UPDATE: Villaraigosa just told Wolf Blitzer that he won't run, calling it an "agonizing decision."

ORIGINAL POST: CNN reports that Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will make an announcement about his political future today on "The Situation Room."

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and former Governor and current Attorney General Jerry Brown are already running in the Democratic primary for California governor. There has been speculation for years -- going back even to the 2006 gubernatorial race -- that Villaraigosa would likely run this year, though it has cooled somewhat of late.

The Los Angeles Times this weekend ran results of a poll showing that Villaraigosa's standing in the state's largest city is fairly strong. He begins a second term on July 1.

Villaraigosa Job Performance
Approve 55
Disapprove 37

Should He Run For Governor?
Yes 42
No 48

It would seem that that an announcement on national cable, rather than on local television, signals he may pass on the race. Then again, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) announced his candidacy in the 2003 recall on "The Tonight Show."

After the jump, see results of a three-way race among Democrat candidates in the city.
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Based largely on the battle for the state Senate, 63% of voters now believe New York is headed in the wrong direction -- a Siena polling record.

The survey (June 15-18, 626 RV, +/- 3.9%), released today, finds voters are also down on their governor, David Paterson, who took over for the disgraced Eliot Spitzer more than a year ago. Paterson's favorability rating went up 4 points since last month but is still a dismal 31%, and just 20% feel he's doing an excellent or good job. Should he run for governor next year, just 15% say they'd vote for him while 70% say they'd prefer someone else.

He still trails Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R), neither of whom have said they're running, by wide margins.

Dem Primary
Cuomo 69 (-1 vs. May)
Paterson 16 (-3)
Und 15 (+4)

General Election
Giuliani 57 (-2 vs. May)
Paterson 27 (-4)
Und 15 (+5)

Cuomo 49 (-4 vs. May)
Giuliani 40 (-1)
Und 11 (+5)

From President Obama and his White House staff to the General Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at HUD, National Journal has profiled the top 366 officials in the Obama administration for its quadrennial "Decision Makers" issue.

Along with the profiles, NJ has released demographic data on the new regime. Here are some examples:

• The percentage of white Christians among top officials whose religious affiliation is known dropped from 71 percent during Bush's second term to 46 percent in the Obama administration.
• Harvard was the top college for undergraduate degrees, followed by Yale and Princeton. Harvard was far and away the leading university for graduate degrees, followed by Oxford and Yale.
• 12 percent of top Obama officials have served in the military, down from 18 percent of top officials at the start of Bush's first term.
• 37 percent of top Obama officials have worked in think tanks or academia, compared with 27 percent in Bush's first term.

Sen. John Ensign's approval rating has dropped 14 points from last month -- before his nine-month extramarital affair was revealed -- a new Las Vegas Review-Journal/Mason-Dixon survey finds (June 18-19, 625 RV, MoE +/- 4%). With a 39% approval rating, Ensign's disapproval rating also increased to 37%, up 19 points from last month.

Still, 62% of voters think Ensign should not resign from the Senate, and his approval rating remains higher than that of other Nevada politicians -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (34%) and Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons (10%), both of whom are up for re-election next year.

Ensign hastily announced the affair a week ago, and since then more details have leaked out -- such as that Cindy Hampton, an aide at the time of the affair, got a significant pay raise after the affair began. "About a third of those polled considered that a very serious concern, while another third called it somewhat serious, for a total of two-thirds viewing the salary increases as a serious matter," LVRG's Ball writes.

Noting Sen. David Vitter's (R-La.) path back from a sex scandal and Ensign's re-election not coming for another three years, Mason-Dixon pollster Brad Coker said: "If Vitter could bounce back in a much more socially conservative state than Nevada, Ensign has at least a 50-50 shot at it."

Today's New York Times has a story on a Georgian defector who is getting a lot of play in the Russian media with claims that Mikhail Saakashvili is mobilizing for a new war with Russia.

Does this lend credibility to speculation, which I reported yesterday, that Russia may be gearing up for a Georgian War II -- with the goal of bringing down the hated Georgian government, humiliating the Americans, distracting the public from bad economic news, and justifying an authoritarian crackdown at home?  (Adrian Piontkovsky, one of the commentators I mentioned, also believes that this is a move by the "Putin faction" in the Kremlin to reverse the drift of real power from ex-President and current Prime Minister Putin to his appointed successor, Dmitry Medvedev.)

Perhaps; at least, the defector story certainly fits with a campaign to prepare public opinion for a new armed conflict with Georgia.  And it does coincide with imminent large-scale Russian military exercises in the Northern Caucasus, specifically in the annexed Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where the only possible opponent for Russian troops is Georgia.

That said, I stand by my view that a new war is highly unlikely.  It would mean a major, long-term rupture with the West, and I don't think the Kremlin boys really want to find themselves locked into Cold War II with no one but Hugo Chavez, Raoul Castro, Hamas and (if he's still around) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for company.  If Russia did succeed in installing a puppet regime in Tbilisi, it would mean de facto occupation, with a very high risk of getting bogged down in a protracted guerilla war.  This, at a time when nearby regions within the Russian Federation (Dagestan, Ingushetia) are already a powder keg, and things in Chechnya are not as stable as they're reputed to be.  In short, it seems like so colossally stupid a move that even the Putinistas would (I hope) know better.

As I said yesterday, a far more likely scenario is long-term, low-level undeclared warfare aimed at intimidating, destabilizing, and discrediting the Georgian government.  The latest incident with the defector certainly fits with that pattern as well.  Barack Obama's trip to Russia is coming up on July 5-6 -- at the same time, as it happens, as the military exercises in the Northern Caucasus.  A strong message of respect for the sovereignty of Georgia (and Russia's other neighbors on "post-Soviet space") would be essential.

(Cross-posted to The Y Files.)

Today's New York Times has a harsh editorial castigating Moscow's latest exercise in stupid self-assertion:

In a depressing sequel to its petty and destructive war against Georgia last summer, Russia has now cast a petty and destructive veto in the United Nations Security Council, compelling the abrupt withdrawal of 130 badly needed international military monitors from Georgia's secessionist region of Abkhazia.

It was petty because Russia's larger interest lies in calming, not stirring up, secessionist ambitions in the Caucasus, a violently fractured part of the world that includes other restive regions like Chechnya. And it was destructive because whatever hopes the Russian-backed Abkhazian separatists might still retain for a semblance of international legitimacy vanishes with the withdrawal of the United Nations mission.

....

Moscow's heavy-handed meddling has isolated Abkhazia, and Russia. Only Russia and Nicaragua recognized the “independence” Abkhazia proclaimed after the Russian incursion last summer. This month Russia voted alone in the Security Council to evict the monitors.

They could have added that Russia suffered an embarrassing setback in its quest for recognition for Abkhazia and South Ossetia when former pal Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus took the first half a $500 million loan that was a tacit bribe for recognition, and then didn't come through.

The Times is quite right that further destabilization and growth of separatism in the region would be detrimental to Russia more than anyone else; hardly a day goes by without deadly violence, including assassinations of high-level officials and military officers, in places like Ingushetia and Dagestan.   But of course, for the Kremlin leadership, muscle-flexing and ego-tripping counts for a lot more than such practical considerations.

Meanwhile, Russia is planning large-scale military exercises near the Georgian border; not only will these exercises take place in "independent" Abkhazia and South Ossetia, but they are pretty clearly directed at Georgia -- at the very least, to send a signal.  Adrian Piontkovsky, writing on Grani.ru (Russian text), speculates that Russia may be preparing for Georgian War II.

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The Las Vegas Sun obtained a letter written by the husband of Sen. John Ensign's (R-Nev.) former mistress to FOX News in an attempt to expose the affair. The letter was addressed to anchorwoman Megyn Kelly at FOX News's corporate office in New York.

In a letter dated five days before Sen. John Ensign's public confession of an extramarital affair, Doug Hampton pleaded to a national Fox News anchorwoman for help in exposing the senator's “heinous conduct and pursuit” of Hampton's wife.

Hours before the Sun obtained an unsigned copy of the letter, Ensign's spokesman said the senator disclosed the affair with Cynthia Hampton because her husband had approached “a major television news channel before Tuesday,” the day Ensign admitted the affair. “We learned of this fact before the news conference,” the spokesman noted in an e-mail.

In his letter, Hampton, a former top administrative aide in Ensign's Capitol Hill office, said: “The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles. We have lost significant income, suffered indescribable pain and emotional suffering. We find ourselves today with an overwhelming loss of relationships, career opportunities and hope for recovery. Our pursuit of justice continues to place me and my family in harm's way as we fear for our well being.”

In the race for governor of Hawaii, Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D) leads Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann in the Democratic primary and Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona in the general election, according to a new poll by DailyKos/Research2000.

The survey, conducted June 15-17 of 600 likely voters, finds Abercrombie ahead of Hannemann 42%-22%, with 36% undecided, and leading Aiona 45%-36%, with 19% undecided. Hannemann also leads Aiona by a 44%-34% margin, with 22% undecided.

After winning re-election with 63% of the vote in 2006, Gov. Linda Lingle (R) -- the first female governor of Hawaii and first Republican to win since 1959 -- is term-limited. The survey tested her against Sen. Daniel Inouye (D) in a potential 2010 Senate matchup, and found the eight-term incumbent senator leading Lingle 52%-40%. Inouye has won his last two re-election bids with 76% and 79% of the vote.

Abercrombie, a New York native, has represented his Honolulu-based district since 1990. Of the three candidates for governor tested, Abercrombie is the best known with just 12% holding no opinion of him. His 55% job approval rating is even with Hannemann (56%) and well above Aiona (44%).

LA Politics Weekly reports today that Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) plans to challenge Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) in 2010.

While he is not ready to make a public announcement, Congressman Charlie Melancon is said to have decided to run for the U.S. Senate next year, according to multiple political sources. The congressman has made no comment about challenging Republican Sen. David Vitter in 2010, but sources say he has told national Democratic campaign officials he will run.

One piece of unfinished business to deal with is getting businessman Jim Bernhard, who is weighing his own options, to step aside and unify the party.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune adds that after initial hesitation, "a renewed press by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, armed with a poll showing Vitter's vulnerability, got Melancon to reconsider." More:

Vitter has maintained overall favorable ratings even after reports of his relations with prostitutes, but some Democrats believe the scandals have hurt him enough to make him vulnerable in his 2010 re-election bid. A missing ingredient for the Democrats has been their ability to muster a strong candidate to run against Vitter.

If true, this would mark a major recruiting win for the DSCC, seeking to expand the map as other incumbents face strong challenges.

Richard Viguerie, one of the lions of conservative activism, thinks the Sonia Sotomayor nomination could invigorate conservatism.  Viguerie  writes:

President Obama's nomination of Judge Sotomayor has so far managed to unite all wings of the conservative movement -- economic, foreign policy, social, traditional and libertarian -- in a way we haven't seen since the early Clinton years.

Is this true?   Most conservatives aren't thrilled with the nomination, but I also don't see a whole lot of passionate opposition (except among those who would passionately oppose any Obama nominee, even Mother Teresa).  For an example of not-exactly-thrilled but muted conservative reaction, see, for instance, these posts by Jonathan Adler on The Volokh Conspiracy.   Adler writes:

Looking at the race-related cases in which Judge Sotomayor has disagreed with her colleagues leads me to the following conclusion (although it does not convince me to oppose her nomination).  Compared to the other judges on her Cirucit, Judge Sotomayor appears more inclined to accept aggressive and innovative use of equal protection arguments in race-related cases and seems to be more accepting of the use of race to achieve diversity in the workplace. This does not make her an "extremist," and it certainly does not make her a "racist," but it does suggest she would fit comfortably on the "liberal" side of the current court on such issues, and is consistent with the inference one could draw from her speeches. Insofar as one disagrees with this approach to race-related cases, this could be cause for concern.

A new article by The New Republic's Jeff Rosen, who has caught flak in the past for his criticism of Sotomayor, argues that she would be a liberal-but-not-too-liberal, and definitely not knee-jerk  liberal or hardcore ideological, presence on the Supreme Court.  It's unlikely that any Obama appointee would be "better," from a conservative/libertarian point of view.

Meanwhile, rallying around opposition to Sotomayor would be unwise for conservatives for a few reasons.   It would be hard to paint her (convincingly) as an out-of-the-mainstream radical.  Also, the right would be investing a lot (scarce) political capital into attacking a Hispanic woman; giving her impressive credentials, trying to paint her as a less-than-competent "affirmative action baby" could easily come across as sexist and racist, particularly given some of the nasty rhetoric already directed at the judge.

This does not mean that conservatives and libertarians should not criticize Sotomayor.  There's plenty to criticize.  This is not, however, a wise fight to pick as the mother of all battles.

(Cross-posted to: The Y-Files.)