The Columbus Dispatch reports that Ohio State Sen. Steve Stivers, a Republican who for two months resisted entreaties to run for Congress next year, has changed his mind and this afternoon plans to “announce his candidacy for the 15th Congressional District seat, likely setting up a showdown with Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy in what could be the nation’s premier congressional race in 2008. . . . Stivers, 42, a member of the state Senate for five years, was the first potential candidate whom U.S. House Minority Leader John Boehner” called after GOP Rep. Deborah Pryce announced in August she would retire. Pryce beat Kilroy, a Franklin County commissioner, by one percentage point in 2006 after a recount. “In 2006, Kilroy repeatedly attacked Pryce for voting to authorize the war in Iraq. . . . But Stivers offers a new challenge, because as a lieutenant colonel in the Ohio Army National Guard, he has led troops in the Iraq war.”

According to the Concord Monitor, “another Republican may run for Democrat Paul Hodes’s Second District congressional seat. Rick Perkins, a Hopkinton resident and longtime member of the U.S. Marine Forces Reserve, is considering a run.” Perkins is a veteran Marine, now in “his 26th year in the Marine Forces Reserve. In recent years, he’s been deployed twice to Afghanistan and once to Iraq with the Marines’ Special Operations Command. In his civilian life, Perkins is a pilot for FedEx. . . . Last week, Jim Steiner, a Republican lawyer from Concord, announced his own intention to run for the Second District seat.”

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that North Carolina Democrats seeking to upset GOP Sen. Elizabeth Dole next year have a major streak working against them. It has been 40 years since a N.C. Democrat won a Senate seat in a presidential election year. But some Democrats “say they believe that 2008 is the year it can happen again.” Last week, state Sen. Kay Hagan “became the most recent and most formidable candidate to enter the race against Dole.” A poll released last week “by Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, showed Dole leading Hagan 46 percent to 33 percent. . . . Despite the wide margin, Democrats see hope in the fact that Dole did not reach 50 percent support.”