2010

MANCHESTER--U.S. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-Rye) said that he "presumes" he will run for re-election in 2010, but left the door open that he might decide to retire.

"I'm presuming I'll run again, but I haven't made any decisions," Gregg told PolitickerNH.com. "I'll sit down with Kathy next year and decide."

RIALTO - Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico (D-Newark) expects Democrats to pick up at least two Republican seats on Nov. 4. Democrats currently hold 48 seats in the State Assembly, six shy of a two-thirds majority, which would allow them to pass crucial legislation without Republican cooperation.

One of Darlene Fitzgerald's long-time allies says she will have a tough race ahead of her as a Democratic candidate in the 2010 U.S. Senate race, but argues Fitzgerald is just the person to handle the burden.

"She is running as an extreme long shot. There are serious questions whether Darlene is cynical enough for politics," said Tom Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP). "But, she is proving again that she throws all her energy into what she believes is right, whether it is quote-‘realistic' or not."

Devine and Fitzgerald have worked together for nearly a decade, as advocates for whistleblower's rights. GAP functions as the nation's foremost organization involved in that effort, and Devine initially encountered Fitzgerald after she went public with her criticisms of the U.S. Customs Agency - her former employer from which she resigned in 1999.

She resigned from her duties as a special agent alleging undue pressure from her supervisors after she questioned the suspension of a drug trafficking investigation. Since then, Fitzgerald has served as an activist calling for expanded rights for federal whistleblowers.

"She became one of the premiers of a wave of DHS [Department of Homeland Security] whistleblowers. We call them the Paul Revere whistleblowers who said "the terrorists are coming - we're not prepared!" said Devine. "She's been almost a personal hotline to other whistleblowers, making herself available to help them emotionally survive what can be a horribly traumatic experience when they are going through the retaliation."

With the next election cycle already shaping up to be one of the most exciting in Nevada's history, some observers are looking toward a 2010 governor's race that could end up being one of the most interesting races in the nation.

Anticipation has kicked into overdrive due in part to a handful of Democrats vying for the shot to take down incumbent Gov. Jim Gibbons (R-Sparks), who has a 21 percent approval rating, according to a recent poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research in Washington D.C.

At the head of the pack is Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid (D-Henderson), son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who surveyed 601 voters in a private poll that sized him up against both Gibbons and Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley to the tune of favorable results.

While Kentucky may be focusing on this year's U.S. Senate competition between incumbent U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Louisville) and businessman Bruce Lunsford (D-Louisville), one candidate is already gearing up for a shot at a Senate seat in 2010.

Former U.S. Customs agent and self-proclaimed "national security whistleblower" Darlene Fitzgerald announced on Tuesday that she will run for the seat of U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Southgate) a Democrat in the next federal election cycle in the Bluegrass state.

"I am going to be one less person in Washington who can neither be bought off or bullied," Fitzgerald told PolitickerKY.com.

Fitzgerald enters the political fray spending several years pushing for "whistleblower" protections for federal government employees.

The campaign to beat a recall attempt against State Sen. Jeff Denham hasn’t decided how it will spend any leftover funds from the election.

Kevin Spillane, a spokesman for the anti-recall effort, said officials will first concentrate on paying off campaign expenses with money from the fund created to beat the recall, Friends of Jeff Denham Against the Recall.

“We’ve got some overhead that’s still being taken care of,” Spillane said. He expected all outstanding debts to be resolved in about a month.

Duf Sundheim, the former chair of the California Republican Party who is heading up a new independent organization designed to recruit top Republican candidates to run for statewide offices, told PolitickerCA.com today that former U.S. Rep. Tom Campbell would be a strong 2010 Republican gubernatorial contender.

"There are people who think he would be a strong candidate, and people have expressed that to me," said Sundheim, who declined to answer when asked if he had engaged in private discussions with Cambell about a 2010 campaign.

Rob Stutzman has not yet signed up to work for Meg Whitman, the former EBay CEO who is considering a run for governor, the highly regarded Republican operative told PolitickerCA.com today. Stutzman directed California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's communications shop before running Mitt Romney's campaign in the Golden State.

"I'm not doing work for Whitman," said Stutzman. "I'm firmly nowhere in the governor's race."

With the dust clearing after last week's letter-writing spat between Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, analysts today said both sides saw the squabble as an opportunity to gear up for statewide runs.

"They are two potential rivals for the governorship in 2010," said Allan Hoffenblum, editor of the California Target Book.

Analysts said that, for Garamendi, taking aim at Poizner's new insurance regulations, provided an opportunity to win attention from the media - something a lieutenant governor working under a Republican governor often has difficulty doing.

For Poizner, a pro-choice and pro-gay rights Republican, pushing back on Garamendi provided an opportunity to show state Republican Party activists he is willing to go on the offensive against a Democratic foe.