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By Scott Wong (
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swong@politico.com or @scottwongDC)

GOP EXPANDS THE SENATE MAP - Patrick O'Connor reports on A1 of the Wall Street Journal: "President Barack Obama's sagging approval ratings and the rocky health-law rollout are expanding the map of competitive Senate races this year, giving Republicans new hope of capturing seats in states that the president carried in 2012. The GOP already had a strong opportunity to pick up a net six seats to win a Senate majority. Democrats have to defend many more seats than Republicans, including in seven states that Mr. Obama lost in 2012.

-- "Now, polls show tighter-than-expected races for Democratic-held seats in Colorado, Iowa and Michigan, while a formidable Republican is challenging the Democratic incumbent in Virginia and another is weighing a bid in New Hampshire. In 2012, Mr. Obama won all five of those states. With Election Day more than nine months away, the question is whether this marks a low ebb for Mr. Obama and his party, or a lasting trend."
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FEDERAL OFFICES in the D.C. area are closed today due to snowstorm Janus, according to the Office of Personnel and Management. Emergency and telework-ready employees required to work should follow their agency's policies. The D.C. city government and many area schools are closed as well. Between 4 and 7 inches of snow are expected in the area. It already would have been a quiet day at the Capitol - Congress is on recess this week following Monday's Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
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LANKFORD IS IN, COLE WON'T RUN -- Randy Ellis reports for NewsOK and The Oklahoman: "Oklahoma U.S. Rep. James Lankford made it official Monday. He's a candidate for U.S. Senate. 'I believe that the conservative solutions that can be proposed and that I'll bring can help families from every race, every economic background and every town in our country,' Lankford declared Monday during his candidacy announcement at Oklahoma City's Oklahoma History Center. Lankford is seeking the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Muskogee. ...

-- "Lankford is the first candidate to announce he will seek Coburn's seat. U.S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-Tulsa, and state House Speaker T.W. Shannon, R-Lawton, have indicated they are contemplating running for that office. While U.S. Rep. Tom Cole, R-Moore, and Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt have said they will not enter the Senate race. Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner Patrice Douglas and state Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, are among candidates believed to be considering a race for the House seat Lankford will be leaving."
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-- Lankford is already under attack from the outside group, Senate Conservatives Fund or SCF: "We won't support Congressman Lankford's bid for the Senate because of his past votes to increase the debt limit, raise taxes and fund Obamacare," said Matt Hoskins, the group's executive director. Washington Times:
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-- The WSJ Editorial Board says Congress needs more Tom Coburns: "Mr. Coburn's tenure on Capitol Hill has been notable for his convictions on behalf of limited government combined with a determination to do more than grandstand. He and his staff ground out reports that exposed the titanic amount of misspent government money, most recently on fraud in the Social Security disability program. ... He succeeded in winning a Senate earmark moratorium and a federal database of online spending, and he more or less single-handedly killed the ethanol tax credit. ...

-- "Conservatives are at a disadvantage to liberals in Washington because they don't define their lives by politics. Watergate-era Democrats like George Miller are now retiring, but as political lifers they hung around for decades looking for every chance to expand state power. Mr. Coburn was a doctor and businessman before he entered politics and now will return to other productive pursuits. Conservatives need to replenish their ranks with more Tom Coburns who enter politics to do something other than hold power."
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CHRISTIE OFFICIALS REJECT SANDY AID ALLEGATIONS -- Heather Haddon writes for the Wall Street Journal: "New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration on Monday struck back against accusations that superstorm Sandy money was improperly withheld from Hoboken, as a scandal over alleged political intimidation threatened to overshadow the Republican's inauguration on Tuesday. Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno said Monday she didn't tell Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer that her city's federal storm recovery funding was contingent on local approval of a politically connected development project. That charge-leveled over the weekend and now being examined by federal prosecutors-added a new layer of
problems for the Christie administration, which has been roiled by revelations that the governor's aides and allies orchestrated a traffic jam in Fort Lee, N.J. by closing lanes to the George Washington Bridge. ...

-- "Ms. Zimmer, a Democrat who until now had been supportive of the Republican Christie administration, said on Saturday that Ms. Guadagno and Mr. Constable had confronted her over the development project last May and that she recorded the exchanges in her personal diary. Ms. Zimmer said federal prosecutors questioned her about the matter on Sunday. 'I stand by my word, remain willing to testify under oath, and I will continue to answer any questions asked of me by the U.S. attorney's office,' she said Monday."
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-- Christie will take aim at D.C. in his inaugural address today, POLITICO's Katie Glueck reports: "Embattled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will issue a call for bipartisan cooperation and take a swing at Washington in his Inaugural address on Tuesday, according to excerpts released ahead of the speech. 'We cannot fall victim to the attitude of Washington, D.C.,' the Republican will say, according to prepared remarks. 'The attitude that says I am always right and you are always wrong. The attitude that puts everyone into a box they are not permitted to leave. The attitude that puts political wins ahead of policy agreements. The belief that compromise is a dirty word.'"
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COONS FOLLOWS IN BIDEN'S TRACKS - Your Huddle host, Scott Wong, reports from aboard the 2124 Acela Express: "Three years into his Senate term, Chris Coons is still heeding the advice of his predecessor, Joe Biden: Don't find too cozy a place to live in Washington. That's why Coons, one recent weekday night, caught a ride from his Senate office to Union Station and hopped on the 6 p.m. northbound Amtrak train just minutes before departure. He chatted up a conductor about how unusually crowded the cars seemed, shuffled through the aisles, then settled in for the 70-minute ride home to Wilmington ... The Delaware Democrat makes the trip to and from Washington almost every day the Senate's in
session. ...

-- "'The piece of advice he gave that I thought was very wise and very helpful was, 'If you choose to keep your family in Delaware, then don't get a comfortable, easy place in Washington, because the attractions of staying in Washington gradually, inevitably get stronger,'' Coons said aboard the Acela. 'Your staff will always find one more thing, one more meeting, one more event, one more conversation. So make it physically difficult, not easy, to stay over.'

-- "On rare nights he's in Washington for late votes, fundraisers or dinners, Coons often crashes with fellow senators, like Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley ,who has a spare room in his Takoma Park pad. He'll sometimes grab a hotel room. On a few rare occasions, he's slept on a cot in the Senate gym." For Pros:
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GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, JAN. 21, 2014, and welcome to The Huddle, your-play-play preview of all the action on Capitol Hill. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to
mailto:swong@politico.com
swong@politico.com . If you don't already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

My new followers include
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TODAY IN CONGRESS - Both the House and Senate are out this week for the January recess. They return the week of Jan. 27.

NYT A1 Monday, "A Loophole Allows Lawmakers to Reel In Trips and Donations," By Eric Lipton in Vail, Colo.: "After some time in the hot tub, an evening cocktail reception and a two-and-a-half-hour dinner in a private dining room named Out of Bounds, Representative Adrian Smith, Republican of Nebraska, made one last stop, visiting the lounge at the Four Seasons Resort hotel here to spend more time with the lobbyists and other donors who had jetted in from Washington, D.C., to join him for the weekend getaway. On the other side of the Rocky Mountains, in Utah, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, kicked off the new year in the equally upscale resort town of Park City by hitting
the ski slopes in the morning with her chief of staff. She then joined a roomful of corporate executives and lobbyists at a mountaintop resort for lunch, her face flush from the mountain sun. 'Anyone who wants to do some runs with me, I would love to,' Ms. Ayotte told her guests, many of them also in ski gear.

-- "This is the world of destination fund-raisers, where business interests blend with pleasure in exclusive vacation venues. Lobbyists go to build relationships with lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans alike, seeking action - and often inaction - in Washington for their clients and companies, with millions of dollars at stake. While approval ratings are at historic lows for members of Congress, their allure to those seeking influence in the nation's capital is as strong as ever."
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TRANSITIONS - SABRINA SINGH, communications director for Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), has been named deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association.

-- JOSH SCHWERIN "recently returned to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as national press secretary, after a serving as a spokesman on now-Gov. Terry McAuliffe's successful Virginia campaign," Roll Call reports. "The Empire State native cut his teeth working for now-Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand's 2008 House campaign. He later served as former Rep. Scott Murphy's communications director and worked at the DCCC as a northeast regional press secretary in 2012. In his new role, he replaces former DCCC national press secretary, Emily Bittner, who was promoted to communications director. Jesse Ferguson, the previous communications chief, will now focus on his role as deputy executive
director."
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KING WOULD SKIP SOCHI - Alex Isenstadt reports for POLITICO: "The Olympics are just a few weeks away, but don't expect Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine to be there. Citing security concerns ahead of the winter games in Russia, King said: 'I would not go, and I don't think I would send my family.' 'It's just such a rich target,' King said in an appearance on CNN's 'State of the Union.' 'It would be a stretch, I think, to say I'd send my family.' King's comments come amid increased concerns from some U.S. officials that Russia hasn't done enough to combat the possibility of a terrorist attack."
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-- REP. MIKE ROGERS, the Intelligence Committee chairman,said he didn't think the U.S. was getting all the information needed to protect American athletes: "I am very concerned about the security status of the Olympics," Rogers said. "What we're finding is that they're not giving us the full story on what the threat streams are, who do we need to worry about, are those groups -- the terrorist groups -- who have had some success, are they still plotting? There's a missing gap." Detroit Free Press:
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SIMPSON'S BEST ALLY: DENTISTS - Shane Goldmacher reports for National Journal: "Rep. Mike Simpson is a 15-year veteran of Congress and a close ally of Speaker John Boehner. But as the Idaho Republican fends off a stiff tea-party challenge in 2014, the fact that he's a dentist may prove to be just as important. The influential dental lobby is expected to go all out this year to protect Simpson, one of only two dentists on Capitol Hill. His primary is still five months away, but the dentists' independent campaign arm has already dropped $22,000 in mailers and spent another $20,000 last week dialing up Idaho voters to gauge the dynamics on the ground."
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FORMER REP. OTIS PIKE, WHO TOOK ON CIA, DEAD AT 92 - N.R. Kleinfield reports for the NYT: "Otis G. Pike, a longtime congressman from New York who spearheaded an inquiry in the 1970s into accusations that the intelligence establishment had abused its power, died on Monday in Vero Beach, Fla. He was 92. ... Over 18 years in the House of Representatives as a Democrat from a heavily Republican district on Long Island, Mr. Pike styled himself an uninhibited, independent thinker, lashing out, for example, against military profligacy. In 1975, he became chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which began examining suspicions that the Central Intelligence Agency had had its hand in
coups in Chile and other countries and was spying on American citizens. The inquiry paralleled one in the Senate; they were the first in which Congress looked into allegations of abuse by the C.I.A."
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FRIDAY'S TRIVIA WINNER - Colleen Shogan was first to correctly answer that Terry Branstad served as Iowa governor during the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.

TODAY'S TRIVIA - Colleen Shogan has today's question: What is the largest statue in the Capitol's Statuary Hall Collection, and which state donated it? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day's Huddle. Email me at
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