Presidential race heats up (by going to South Carolina), Rubio gets some buzz this morning
Here’s your morning briefing on presidential primary politics, from James Pindell of The Boston Globe.
After a weekend in Iowa, followed by a weekend in New Hampshire, the 2016 presidential campaign moves to South Carolina this week.
Six 2016 hopefuls will be in the Palmetto State over the course of a week, which began when Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz addressed a national security conference in West Columbia.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush will be in the state Tuesday and Wednesday. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker gets there Thursday and Friday.
Popping this morning:
Marco Rubio’s house of horrors in Politico: “Now, the three-bedroom property stands as a stubborn symbol of both a politically problematic friendship and lingering questions about Rubio’s personal finances, which dogged him on the campaign trail in 2010 and may do so again. The friendship has frayed in recent years, friends say, as the fortunes of [Marco] Rubio, 43, and [scandal-plagued former CongressmanDavid] Rivera, 49, have diverged. Last week, they put the 1,228-square-foot house up for sale. The list price is $125,000 — $10,000 less than what the two men paid for it a decade ago.”
Nobody can match Marco Rubio’s upside in The Washington Post: “The fact remains that Rubio, more than anybody, is the guy Republicans should want to earn the nomination. That’s not to say that he’s definitely their best candidate — just that he’s the one with the most of what is described by pro-sports draft analysts as “upside.”
And it’s not just because he’s young, a gifted messenger, Hispanic and comes from a swing state. All of those things are important to making Rubio the GOP’s upside candidate, but it’s also because he’s the kind of guy who could — in theory, at least — unite a fractured Republican Party.”
Rand Paul talks tech — and Clinton emails — at SXSW in The Dallas Morning News: “In his continued campaign to reach nontraditional GOP voters, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul stopped in Austin on Sunday to speak with the hip, young and plugged-in at the South by Southwest Interactive conference.”
Gowdy Says He Doesn’t Want Benghazi Committee’s Probe to Stretch Into 2016 by Bloomberg Politics: “Representative Trey Gowdy said Sunday he doesn’t want the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s work — which has now expanded to include a look at Hillary Clinton’s e-mail practices — to become a focus of the presidential contest.
“ ‘I would like to be through as quickly as possible,’ the South Carolina Republican leading the committee told NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press. ‘I have no interest, zero interest, in you and I having this conversation in 2016. ‘”
Vote on attorney general nominee hits new delay in The New York Times: “The Senate will not consider the nomination of Loretta E. Lynch to be attorney general until it moves forward on a stalled human trafficking bill, Senator Mitch McConnell,Republican of Kentucky, the majority leader, said Sunday.”
A NCAA tournament printable bracket to take into the office.
Number of the day: 217
The number of electoral votes reliable Democratic voting states give the 2016 Democratic nominee to start with (on the way to 270), according to the Rothenberg-Gonzales Political Report.
New Hampshire chatter: ‘Petition on steroids’ means stamping dollars to get money out of politics in The Concord Monitor: “[Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s] method is a petition on steroids: stamping dollar bills with messages like, “Not to be used for bribing politicians,” that he estimates have already made 87 million impressions across the country.
The focus for the next year is on New Hampshire, where 800 people have purchased stamps. Cohen and the rest of his nonprofit, the Stamp Stampede, intend to mark 10 percent of the bills in the state before the 2016 presidential primary, and to do so they’re looking to get an additional 6,000 stampers on board.”
Iowa chatter: Courting Iowa’s evangelical right brings risk, reward in The Des Moines Register: “The pastors represent access to a motivated grass-roots campaign army and a pool of voters all but guaranteed to turn out on caucus night.
“But appealing to that constituency also means abiding rhetoric seen by some as strident and even hateful. It means adopting priorities that even some fellow Republicans would prefer to see de-emphasized in the national political debate.”
South Carolina chatter: GOP opts for party chief for keynote in The State: “Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, will be the keynote speaker at the S.C. Republican Party’s Silver Elephant fundraising dinner on May 1.
Rather than try to choose a speaker from the dozen-plus Republicans weighing 2016 White House runs, state GOP officials went with Priebus, the party’s leader.”
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