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“And I can’t deny the fact that you like me. Right now, you like me!” — Sally Field, accepting the Best Actress Academy Award for ‘Places in the Heart’ in 1985.

Establishment Democrats fear him, cable news pundits dismiss him as unelectable, and Trump supporters celebrate his success. But how do rank-and-file Democrats feel about Bernie Sanders?

They like him. Right now, they like him.

A new WBUR poll of New Hampshire Democrats gives Sanders 29 percent of the vote and a double-digit lead over his closest competitor — a margin so large some see the poll as an outlier.  However, look past the topline and the numbers in this poll aren’t out of line with recent results.

For example, Sanders’ approval rating among New Hampshire Democrats is 74 percent — higher than any other candidate.

In Morning Consult’s latest poll of Democrats nationwide, his approval is 73 percent — and that’s actually down by 3 points.

And a new FiveThirtyEight analysis of multiple polls finds Sanders is the most popular Democrat in the field with a 73 percent favorable rating and a net +51 percent approval.

It’s true that Sanders favorability is only slightly higher than Biden (71 percent) or Elizabeth Warren (68 percent), and polling throughout 2019 found Democratic primary voters generally like all of the frontrunning candidates and were satisfied with their choices. So in a sense, Sanders’ numbers aren’t news.

If you woke up New Year’s Day feeling guilty about all those last-second charitable solicitations you ignored, it might ease your conscience to know you aren’t alone. Just ask Liz Warren.

On the campaign trail, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tirelessly attacks the greed and self-interest of America’s wealthy, the “millionaires and billionaires” who, she claims, are “waging war on America’s middle class.”

“It’s time for the millionaires to pay their fair share!” Warren demands.

But when it comes to spreading the wealth to charitable causes and community service, Warren is one of the millionaires who apparently hasn’t gotten the message.

According to the tax returns Warren has posted on her campaign website, she and her husband Bruce Mann have earned more than $10 million since 2008, but they’ve rarely donated more than 4 percent of their income to charitable causes. For example, in 2014 Warren earned more than $1.6 million but gave just 2.7 percent to charity. The following year she took in nearly $1.2 million, but donated just 2.3 percent.

All that changed, however, in 2017 when Warren was preparing to formally enter the presidential race. That year her charitable donations suddenly spiked to 8.4 percent, leading some to speculate that her newfound generosity was more about electability than philanthropy. In 2018, she donated 5.5 percent of her income to charity.

Exclude her “presidential primary” years, and Warren donated an average of just 3.5 percent of her millions in income to charitable causes. That number is low for the average American in her income bracket (the average millionaire donates nearly twice that amount), and it sounds particularly ungenerous given her political platform of income redistribution, trillion-dollar tax increases and “you didn’t build that!” rhetoric.

And yet compared to her fellow 2020 progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Warren’s the Oprah Winfrey of the Democratic field.

In 2016, Sanders donated just $10,600 of his $1 million income — around 1 percent — to charity. His total household donations since 2009 manage to get him to the two percent level.

According to analysis by Forbes magazine, the least charitable Democrat is also the poorest: Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Despite his progressive bona fides, including a “paid” volunteerism program,  Buttigieg has donated just 1 percent of his income to charity since 2009.

And then there’s former Vice President Joe Biden, who made headlines in 2008 when Barack Obama tapped him to be his running mate it was discovered the Bidens had donated just $3,690 to charity over the course of an entire decade. He’s since raised that number to six percent, much of it donated to Biden family foundations.

Thus far the issue of charitable giving hasn’t come up on the campaign trail, perhaps because Democratic primary voters are also less likely to support charitable causes themselves.

According to multiple studies, Americans on the left are less charitable than their Republican counterparts. States that supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 were, on average, less generous in their charitable giving than those carried by Donald Trump.

Arthur C. Brooks, a social scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School and author of the book on charitable giving Who Really Cares says his research finds, “People who favor government income redistribution are significantly less likely to donate to charity than those who do not.”

Data from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy show that a smaller percentage of Americans are donating to charity each year, but overall donations are rising. In fact, over this same 2009-2017 period during which millionaire candidates like Warren and Sanders give so little, total U.S. donations to charity rose by nearly $100 billion, from $314 billion to $410 billion.

The same “millionaires and billionaires” whose greed is allegedly endangering our democracy are giving more to charity and community service. Even as progressive politicians give so little.

There are exceptions, most notably Sen. Cory Booker. The former Mayor of Newark has donated nearly half a million dollars — about 11 percent of his income — to charity over the past decade. Unfortunately, Democratic primary voters aren’t being as generous toward his campaign and Sen. Booker continues to linger around 2 percent in the polls.

From free healthcare for illegal immigrants to paying off everyone’s student loan debt, Elizabeth Warren has lots of plans for taxpayer-funded generosity. American voters may want to ask why her charity doesn’t begin at home.

Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard is so committed to winning the New Hampshire primary that she’s moved to the Granite State, renting a house in Goffstown, N.H.  Now that she’s moved in, the question has arisen: Should she be able to vote for herself here, too?

According to the New Hampshire ACLU, the state Democratic Party, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and — oddly enough — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the answer appears to be yes.  Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii should be able to cast a vote in the New Hampshire presidential primary.

In 2018 when Republicans still controlled the state legislature, Gov. Chris Sununu signed a voting reform bill into law that specifically declared voters must be residents of New Hampshire, as opposed to merely “domiciled” here. “New Hampshire now aligns with virtually every other state in requiring residency in order to vote,” Sununu said in defense of the legislation.

As a result, people who are domiciled in New Hampshire — students, temporary workers, 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — must take actions to indicate actual residency, like getting a New Hampshire driver’s license or registering a car. Which means that, under current law, Rep. Gabbard wouldn’t be able to vote in the First in the Nation primary in February.

But what happens if the ACLU of New Hampshire, with the support of Sen. Elizabeth Warren and most of the 2020 presidential field, is able to get the law overturned? Could Tulsi vote “Gabbard 2020” in Goffstown?

“Yes,” says Republican state Rep. Barbara Griffin, “And I hope if she does, she votes for me, too!”

Griffin, one of the key supporters of the voting reform efforts, represents Gabbard’s new home/residence/domicile in the state legislature. “She’s got a lease agreement and a phone number. Under the old law, that’s all she would need.”

To some — particularly actual New Hampshire residents who own homes and pay local taxes and don’t want non-residents picking their city councilors or members of Congress — the idea of a congresswoman who currently represents a district seven time zones away voting in a New Hampshire election may sound crazy.  Is this really what the ACLU and progressive activists fighting to change the law want?

The ACLU-NH declined repeated requests for comment and refused to answer any direct questions about Gabbard’s voting eligibility. Sen. Shaheen, who urged every 2020 Democratic candidate to publicly oppose the new Granite State law, also declined to say whether she supports allowing Gabbard to legally vote for herself here.

Multiple sources inside state government who deal directly with voter eligibility and the new law told NHJournal that while there are legitimate questions about Gabbard’s voter status in New Hampshire, she almost certainly would have been allowed to vote legally under the old system.

“A person in [Rep. Gabbard’s] situation would not have been turned away,” one source told NHJournal.

It’s also worth noting that in Gabbard’s home state, would-be voters must pass a “residency” test as well. “The residence stated by the applicant cannot simply be because of their presence in the State, but that the residence was acquired with the intent to make Hawaii the person’s legal residence with all the accompanying obligations therein,” according to the state of Hawaii’s election’s office. Anyone making that claim falsely “may be guilty of a Class C felony.”

Why would New Hampshire, with the highest percentage of college students per capita in the U.S., want lower standards for voter residency than an island state in the South Pacific?

Unfortunately for the ACLU-NH (and, theoretically, Rep. Gabbard), that’s unlikely to happen. Last month, a federal judge refused the ACLU-NH’s request for a preliminary injunction to block the law from being in effect for the First in the Nation primary on February 11.

For her part, Rep. Griffin says she has no problem with Gabbard voting in the #FITN primary–as long as she does it legally.

“Just register your car here in our town within 60 days,” she requests. “That’s more tax revenue for my town!”

Tuesday night Gov. John Kasich was on the set of “Cuomo Primetime” with Chris Cuomo, a show that regularly features liberal commentators like Paul Begala, Sally Kohn and Bill Press. Their topic Tuesday night–and every night–is how horrible Donald Trump is and, by extension, how awful the Republican Party is.  Cuomo linked Trump to the “white nationalist” comments of Iowa Congressman Steve King and called him the most untrustworthy person in politics he’d ever seen. Kasich nodded, sighed and largely agreed.

It was the beginning of John Kasich’s career as a paid political analyst for CNN and the end of his campaign for president as a Republican.

Short of volunteering to testify at President Trump’s impeachment hearings, it’s hard to imagine anything the former Ohio governor could do that would damage his viability in the GOP more than going to work for CNN. He and his team must realize how much the Republican base reviles the network of Anderson Cooper and Jim Acosta.  Even MSNBC would be less damaging to Kasich with the GOP base because they view it as openly partisan and, therefore, accept its biases as fair play.

CNN, on the other hand, continually pushes the blatantly #FakeNew that it’s a nonpartisan news platform.  Given its overt, tireless anti-Trump bias (it was the home of Trump-decapitating comedian Kathy Griffin and anti-Trump obsessive Don Lemon) this claim of objectivity drives many conservatives crazy.

Plus–it’s Trump’s target number one.  And John Kasich, who ran for the GOP nomination just three years ago, chooses to go to work for them?  It’s a great way to give Trump the finger, but a lousy way to win the GOP nomination.

“Stick a fork in him, he’s done,” says GOP consultant and longtime NH player Dave Carney. “He’s a non-starter.”

Several other NHGOP politicos agreed. “I don’t know what he’s thinking,” one told NHJournal. “Even if he spends all his airtime bashing Trump instead of the GOP, Republican primary voters are going to hate him for it.”

They weren’t loving him before. A poll of Republicans last year gave Trump a 62-27 margin over Kasich in a primary. Which wouldn’t be so bad…except these were Ohio Republicans.

“Amongst Republicans in New Hampshire who would like to see a challenge to the president, John Kasich rates the highest,” Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics told WMUR-TV. “The problem is that he only rates at 9 percent, and the president has a solid 70 percent backing right now amongst Republicans.”

Still, John Kasich is slightly more popular than the Cable News Network.  When asked to name their most trusted news source, only 3 percent of Republicans named CNN.

A Republican activist told NHJournal “Being the Republican who hated Trump the most isn’t going to win you points among the base, even if Trump does crash and burn. ‘I told you so’ is rarely a winning message. Kasich will be in their face, every night on a network they hate, reminding them he’s not on their team. It might be good TV but it’s terrible politics.”

Soon-to-be Utah Senator Mitt Romney’s op-ed attack on President Donald Trump got a lot of attention, but it didn’t answer the key question: What does Mitt want?

“He doesn’t ‘want’ anything,” longtime Romney ally and advisor Jim Merrill told InsideSources on Wednesday. “He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”

Romney’s opinion piece in Wednesday’s Washington Post decried President Trump’s character (“presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring”) and Mitt pledged to “speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”  Tough talk–but what does it mean?

According to Romney, what it doesn’t mean a primary challenge. “No,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper who asked him about a 2020 POTUS run. “You may have heard I ran before. I’ve had that experience.”

So why release the op-ed?  It’s certainly not a message GOP voters–who still overwhelmingly support President Trump–want to hear. On talk radio Wednesday, callers from across the nation and from his former home state of Massachusetts expressed their anger with the 2012 GOP POTUS nominee. “He should be loyal to Trump–period!” one caller told national talk host Hugh Hewitt Wednesday morning. “Every Republican needs to support President Trump.”

On Boston’s WRKO, which serves vote-rich southern New Hampshire, a Republican called Romney a “two-faced, back-stabbing snake.”

Stephen Stepanek, the likely incoming NHGOP chairman, isn’t much kinder. “Trump is out fighting for Americans and Republicans like Mitt Romney aren’t standing with him like they should. When it gets nasty and the Democrats start attacking, they aren’t there in the trenches,” Stepanek told NHJournal.

“When the going gets tough, Mitt gets going,” Stepanek says.

Mitt has even annoyed some family members, with his niece (and GOP Chairwoman) Ronna Romney McDaniel tweeting: “For an incoming Republican freshman senator to attack @realdonaldtrump as their first act feeds into what the Democrats and media want and is disappointing and unproductive.”

Not that Romney’s prospects in a primary against Trump were strong before the Wednesday papers hit. In a Suffolk poll of New Hampshire voters released last May, Trump was handily beating Romney 63-28 percent, similar to his 66-23 percent margin over outgoing Ohio Gov. John Kasich, though better than the projected 72-15 percent beatdown he’d give former AZ Sen. Jeff Flake.

One theory is that Romney wants to establish himself as the leader–not just a member–of the loyal GOP opposition to Trumpism. One longtime GOP activist, however, told InsideSources that Romney wrote on the eve of his entrance in the US Senate in order to “get him in the conversation about 2020. He’s clearly got it on his mind.”

But as Merrill, a key GOP player in New Hampshire politics and longtime Romney ally, pointed out, Romney was already there.

“He doesn’t need to interject himself into the conversation, he’s already in that conversation.  Mitt Romney is a leader in the party and he’s going to be a leader in the Senate,” Merrill said. “When people start thinking about alternatives to President Trump, his name is always going to come up.

“Which is why calling Mitt a ‘freshman senator’ was so unnecessary. Nobody looks at Mitt Romney that way,” Merrill said.

For his part, President Trump doesn’t appear to be worried, quipping that “If he fought [President Obama in 2016] the way he fights me, I’m telling you, he would have won the election.” Trump pointed out that he endorsed Romney “and he thanked me profusely.” If there’s a potential political foe keeping Donald Trump awake at night, it’s not Mitt Romney.

So the question remains: What was the purpose for releasing the op-ed?  According to Ryan Williams of FP1 Strategies (and a former Romney spokesperson), it’s all about timing.

“Romney has said all these things about [Trump] before. The reason for writing this now is because December was a bad month for Donald Trump. Romney’s been looking for a big moment to speak out. This is the moment,” Williams said.

Both Williams and Merrill are actively involved in GOP politics and both reject the premise that the op-ed is related to a POTUS bid.  Instead, they told InsideSources they believe Romney’s primary motivation is to lay the groundwork for how he plans to work with the president in the future.

“Read that paragraph about how he would work with Trump like he would with any president, it’s all there,” Williams said. He also believes Romney’s op-ed avoided personal attacks on the president. “He wasn’t gratuitously attacking President Trump, he was pointing out how character effects our relationships with our allies, how willing people are to work with you on policy.”

The bottom line, according to Jim Merrill:  “Mitt Romney didn’t need a political motivation to write this. He was doing what he thought is the right thing.”

The hits just keep on coming for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s would-be POTUS bid. The former front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination has dropped to a woeful 7th place in the latest CNN poll,  behind former Secretary of State John Kerry (who’s unlikely to even run) and newcomer Rep. Beto O’Rourke–who just lost his bid for U.S. Senate.

At 3 percent, Warren is tied with billionaire Michael Bloomberg and little-known Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.  This is a dramatic decline from four years ago when progressive groups like MoveOn.org were mounting a $1 million “Draft Warren” campaign.  As recently as May, Warren led the Democratic pack in a Suffolk poll and in August the Boston Globe was using the word “front-runner” to describe their home-state senator.

(Artwork via CNN)

Not anymore.

The Globe has since editorialized that Warren is “too divisive,” has “missed her moment” and should drop out of the 2018 race altogether. The new CNN poll is just the latest with Warren in the single digits and in the back of the pack.

While Sen. Warren’s sagging poll numbers are surprising, they’re not actually a surprise. In October, NHJournal reported concerns among Massachusetts Democrats over Warren’s potential candidacy and questions about her recent political performances. And Harry Enten, a political data analyst now with CNN, recently reported that Sen. Warren underperformed in her re-election bid in Massachusetts earlier this year.

Two top-level New Hampshire Democrats both recently told NHJournal that they didn’t know of any activists supporting Sen. Warren in 2020.  “Her name just doesn’t come up,” one Democratic player told NHJournal.

NH State Rep. John Cloutier is the kind of Democrat one would expect to see backing, or at least leaning toward Warren.  A veteran Democrat who represents Claremont (one of the most liberal cities in the state) and backed Bernie Sanders in 2016, Cloutier told the Valley News he’s looking for a younger candidate in 2018.  “I think we need a fresh face, with all due respect to Bernie and Joe and Hillary,” Cloutier said. “We need someone who is going to unite the party, appeal to independents to some extent, and be just a total difference from Donald Trump, frankly.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who just survived a massive blue wave that handed control of the legislature to the Democrats, has announced he opposes a proposal to have the state party openly support President Trump in the 2020 primary.

A vocal group of Republicans, led by Trump supporters state Rep. Fred Doucette and Windham town selectman Bruce Breton, are promoting a rule change allowing state party officials to promote incumbent Republican presidents in the Granite State’s first-in-the-nation (FITN) primary.

“Whether it’s President Trump or President XYZ, it’s the same,” Doucette told NHJournal. “Republicans work too hard to win the White House to sit back whenever an incumbent Republican is being challenged.”

Gov. Sununu does not agree.

“Whether it’s a primary for the New Hampshire House or the White House, the New Hampshire State Republican Committee must remain neutral in primaries,” Gov. Sununu said in a statement released to NHJournal. “After hard-fought primaries, the State Party is the vehicle to unite Republicans, and that is hard to accomplish if they try and tilt the scales for any candidate.”

Gov. Sununu did not mention the other commonly-made argument against ending the NHGOP’s neutrality policy: The risk it might pose to New Hampshire’s precarious position at the front of the line in electoral politics.

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Multiple media reports confirm that former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick will not be running for president in 2020, despite having started a successful political PAC and Patrick’s standing as the top pick inside ObamaWorld.

“If true, this news takes off the board one of ten strong Democrats who had a path to score Democratic primary victories in the three early states and to ultimately take on President Trump,” David Paleologos, Director
of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, told InsideSources.  “The windfall beneficiaries regionally are Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.  Among African-American voters, especially men, Corey Booker benefits.”

Patrick, a two-term Democrat who made the counter-intuitive move to Bain Capital—the same company Democrats vilified due to its connection to another former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney—has spoken openly about considering a 2020 POTUS bid and the “encouragement I’ve been getting from a number of places and source,” including from high-dollar Democratic donors.

In addition, Patrick’s political action committee, the Reason To Believe PAC, was a success. According to data at OpenSecrets.org, the PAC raised more than $500,000 in 2018 (NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s raised less than one-tenth that amount.) And according to the PAC’s website, “Reason To Believe endorsed 27 progressive candidates and 3 ballot initiatives. 17 won their races.”

But the most significant encouragement came from people close to former President Barack Obama. According to reporting by Politico, Obama was “nudging him to run…Patrick is ObamaWorld’s clear and away 2020 favorite.”   Close Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett in particular has been pushing a Patrick bid, calling a Deval Patrick presidency “what my heart desires.”

“Deval would make an outstanding President. He’d make a terrific candidate,” Jarrett has said.

And just weeks ago, the New Yorker ran a profile of Patrick that included the intriguing news that Michelle Obama had met with Deval’s wife Diane to encourage her to support a presidential bid.  According to their reporting, Diane did just that.

And yet Patrick is taking a pass on 2020.

There are many reasons for people not to run for office. Michael Avenatti used concerns from his family–the classic (and frequently insincere) reason for bowing out. That does not appear to be the case for Deval Patrick.

One reason, however, may have been his weakness among Democrats in his home state of Massachusetts. Patrick has never been in the top tier in national polls of potential 2020 candidates, but that’s to be expected in a field of more than 30 candidates. But a September poll of Massachusetts Democrats showing just 38 percent thought he should even run, while about 48 percent  were opposed–is hardly a ringing endorsement. And a more recent UMass poll of Bay State Democrats put the former governor in single digits.

He is expected to make a formal announcement of his decision not to run, perhaps later this week.

Outgoing New Hampshire GOP Chairman Wayne MacDonald tells NHJournal he has “major concerns” over ending the policy of party neutrality in the 2020 POTUS primary and supporting incumbent President Donald Trump.

“Anyone should be able to run for the nomination. Donald Trump is the president, and his record should be considered. But until our nominee is chosen by a vote of the people, the party leadership needs to be neutral,” MacDonald told NHJournal.

Not everyone agrees. Bruce Breton, who was very active in Trump’s 2016 campaign in New Hampshire, finds the party’s policy of neutrality “deeply flawed.”  He has abandoned his bid for NHGOP Vice Chair in part because running for the office “would be contrary to my continued support of President Trump. As per our bylaws I would have to remain neutral in the upcoming 2020 campaign. It is my strong belief that those bylaws should be changed to reflect that the NHGOP would support an incumbent president.”

But MacDonald was adamant. “I understand the logic of wanting to support an incumbent president in your own party. But the nomination is something that is bestowed upon them by the voters,” MacDonald said, adding that the candidates and offices are irrelevant.

“This has nothing to do with Trump. We were neutral in 1992 when George H. W. Bush was president [and challenged by Pat Buchanan].  And it’s not just the presidency. Governor, senator, what have you—the party needs to remain neutral.”

MacDonald has served as state party chair three times, always as an appointee and never as an elected candidate. On Tuesday, he announced he won’t be running to keep the job.

“I’ve always enjoyed it, but it’s never been easy. People don’t leave the job when things are going well,” he noted wryly. “It’s an intense and exhausting experience.”

When news broke of MacDonald’s decision, Gov. Chris Sununu released a statement offering “sincere thanks to Chairman MacDonald for his steady leadership over these past few months. He had to step up to take on a tough challenge, served admirably, and I sincerely hope Wayne stays involved in the years ahead — the Republican Party is better off with Wayne MacDonald at the table.”

MacDonald told NHJournal he agreed with those who say the job should be a paid, full-time position for the GOP as it is for the New Hampshire Democratic party, adding: “I’m Scottish, so if they had offered to pay me, I wouldn’t have said ‘no.’”

“One big advantage Democrats have had is continuity. They’ve been able to build on their experiences from one cycle to the next. We’ve had very few chairmen serve back-to-back terms.”

MacDonald is right. Former NHGOP chair Fergus Cullen tweeted out the list of state party chairs since 2000. There have been eleven already, and only one—Jennifer Horn—served two consecutive terms.  “During this time, NHDems have had just two. They stuck with Kathy Sullivan and Ray Buckley not only after wins but after losses too,” Cullen tweeted.

MacDonald declined to endorse anyone to replace him, but he did share his biggest concern for the next chairman: “Fundraising.  That’s got to be the number one job.”

“And I don’t have a problem with going to Washington, DC for funding, as the Democrats do, that’s fine. The problem is that there isn’t this pile of money waiting for us in Washington to just scoop up and take back to New Hampshire. We’re going to have to compete for money there too,” MacDonald said.

He pointed out the example of former party chairman John H. Sununu. “He really was in a class by himself when it comes to state chairmen. He had been governor, he had all the contacts, and he raised a lot of money for the party.  But even he didn’t meet the $1 million fundraising goal he set for himself.”

“No matter who becomes the next chairman, fundraising is always hard.”

A progressive group led by former Attorney General–and possible 2020 POTUS contender– Eric Holder announced this weekend it’s targeting the Granite State in its push to “stop or prevent” what it calls “Republican gerrymandering.” This despite the fact that Democrats just took control of both houses of the New Hampshire legislature.

In a post on their website, the National Democratic Re-Districting Committee revealed the map of states they will be targeting in 2019 and 2020 as part of their efforts at what they call re-districting reform.  “During the 2019-2020 election cycle, the NDRC is targeting 12 states, including 3 gubernatorial races, 13 state legislative chambers, and one down-ballot race,” the NDRC says.

One of those governors is New Hampshire Republican Chris Sununu.

In fact, despite claims by Holder that his efforts at the NDRC are non-partisan (“We’ll go after Democrats if they try to gerrymander, too,” he said during a stop at St. Anselm College in June), all three of the governors his group is targeting are Republicans.  All of the legislatures on the NDRC list are controlled by the GOP, too, with the singular exception of Minnesota, where control of the legislature is split.

(from the NDRC website)

“They’re all states where we need to stop or prevent Republican gerrymandering,” the NDRC says.

One of the biggest promoters of Holder’s efforts here in New Hampshire has been Colin Van Ostern, the one-time Democratic campaign worker and gubernatorial candidate who’s now lobbying to replace Secretary of State Bill Gardner.  Having a partisan ally as the chief elections officer in the Granite State would be a boon to Holder and the NDRC.

It’s also likely to raise more questions about the wisdom of having an openly-partisan Secretary of State replace Gardner, who has earned praise from both sides of the aisle for his nonpartisan approach to the job.