SSP Daily Digest: 6/25

• AZ-Sen: Wow, ultimate blowhard J.D. Hayworth actually realized he was in an untenable situation and had to apologize… for his having appeared in an infomercial touting “free grant money” seminar ripoffs. (He was unapologetic on Monday when the story broke, saying Republicans’ two favorite words: “buyer beware.”)

• CO-Sen: The Denver Post has a must-read profile of Ken Buck’s time as a federal prosecutor in Colorado, focusing on a 2000 case where he declined to file charges against gun shop owners, suspected of illegal sales, that he knew from local Republican circles. The incident ended with Buck resigning in 2002 to take a job as counsel for a construction company, after receiving a letter of reprimand and having to take ethics courses. (Ironically, the US Attorney who issued the letter of reprimand is Republican now-AG John Suthers, who probably would have been the GOP’s strongest Senate candidate here had he decided to run.)

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon is accusing Rob Simmons of running a “stealth campaign,” despite his having “suspended” his operations. Simmons’ name remains on the ballot, and he still has a skeletal staff, although apparently for fundraising purposes and to help other local candidates… but it seems pretty clear he’s keeping his engine idling in the event that the McMahon campaign implodes, which is probably the source of her chagrin. McMahon is also out with a new ad, which, for the first time, features her admitting to her past as pro wrestling impresario (instead of just vagueness about being a “businesswoman”); she says that pro wrestling “isn’t real” but “our problems are.” Yeah, tell Owen Hart it isn’t real…

• KS-Sen: Sarah Palin sez: Get a brain, Moran! Well, she didn’t quite say that, but she did tell her Facebook legion to support Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary in Kansas instead of Jerry Moran. Social con Tiahrt trails fiscal hawk Moran in the polls, though.

• NV-Sen: There’s more amazing dirt today on the Independent American Party, the right-wing third party in Nevada that included Sharron Angle as a member back in the 1990s. The party, during that time period, paid for a bizarre anti-gay flier (referencing “sodomites” and “brazen perverts”) to be included in local newspapers. The party’s other pronouncements during this time included prohibiting “the financing of the New World Order with American taxes” and eliminating “the debt money system.”

• TX-Sen (pdf): PPP has approval numbers for Kay Bailey Hutchison as part of their Texas sample this week, and they might give her some pause about running for re-election in 2012 (which she’s on the fence about, apparently). Her futile run for Governor seems to have hurt her standing, as her overall approval is 37/43 and it’s only 47/37 among Republicans. On the question of whether she should run again, Republicans are split 43/43, and maybe most alarmingly for her, 39% of Republicans think she’s too liberal while 46% say she’s about right. It definitely creates an opening for a teabagger challenge, if she does run again.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman’s trying an interesting damage control approach, having taken harder hits from the California Nurses’ Association than anyone else. She’s doing a targeted direct mailing to nurses’ homes, offering her side of the story, saying “don’t take the union boss’s word for it.”

• FL-Gov: I didn’t think super-rich Rick Scott really needed any intervention from outside groups, as he’s able to pay his own way. But he’s getting $1.5 million worth of advertising bought on his behalf by a 527 called “Let’s Get to Work.” It’s yet another anti-Bill McCollum ad, questioning his work as a lobbyist as well as his immigration stance.

• IA-Gov: Terry Branstad, who picked little-known state Sen. Kim Reynolds as a running mate yesterday, is now trying to sell her to the state’s social conservatives, letting them know that she’s really one of them (even if they hadn’t heard of her). Branstad, of course, is trying to head off an indie bid by vanquished primary foe Bob Vander Plaats. There are two other Branstad-related articles you might check out today: one is a piece from the Univ. of Minnesota’s Smart Politics on the success rates for ex-Governor comebacks (bottom line: it’s a pretty high rate (63%), although that’s usually for open seats, not against incumbents). And the other is a Politico look at the possible resurgence of the mustache in politics: Branstad, along with John Hoeven and John Kitzhaber, is wearing the ‘stache with pride (unfortunately, we can’t say the same about Ron Sparks anymore).

• IL-Gov: While nobody seems interested in challenging Scott Lee Cohen’s 133K signatures (five times as many as needed), Democrats are still weighing other legal methods of dispatching Cohen. While Cohen’s situation is unusual and there aren’t court cases on point, it’s possible the state’s sore loser law would prevent him from winning a Dem nomination, resigning it, and subsequently launching his own indie bid for a different office.

• SC-Gov: Here’s what initially seems like a big surprise, but is symptomatic of the rocky relations between the country-club wing of the state GOP and the Mark Sanford wing (of which Nikki Haley is a member). The state’s Chamber of Commerce just endorsed Democratic nominee Vincent Sheheen, suggesting that the GOP’s old-boy network in SC may take desperate measures to keep Haley out. The animus, at least on the surface, seems driven by efforts by Sanford (and Haley, in the legislature) to reject federal stimulus funds. Nice to see something of a public admission that, at the end of the day, big-business Republicans like to see government spending on the infrastructure that they, y’know, need in order to successfully do business, as opposed to the teabaggers’ empty-headed anti-government nihilism.

• TX-Gov: A Texas judge yesterday blocked the Green Party from the ballot in November, which ought to help Dems’ chances if the gubernatorial race winds up close. Moreover, the investigation into who was behind efforts to get the Greens onto the ballot in Texas (and conceivably save Rick Perry) has turned up some remarkable evidence: that Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, personally paid for efforts. Toomey paid a monthly stipend for six months to the organizer of the petition drive. (That drive failed, but a subsequent one bankrolled by mysterious group Take Initiative America later succeeded; Democrats, however, blocked the Greens from qualifying, saying that Take Inititative’s $500K operation was an illegal in-kind contribution to the Greens.)

• KS-01, KS-04: SurveyUSA has polls of the Republican primaries in two dark-red districts in Kansas. In the 1st, state Sen. Jim Barnett (probably the most moderate figure in the race) is still in the lead, at 23. Someone by the name of Tracey Mann has surged into 2nd place at 20, from 4 in the last poll of this race in February (probably by virtue of consolidating the Tea Party vote), while CfG choice state Sen. Tim Huelskamp is at 18. Rob Wasinger is at 11, Sue Boldra is at 8, and Marck Cobb is at 2. And in the 4th, it’s a dead heat between two businessmen: Mike Pompeo is at 39 while Wink Hartman is at 37. (Pompeo is the insider here; he’s an RNC committeeman.) State Sen. Jean Schodorf is at 8, with Jim Anderson at 6 and Paji Rutschman at 1. They also look at the Dem primary, where Raj Goyle, despite his fundraising prowess, is only at 42-32 against “retiree” Robert Tillman. Looks like Goyle might need to expend some shoe leather to avoid going the route of Vic Rawl.

• PA-11: Rep. Paul Kanjorski is some Beltway-media hot water, after delivering a very convoluted sentence at a financial reform bill hearing on the topic of foreclosure prevention that made it sound like that “minorities” weren’t “average, good American people.” Extended parsing of the sentence seems to suggest that he was actually taking issue with Republican characterizations of the types of people who wind up in foreclosure. Still, any time that the crusty Kanjorski, facing another tough challenge from Lou Barletta this year, has to spend digging out of his own holes is too much.

• TN-08: With the hard-right rabble whipped up into such a froth that anything short of punching Democrats in the nose is seen as RINO collaborationism, this can’t bode well for Stephen Fincher’s primary hopes. Fincher voted in the May 2010 Democratic primary for local races. Fincher offers the excuse that, with no GOP primary, it was vote in the Dem primary or not vote at all, but that undercuts his own attacks on Ron Kirkland for his occasional Dem-voting past. (wtndem has more in his diary.)