Justin's Political Corner

Moments ago, Gary Peters announced that he will run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Carl Levin in 2014.

h/t: eclectablog.com

AP sources tell @donnacassataap that Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, Finance committee chairman, to retire apne.ws/10b6315#MTSEN

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) April 23, 2013

H/T: Jed Lewison at Daily Kos

Former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD) acknowledged over the weekend that she is mulling the possibility of running in South Dakota’s open 2014 U.S. Senate race.

No Democrat has declared in the race for the seat currently held by Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who announced last month that he will not seek re-election next year. Former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R) is the lone Republican to declare, although there is plenty of speculation that Rep. Kristi Noem (R-SD), the tea party favorite who unseated Herseth Sandlin in 2010, may toss her hat in the ring as well. Brendan Johnson, a U.S. attorney and son of the retiring senator, is also said to be considering a run in the race, but Democrats in the state are desperate to avoid a primary. 

A survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling last month showed Herseth Sandlin locked in tight races with Rounds and Noem in hypothetical general election matchups. 

H/T: TPM LiveWire

Ashley Judd declared on Wednesday that she’s decided against a run for Senate in Kentucky against Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

(Reuters) - Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, does not plan to run for re-election when his current term ends in 2014, sources close to the matter and key Capitol Hill staffers said on Monday.

Johnson, 66, joined the Senate in 1997 and has been widely expected to retire at the end of his term. He plans to make the announcement on Tuesday, the sources said. Johnson’s staff said that he will hold a press conference at the University of South Dakota on Tuesday.

His retirement would leave a vacant seat in a conservative-leaning state that could be difficult for Democrats to defend as they try to protect their majority in the Senate.

Political analysts expect Johnson’s son, Brendan Johnson, who is South Dakota’s U.S. attorney, to emerge as a potential Democratic candidate in the 2014 election. The younger Johnson has not announced any formal plans to seek the Senate seat.

Former Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who lost a bid for reelection in 2010, is another leading choice to run if the incumbent senator retires.

Johnson’s exit from Congress would also create an opening at the top of the banking committee, which he has led since 2011. Currently, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed is the second-ranking Democrat on the panel.

h/t: HuffPost Politics

The Huffington Post is now reporting that actress Ashley Judd is now taking steps to enter the race for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky currently held by Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Judd, even though she has not actually entered the race as of yet, has already been targeted by conservative front groups, who are trying to paint her as a hard-line liberal and a carpetbagger, which is very easy for them to do, since she is an opponent of mountaintop removal coal-mining and was one of President Barack Obama’s most vocal supporters during his 2012 presidential campaign, additionally, she currently resides in Tennessee and would need to move to Kentucky in order to run for a U.S. Senate seat there.

Also, HuffPo has named Kentucky Secretary of State Allison Lundergan Grimes as a potential Democratic primary challenger to Judd. The possibility of a Judd-Lundergan Grimes primary, which is certainly not out of the question, would lead to an ideological fight within the Kentucky Democratic Party, as Judd is a progressive Democrat and Lundergan Grimes is a moderate Democrat. 

h/t: Downstate Democrat at Daily Kos

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) plans to run for reelection next year.

“I am out there running,” he told POLITICO earlier this week.

The majority whip has been raising money but has not hired campaign staff yet.

h/t: Politico

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan says he will not seek re-election in 2014. He says he wants to do his job as Senate Armed Services chairman and as an advocate for his home state “without the distraction of campaigning for re-election.”

Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978 and is the longest-serving senator in Michigan’s history. The 78-year-old lawmaker says in a statement the decision was “extremely difficult.” He says he loves representing the people of Michigan and fighting for what he believes is important for them.

h/t: Yahoo! News

It’s a sign of how anxious the right wing is about the possibility that Ashley Judd might run for Senate against Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that the attacks on her have geared up before she’s even formally entered the race. There’s the American Crossroads ad trying to frame her as out of touch with a series of relatively anodyne and contextless quotations. And now, the Daily Caller, which has been trying to frame Judd’s feminist beliefs as fringe, has launched the stupidest salvo against her at all: arguing that Judd, because she has done nude scenes for her work as an actress, “has—literally—nothing left to show us.” In an exceptionally gross piece, Taylor Bigler, the Caller’s Entertainment Editor (Entertainment, in Caller parlance, apparently means surfing Mr. Skin and publishing clickbait trash gossip) writes:

We are used to knowing just about everything there is to know about serious political candidates. But will Judd be the first potential senator who has — literally — nothing left to show us? The actress has bared her breasts in several films and has had some raunchy sex scenes in others. According to MrSkin.com, which bills itself as “the largest free nude celebrity movie archive,” Judd has flashed just about everything on-screen. It seems like she was particularly liberal with nudity early on in her career…Judd did a lesbian sex scene in 2002′s Oscar-nominated “Frida” and has nine other films categorized as “sexy” by Mr. Skin, meaning that there is at least one racy scene in those films.

It may come as a surprise to the Daily Caller, but actresses don’t generally take their clothes off on-screen as an expression of some sort of groovy seventies lifestyle, or as a way to have sex with people who are not their spouses or partners. Rather, getting asked to take off some or all of your clothes is, for a lot of actors, a frequent requirement of the job, and something that until recently, tended to be asked of women more frequently than men. 

Attacking Judd for her nude scenes is part and parcel of the right’s current strategy to discredit promising female advocates. Like Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on Sandra Fluke, the Caller’s attempts to impugn Judd as an exhibitionist are an attempt to make her seem less serious by impugning her sexual chastity (that this tactic remains in the playbook is a whole other world of crazy). But the evidence is even more specious and pathetic here. Fluke, who became engaged shortly after enduring nationally-broadcast attacks on her character, stumped for birth control access in the real world. Judd took her clothes off as part of fiction. The Daily Caller may not know the difference, but voters do. And Judd, who already knows a thing or two about the insanity of media scrutiny, is getting a real, and sadly valuable education in what you have to be willing to take if you want to be active in American public life as a woman.

H/T: Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress

Whether or not film star and progressive activist Ashley Judd decides to challenge Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for his seat in 2014, conservatives seem to be gearing up for a fight. On Tuesday morning, right-wing website The Daily Caller compared Judd’s unabashed feminism and environmentalism to former Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), whose campaign failed after he claimed women couldn’t get pregnant from“legitimate rape.” Akin’s comment was not only medically wrong, but also insulted and dismissed rape victims. Judd’s “most stunning comments,” according to the Daily Caller, range from harsh rhetoric against mountaintop removal to criticism of patriarchal institutions:

She has spoken out against having kids, saying it is “unconscionable to breed” while there are so many starving children in the world.

She has criticized the tradition of fathers “giving away” their daughters at weddings, calling that practice “a common vestige of male dominion over a woman’s reproductive status.”

She has even compared mountaintop removal mining to the Rwandan genocide, and has criticized Christianity as a religion that “legitimizes and seals male power.”

By getting in the race with this sort of baggage, Judd runs the risk of being portrayed as a Todd Akin-esque candidate – meaning voters simply decide she’s unqualified to serve as a senator, because her comments are so outrageous and extreme that people can’t bring themselves to vote for her.

The Daily Caller equates Judd’s and Akin’s comments as gaffes. But Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment cost him the election not because it was “outrageous” but because it shed light on his radical anti-choice voting record. 

h/t: Aviva Shen at Think Progress

Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE) has reportedly decided to retire at the end of his current term, NBC News reported Monday.

The report said that Johanns has informed Republicans in Nebraska, including Gov. Dave Heineman (R), of his decision, which will create an open seat in next year’s race. It is believed that the popular Heineman will pursue the seat that has been held by Johanns only since 2009. 

h/t: TPM LiveWire 

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) will not seek re-election next year, the Star-Ledger reported Thursday.

h/t: TPM LiveWire