First Brookline activist Pamela Julian started collecting signatures. Now state Rep. Mike Rush, D-Mainly West Roxbury, faces opposition from Matt Benedetti, a West Roxbury Air National Guardsman, the Transcript reports:

Benedetti said he understands Rush is "a nice guy," but he said "there are a lot of issues facing the district, and we need someone who is more responsive and better ways to come up with solutions to problems."

Benedetti tells the paper he originally planned to run for the 10th Suffolk seat when it looked like state Sen. Marian Walsh would become a judge and Rush would run for her seat. That didn't happen and Benedetti, like Rush a Catholic Memorial grad, decided to stay in the race.

State Rep. Mike Rush could face opposition this fall because he never returned a constituent's phone call.

Pamela Julian of Brookline says she called Rush to try to enlist his support for a bill that would let high-school and college students register to vote right at their schools; she's director of Associated Students of Massachusetts, which is pushing the bill. Rush never called her back and she says she started getting upset and looking at Rush's voting record and so she was down in front of the Starbucks on Centre Street in West Roxbury on Saturday collecting signatures to get on the September Democratic primary ballot.

Julian says her main issue is that she'd pledge to be a full-time state rep; she says Rush has the second-worst record in the House for missing roll call votes. However, she would also be a more liberal rep than Rush. Rush opposes single-sex marriage; Julian supports it.

Although she lives in Brookline now, Julian says she's familiar with the West Roxbury end of the district - she used to live there (and even helped run David Finnegan's local effort in a mayoral run against Kevin White).

Rush has represented the 10th Suffolk district in the House of Representatives since 2003.

This past Saturday, the Globe declared the South End was overrun with Yuppie rugrats even though, as Michael Pahre pointed out, the thesis contradicted a Globe story just seven months earlier that said Yuppie parents had fled Boston en masse.

Today, on Blue Mass. Group, David points out a similar "huh?" in a Globe story that quotes the owner of the Raynham dog track as saying a ban on dog racing would cost 6,000 to 8,000 jobs at the state's two dog tracks. In January, the Globe reported Raynham only employs 350 people. As David notes, it seems unlikely that the smaller Wonderland track employs several thousand more people.

ParkwayBoston.com has the scoop: She'll be running for re-election this fall.

So John Tobin might want to start thinking about running for mayor in 2009.

Takes out nomination papers. Does he know something we don't about incumbent Marian Walsh becoming a judge, or is he running regardless?

The Herald today shows some ink-stained lovin' for David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center:

... In a business that is an uncertain venture at best, it wasn't the first time David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, has proven more accurate than larger pollsters.

In New Hampshire, where Obama beat Clinton by 3 percentage points, Suffolk showed Obama winning by 5, compared with Zogby, which showed him leading by 13. ...

You don't say.

Adam Reilly highlights other examples of Paleologos "accuracy". Blue Mass. Group: Egg, meet face.

At the time, it was like "oh, that's interesting," in an "I will forget this in 30 seconds" sort of way. But as Michael Pahre notes, the fact that Sam Yoon (yes, our Sam Yoon) was named to the Democratic National Committee's Rule Committee in January now has some national implications: His committee has to decide what to do about Florida and Michigan.

Steve reports:

... I can confidently report that it has been very convincing among the coveted "angry smelly pre-lunch drunks who for some reason zero in on you out of all the passengers on the train in order to wave the front page of the paper in your face and scream racist ignorant nonsense and violent threats against politicians right into your ear until they release you're trying hard to ignore them then scream threats against you instead and tell you to get a haircut because it's always 1950 somewhere" vote.

Michael Bloomberg of Medford to sit this one out.

Massatoosits just doesn't cut it, especially because he's eventually going to screw up and use a similar sounding name that will get him in a lot of trouble.