Major congessional news: Chavez, Versace drop out, Luallen confirms

• Chavez drops out

Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez withdrew from the New Mexico Senate race tonight -- a surprising desicion but not a totally unexpected one. With the entire Democratic establishement rallying behind Rep. Tom Udall and the DSCC firmly behind him, it was becoming hard for Chavez to continue campaigning. This leaves Udall -- considered much more progressive than Chavez, whom liberals despise -- as the likely nominee for the open seat for the New Mexico Senate seat.

The GOP still has a divisive primary on its hands between Rep. Pearce and Rep. Wilson -- which means the only major candidates left in the race are the state's three representatives. Now, this isn't necessarily a huge boost for Democrats insofar as competitive primaries do not always hurt a party -- quite the contrary, they can give the nominee more exposure. But Chavez was preparing to run a negative campaign against Udall and had already been voicing concerns that Udall is too liberal and too far to the Left for the state -- accusations that could have come back and haunted Udall in the general election.

But this is still good news for Democrats insofar as Udall would be a far stronger general election competitor than Chavez -- and this guarantees that Democrats go in the general election favored to take the seat from the GOP. Also, it is good news for progressives who would be better off with Senator Udall than Senator Chavez.

• Luallen not running for sure

Crit Luallen makes it official: she will not be running for Senate. Rumors started swirling this morning, and it did not take long for her to confirm. She said she had just been re-elected State Auditor and did not want a promotion so soon -- but did promise that the party would fight against McConnell next year. The question now is: with whom?

Iraq veteran Andrew Horne now looks like he might jump in -- he called himself a "likely candidate" today. I got some heat this morning for dismissing Andrew Horne chances; I did not want to say he could not win. Polls have shown that he would keep McConnell under 50% as well despite lower name recognition. However, let's not get carried away here; 2006 showed that Iraq veterans do not necessarily run that well, and McConnell has a huge campaign chest that Democrats will have trouble matching. Horne will have a great chance to unseat him, but there's no reason to say that he would have been as strong a candidate as Luallen. And the DSCC is apparently now trying to seduce Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo into running. Mongiardo came within 2 points -- and pretty much out of nowhere -- to beat senile Senator Bunning in 2004.

• Blow to Democrats in IL-18

Rep. LaHood was one of the first Republican representatives who announced his retirement earlier this year. And while not the most competitive of districts, IL-18 seemed to be ripe for a pick-up if Democrats ran a good campaign under good circumstances. They had recruited Dick Versace (former coach of the Indianapolis Pacers) to run, but Versace just announced today that he was withdrawing his candidacy.

The problem for Dems: The filing deadline has already passed (Illinois has the earliest congressional filing deadline by far), and Democrats have no other candidate on the ballot. In other words, they have no one on the primary ballot in February 5th. If I understand the rules correctly that will mean that a Democratic committee will be allowed to replace the vacancy on the ballot, but that would still create awkward circumstances to start a race -- though not ones that would be impossible to overcome. It will also require Democrats to find another candidate to fit the district and who could win in slightly GOP terrain.

In other House news, Rep. Jim McCrery retired today, the 18th House Republican to do so. His Louisiana district is very GOP (Bush won it by 19 points in 2004) and the state has grown more Republican since then. But more conservative districts went blue in 2006, so Democrats potentially have a shot at an open seat here.