First Steps

Oregon: Steve Novick officially gets in today. Blue Oregon gives rundown and background. I do very much like Novick's tag line: "The fighter with a hard left hook." (Hmmm... "Hard Left Hook" would be a good name for a blog...)

Massachusetts: Some polling out of Suffolk University that would seem, on the surface, to be bad news for Senator John Kerry:

When voters were asked whether Kerry should run for another six-year term in 2008 or if it is time to give someone else a chance, just 37% indicated that he should seek re-election while 56% said that it was time to give someone else a chance.

Looks like bad news for Senator Kerry? Blood in the water? Then, NRSC, you ought to dump a couple million bucks in Massachusetts. Go for it. Every dollar the NRSC blows in Massachusetts on a tease is a dollar they won't have available to spend in actually competitive states.

Mississippi: Thad Cochran, focus of numerous retirement rumors, announced a Q1 fundraising take of just over $630,000, which is right around his fundraising goal. Cochran's cash-on-hand at the end of Q1 was just under $900,000 - not huge, but hardly paltry. However, money isn't an indication of how competitive Cochran will be. It is an indication of whether or not retirement is on the horizon. The take isn't so low (like John Warner's was) that one could point to it as clear evidence of a retirement bent; but it isn't so high as to say there is no question of a re-election bid.

One hint suggesting a Cochran re-election bid is the relatively low take of GOP Rep. Chip Pickering, considered to be Cochran's understudy. The aforelinked Clarion-Ledger piece notes that Pickering's Q1 take was less than $18,000, low for a House run, much less a statewide Senate campaign. If Pickering thought he was preparing for a statewide bid, he probably would have hustled more on fundraising. It could actually be that Cochran is, at this point, genuinely undecided on his 2008 plans.