Daily Political Wire 8-25-2010

George Wenschhof

Primary Results reveal a few surprises - Alaska has Republican Joe Miller beating incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski 51-49% with 98 precincts reporting. Murkowski would make it the second Republican Senator to be beat in the primaries joining Bennet in Colorado to be shown the door. Former republican, now Democrat; Arlen Specter was also beaten in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.

In Arizona Senator John McCain easily won against tea party favorite J.D. Hayworth 56-32%. However, McCain may have damaged his ability to work to gain consensus across party lines in the Senate as he lurched far to the right, abandoning many of his career positions on issues.

Kendrick Meek, with backing from Labor, easily won against billionaire Jeff Greene for the Democratic nomination for Senate. It will be interesting to see if meek can now begin to battle the front runners Charlie Crist (I) and Marco Rubio (R).

In another upset, Republican Rick Scott beat favored Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for Governor. Scott will face Democrat Alex Sink. Chris Cillizza has some analysis here.

Up in Vermont, the Democratic primary for Governor is as close as it gets with 90% of precincts reporting Peter Schumin was ahead of Doug Racine by only 121 votes. A state mandated recount will probably take place. Politico.com has more here.

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CBO report shows Stimulus bill has helped the economy, yet real estate sales plummet - the CBO report touted by Vice President Joe Biden yesterday showed the 787 billion Stimulus bill may have created up to 3 million jobs and boosted the economy by 4.5% in the last quarter. TheHill.com has more here.

Unfortunately, unemployment remains at 9.5% and the National Association of Realtors just announced existing home sales were down 27.2% in July, the lowest figure in a decade. You can read more here.

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Justice Department will appeal Judge's Ban on stem cell research - as expected the Obama administration is appealing the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Judge Royce Lamberth had placed a temporary ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Reuters.com has more here.

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Maryland is latest state to receive federal funds for education - Maryland is the 12th state to be awarded funds in the "Race To The Top" competition for portions of the 3.4 billion being doled out by the Education Department.

Detractors of the program point out the program favors heavier populated states as 11 of the 12 states to be awarded funds all are located on the east coast. The other state is Hawaii. The NY Times has more here.

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Obama to deliver Prime Time Speech on Iraq next Tuesday - air time has been requested from the television networks for next Tuesday. The president will be back from vacation and will deliver a major speech outlining the end of military troops in Iraq. CNN.com has more here.

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Wikileaks.org to release more Pentagon Papers tomorrow - another up to 15,000 documents relating to the U.S. war in Afghanistan may be released following the already 76,000 documents previously posted on the website. You can read more here.

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