchup, 48-43.
Gerrymander: Happy 200th birthday gerrymandering. The Brennan Center takes a look back at the glorious (inglorious if you are pure on such things) history of electioneering. Arguably gerrymandering predates the 19th century as gerrymandering was alive and well in colonial Pennsylvania. In William Penn's grand experiment all was not well on the electoral front. Seeing members of the legislative assembly we elected based on county, the predominately English Quakers sought to divide the influence of the Welsh Quakers in the Welsh Tract region west of Philadelphia. Thus the county line between two of the three counties at the time, Philadelphia and Chester, was drawn essentially to split the Welsh in half. Now the boundary in the Main Line suburbs of Philadelphia separating Delaware and Chester counties from Montgomery County is the historical artifact of this gerrymandering.
PA-Ballot Signatures: Speaking of Pennsylvania relics of the past, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has struck down a state law requiring petition signature gathers to actually live in the district. This recently came up in the disputed PA-12 primary where Mark Critz challenged Jason Altmire's petitions. Based on federal case law, this seemed like an inevitable conclusion.
Elections have consequences -- from the race for President to the race for one seat on a city council. The political economist Max Weber wrote that the state possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. But in the United States, the state is divided into myriad federal, state, and local entities. And the elections to fill those entities are the products of the fascinating interactions between campaigns, party affiliations, voter turnout, and the media spotlight. Red Racing Horses analyzes those elections -- from a Republican-leaning perspective -- to keep a close eye on the process of electing officials, and to offer our perspective on the election-related issues of the day. Thank you for visiting, and we hope you'll enjoy the blog.
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