The Romney campaign responded to Ryan Grim, who dug this up, by saying that “Gov. Romney wants to ensure states, who are the first responders and are in the best position to aid impacted individuals and communities, have the resources and assistance they need to cope with natural disasters.” But that requires a federal response, or else you have the death spiral I previously described, where emergency response must get paid for by taking money out of other areas of the state budget. That’s if primary Romney doesn’t get his greatest wish, to privatize disaster response.

Lisa Epstein, the foreclosure fighter who gained national recognition for her research and discovery, attempts to pull off an upset on Tuesday in the race for Clerk of Court in Palm Beach County. This is the equivalent of a register of deeds, the official who records mortgage transfer documents in counties across the country. Epstein is running in the Democratic primary against Sharon Bock, a longtime incumbent who has done little of note in highlighting the fraudulent documents rolling into her office, in one of the key areas in the country for the foreclosure crisis. With no other candidates on the ballot, this primary race will decide the next Clerk of Court. All voters in Palm Beach County can participate in the election.

In an upset last night, Beto O’Rourke, a former city councilman in El Paso, defeated incumbent Democrat Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary in Texas’ 16th district. O’Rourke just crossed the 50% threshold needed to avoid a runoff. This is a safe Democratic seat for November. The race in the border district was important, because [...]

The new Public Policy Polling survey of Wisconsin shows that Scott Walker has regained leads in his recall election against all challengers, pinning right at the magic 50% mark. He leads Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett 50-45, and former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk 50-43, with larger leads against the lesser two candidates in the Democratic primary.

A small band of foreclosure fraud fighters in Florida, ground zero for the housing crisis, decided to get involved in public service at one of the most basic levels possible. These activists want to become the public official who tracks the transfer of mortgages in their respective counties. Sometimes this is called a register of deeds, or recorder of deeds, or a clerk of court. It’s traditionally a backwater for legacy types who, if they’re lucky, never get their name in the papers. But since the foreclosure fraud crisis, a few of these registers of deeds have shown real leadership in exposing criminal fraud in the mortgage document process. Inspired by their efforts, one of the leading foreclosure fraud activists in the nation, Lisa Epstein, is running for office.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s first ad of the gubernatorial recall election in Wisconsin begins by asking the question, “isn’t it time to end the civil war in Wisconsin?” He was referring to Scott Walker and the war on public employees, but he could be referring to the battle among Democrats over the next month, since unions have endorsed Kathleen Falk instead.

Welcome to a parallel universe. A casual onlooker might mistake it for our own. The same people run their Congress and their Democratic National Committee. The same election results toss out half the Republicans in 2006 and the rest in 2008. But in our universe, those events were recorded as the triumphs of smart folks like Rahm Emanuel and David Plouffe, winning despite the ruinous work of the DNC. In Herding Donkeys, Ari Berman reports from a place where Howard Dean deserves the credit.

In addition to Presidential primaries in Alabama and Mississippi today, there are primary elections for Congress as well. And a new SuperPAC devoted to beating incumbents has a few more races in their sights today. One of them involves the powerful chair of the House Financial Services Committee, GOP Rep. Spencer Bachus.

Dennis Kucinich, the eight-term Congressman from Cleveland, lost his bid for re-election last night in a primary to fellow Rep. Marcy Kaptur. Ohio lost two seats after the 2010 reapportionment and eliminated a seat in the Cleveland region, giving Kucinich few options. He decided to try to defeat Kaptur largely on her turf, and came up well short, 56-40. Kaptur is a reliably liberal and even populist vote on economic issues, but she’s also anti-choice and was a major thorn in the party’s side on the Stupak amendment.

Pawlenty’s candidacy was very much predicated on winning Iowa, a neighboring state to Minnesota. He hoped the momentum from that early victory would slingshot into other states. He spent months in Iowa and put up the first TV ads of any candidate there. But he never gained traction, either there or nationally.