Author: Crisitunity

SurveyUSA for KSTP (6/14-16, likely voters, 5/3-5 in parens):

Mark Dayton (DFL): 39

Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL): 26

Matt Entenza (DFL): 22

Undecided: 11

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Mark Dayton (DFL): 38 (34)

Tom Emmer (R): 35 (42)

Tom Horner (IP): 12 (9)

Undecided: 15 (15)

Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL): 33 (33)

Tom Emmer (R): 35 (41)

Tom Horner (IP): 12 (9)

Undecided: 21 (17)

Matt Entenza (DFL): 33 (31)

Tom Emmer (R): 37 (42)

Tom Horner (IP): 12 (10)

Undecided: 18 (16)

(MoE: ±2.5%)

The newest SurveyUSA poll of the Minnesota governor’s race shows an unlikely political comeback underway: ex-Sen. Mark Dayton, who retired in 2006 because few people expected him to be able to win re-election, is now the favorite in the DFL primary against DFL-endorsed Margaret Anderson Kelliher, and also the only Dem currently beating Republican Tom Emmer.

It’s a better set of numbers for the Dems than the ones put up in the previous SurveyUSA poll, where Emmer had a substantial lead in the midst of a post-convention bounce. These numbers instead look much closer to the more recent MPR poll, which had Dayton beating Kelliher by 10 in the primary and Emmer by 4 in the general (while Emmer narrowly beat MAK and Entenza). The previous SurveyUSA poll was distinguished by much demographic weirdness in the crosstabs, but today’s poll has many of the same oddities (the Democratic primary sample in today’s poll, for instance, is only 34% liberal, is only 56% in the Twin Cities, and actually has 22% Tea Party supporters in it, while those 18-34 year olds still continue to be big Emmer backers)… so I suspect there is some real movement away from Emmer as his bounce fades, rather than merely a more favorable sample.

• AK-Sen: It looks like that unexpected Sarah Palin endorsement may have put Joe Miller on the map, in his challenge from the right to Lisa Murkowksi in the GOP Senate primary. Now he’s gotten the backing of the Tea Party Express. Of course, it remains to be seen whether the libertarian-minded teabagger message has much resonance in Alaska; remember, at the end of the day, Alaska Republicans like their federal goodies a lot (hence the staying power of Ted Stevens and Don Young).

• IL-Sen: Could a factual dispute over Mark Kirk claims that he taught at a nursery school actually succeed in taking him down yet another peg? Kirk mentioned in a 2006 speech that he’d been a teacher, worrying about what kid might bring a gun to class. After questions arose as to whether Kirk had ever actually taught, his campaign clarified that it was a reference to his time working for one semester at a nursery school in Ithaca, New York. If even the preschool-age children of Cornell professors are taking guns to class, we’re in a lot more trouble than I’d thought. There’s also one other weird Illinois item out today: the 7th Circuit just ruled that there needs to be a special election to fill Barack Obama’s seat, after all. That’s about a year too late to be relevant, considering that Roland Burris’s tenure is almost over. But it may yet result in a special election coinciding with the November general election, which would presumably mean that Alexi Giannoulias or Kirk would get to serve in the lame-duck session and get a smidge more all-important seniority. [UDPATE: Actually, because there’s no “irreparable harm,” the 7th Circuit didn’t order a special election even though they said there probably should have been one; instead, they sent the case back down to the district court.]

• SC-Sen: Guess who’s back all of a sudden, now that there’s a gaping hole where a competent candidate should be in South Carolina? Supporters of Linda Ketner, who last year declined a re-run in SC-01 (where she’d run well in 2008), are floating her name for a Senate run. Since it doesn’t look like Alvin Greene is getting off the Democratic ballot line (after the state election commission today said they aren’t getting involved), the deep-pocketed Ketner would need to run as an independent instead. Ketner, herself, hasn’t said anything about a bid though.

• CA-Gov: Why walk back to the center after winning your primary, when you can make one frantic, implausible leap instead? After getting pulled to the right by Steve Poizner in the primary, now Meg Whitman is saying “No, no, I love immigrants,” in a Spanish-language TV ad that’ll debut during today’s Mexico/France World Cup game. She says she opposed Arizona’s new immigration law and opposed Califorina’s 1994 Prop 187, too.

• FL-Gov: Indie candidate Bud Chiles isn’t getting the warmest of welcomes in his newly-launched bid; news reports are surfacing of his involvement in a real estate development flop in a small Panhandle town. Chiles is a defendant in seven different lawsuits, either foreclosure suits or suits over leases of construction equipment. Whether or not that sticks, though, there’s also an institutional disparity showing up in how state Dems are viewing him, versus how they’re viewing Charlie Crist’s independent candidacy: Palm Beach Co. Commissioner Burt Aaronson has gone public in wanting Chiles to get out the gubernatorial race while being fine with Crist staying in the Senate race.

• ME-Gov: This morning we linked to an article musing that moderate Maine Republicans might defect to the independent candidacy of Eliot Cutler, rather support the hard-right Paul LePage. Unfortunately, visions of cat fud dancing in our heads were dashed by a unity rally today where all six losing GOP candidates, even the decidedly moderate state Sen. Peter Mills, endorsed LePage.

• MI-Gov: There’s one more poll of the gubernatorial primaries in Michigan, this time for Inside Michigan Politics. On the GOP side, they find Peter Hoekstra leading at 21, followed by Rick Snyder at 15, Mike Cox and Mike Bouchard with 10 each, and Tom George at 1. The Democratic primary has Andy Dillon at 14 and Virg Bernero at 10, with a whopping 76% undecided.

• MN-Gov: The AFL-CIO has decided to follow the lead of the SEIU, and not make an endorsement in the Democratic primary, where a variety of labor-friendly candidates are competing.

• NH-01: I wonder if this is just personal animosity at work, or if there’s a larger story here? Manchester mayor Ted Gatsas endorsed in the GOP primary in the 1st, and rather than endorse his immediate mayoral predecessor (and presumed frontrunner) Frank Guinta, he backed Sean Mahoney instead.

• NY-20: Here’s some good news for Rep. Scott Murphy, who between strong fundraising and third-tier opposition, is already having a pretty good electoral cycle: he’s been endorsed for the Independence Party’s ballot line this year. It’s sharp contrast to neighboring Rep. Mike Arcuri, whose all-cycle-long woes just got added-to by the IP endorsement going to GOP opponent Richard Hanna.

• OH-13: According to the Fix, Tom Ganley is out with an internal poll from POS that gives him a 3-point lead (44-41) over Rep. Betty Sutton. I’m wondering about the date on the poll, though (which they don’t discuss), as there were rumblings all the way back in mid-February, when Ganley switched over from the Senate race where he was flailing in the GOP primary to the 13th, that Ganley had an internal poll giving him a 3-point lead (although that was the only detail given). Or, maybe he’s just polling verrrrrry consistently.

• SC-04: Big-time tension down at Bob Jones University! The school’s arts and sciences dean endorsed GOP primary challenger Trey Gowdy several months ago, but now the school’s former chancellor (and grandson of its founder) Bob Jones III has come out in support of incumbent Bob Inglis instead.

• AL-Ag Comm.: He might have lost the primary, but he won the media war, becoming a minor celebrity along the way thanks to his bizarre ad going viral. And now he’s back: third-place finisher Dale Peterson is endorsing John McMillan, and appearing in an ad where he not only touts McMillan but tells “that dummy” (presumably Dorman Grace) to go back to his chicken farm, and, for good measure, fires a shotgun at a no-good political-sign rustler.

• Louisiana: After a few years of doing it more or less normally, Louisiana is going back to its unique system of jungle primary and runoff for its federal-level races, starting in 2012. Supporters of the switch back say it’ll save money by not requiring separate primaries. (H/t Johnny Longtorso.)

• Polltopia: Today’s must read, if you haven’t seen it already, is a lengthy profile of Scott Rasmussen in the Washington Post. While it has some backstory on Rasmussen’s pre-polling days, the real meat here is a good rundown of what polling experts think Rasmussen may be doing wrong, and some interesting speculation on the future direction of the polling business.

Public Policy Polling (pdf) (6/12-13, likely voters, 4/1-5 in parens):

Pat Quinn (D-inc): 30 (33)

Bill Brady (R): 34 (43)

Rich Whitney (G): 9 (NA)

Undecided: 27 (24)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

If you have a 27/50 approval rating — as Illinois governor Pat Quinn currently does — that means you’re rather unlikely to win an election. There are a few other governors who are plumbing these depths of unpopularity, but they aren’t running for re-election (or in the case of Jim Gibbons, already got bounced in the primary).

Quinn should feel lucky that the GOP put their worst foot forward with Bill Brady, though, as he’d be probably be in unsalvageable territory against, say, Kirk Dillard. A majority have no opinion about Brady, and those who do are split at a tepid 22/22. That gives Quinn the opportunity to try and define Brady as too right-wing for Illinois, and, while it’s too much to hope that Brady can become as unpopular as Quinn, get him unpopular enough that Illinois’s Democratic lean can do the rest of the work. Quinn might also be heartened by the high performance for Rich Whitney (who, it should be noted, also polled in double digits against Rod Blagojevich in 2006 — but that wasn’t a close race, and anti-Blago Dems were free to cast protest votes). In a close race, strategic-minded left-leaning voters might sigh and decide to vote for Quinn, nose held, than waste a protest vote on Whitney, given the conservative alternative in Brady.

• FL-Sen: Politico has a new FL-Sen piece provocatively titled “Democrats flirt with backing Charlie Crist,” but it points to some definitely solidifying conventional wisdom: that Crist, who has been steadily moving to the left in his independent bid, is becoming more appealing to local Dem power brokers as something of a de facto Dem candidate. This is especially the case if Jeff Greene, who has no base and a truckload of vulnerabilities, somehow spends his way into snatching the Dem nomination from Kendrick Meek. Along those lines, Crist‘s latest repositioning is on the issue of travel to Cuba, where he’d previously backed restrictions on travel and remittances but is now moving more in line with freer Democratic positions.

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall got an endorsement from MoveOn with less than a week to go until the Senate runoff against Cal Cunningham. It’s kind of late in the game, but MoveOn money may fund some last-minute ground-pounding.

• NV-Sen: Why do I have the feeling that Sharron Angle is going to get her own bullet every morning filled with the latest crazy revelations about her? I don’t even know where to begin: hot on the heels of revelations that she used to be a member of the right-wing Independent American Party in the 1990s (which she left because of political expedience to run for state Assembly) comes today’s revelations that in the 1980s she left the Republican Party at the height of the Reagan era to become a… Democrat? (She says she did so to help a conservative Dem with his state Senate campaign.) Well, now she can claim she’s tripartisan. Also from yesterday were, of course, revelations that in January of this year she floated the possibility of armed insurrection if Congress “keeps going the way it is.”

With the NRSC playing whack-a-mole with daily Angle bombshells, John Cornyn says he’ll be rolling her out verrrrrrry slowly… it’ll be “a few weeks” before she’s ready to take questions from the press. This comes on top of several stories about Cornyn’s more centrist colleagues cautiously distancing themselves from Angle, with Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe saying they aren’t getting involved, and Dick Lugar taking exception to most of her key action items. At least Jim DeMint is coming to her rescue, paying for some IEs on her behalf out of his PAC money.

• MI-Gov (pdf): Magellan’s out with another public poll of a Republican primary, this time in Michigan. They find Peter Hoekstra narrowly in the lead at 26, with Rick Snyder at 20, Mike Cox at 16, Mike Bouchard at 11, and Tom George at 2. Meanwhile, Cox seems to at least be winning the endorsement game; he got two more nods today, both from two of Hoekstra’s slightly more moderate House colleagues: Dave Camp and Thad McCotter. (Candice Miller, on the other hand, backed Hoekstra last week.)

• OR-Gov: Here’s quick about-face from John DiLorenzo, a Portland attorney who’d fronted himself six figures to launch an independent gubernatorial candidacy. Today he decided not to run after all; he had an interesting explanation, in that he felt that both Dem John Kitzhaber and GOPer Chris Dudley were moderate enough that there really wasn’t any room for him to carve out some space in the middle.

• NC-11: GOP nominee Jeff Miller is out with an internal poll from POS conducted several weeks ago that show him in somewhat competitive territory against Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler. The poll gives Shuler a 46-34 edge over Miller. Miller is on the wrong end of 10:1 cash advantage for Shuler, but just got a FreedomWorks endorsement which may help him gain some ground.

• NJ-06: It looks like the GOP primary in the 6th, the last race from Super Duper Tuesday not to be called, is finally over. Diane Gooch, the pre-primary favorite, at least based on her NRCC backing, conceded and said she won’t seek a recount. Anna Little finished 84 votes ahead of Gooch, who endorsed Little for the run against long-time Dem Rep. Frank Pallone.

• NY-24: Here’s one more big problem for endangered Rep. Mike Arcuri: GOP opponent Richard Hanna got the endorsement of the statewide Independence Party. There’s one catch, though; the Cayuga County Independence Party isn’t on board, and say they’d prefer to endorse Arcuri (and take great issue with the selection process, or lack thereof). It’s unclear for now how the state and county parties will resolve the dispute. Hanna got the 2008 IP line, which probably helped him keep things surprisingly close that year.

• OH-12: GOP Rep. Pat Tiberi was yesterday declared one of only nine GOPers who need continued financial support, largely because he’s facing a top-tier challenge from Franklin Co. Commissioner Paula Brooks. Brooks got a big fundraising boost today with an endorsement from EMILY’s List, which should help send some money in the direction of one of the few places where Dems are playing offense.

• TN-04: One more internal poll to report on, although it’s incredibly stale (from late March… however it was just brought to our attention, thanks to a tipster in the comments). A poll by Republican pollster OnMessage finds Rep. Lincoln Davis — a Dem in a terrible district but facing small-fry opposition — leads his two possible opponents, Scott DesJarlais and Jack Bailey, by identical 44-33 margins.

• UT-02: It sounds like the GOP is still maintaining hopes of monkeying around with the Dem primary in the 2nd, as there are subtle rumblings of efforts to get teabaggers to cross over and vote for very liberal (and probably unelectable in the general) Claudia Wright instead of Rep. Jim Matheson in the Dem primary. Somehow that doesn’t seem likely, though, considering that those same voters would probably like to have a say in the hard-fought and likely close Republican Senate primary between Mike Lee and Tim Bridgewater on the same day (June 22).

• WI-08: The crowd in the GOP field in the 8th is a little smaller; retired physician Marc Trager dropped out of the race, citing health reasons. He gave his backing to state Rep. Roger Roth, who still faces ex-state Rep. Terri McCormick, contractor Reid Ribble, and county supervisors Marc Savard and Andy Williams.

• VA-St. House: The GOP held seats in the state House of Delegates in two special elections last night, meaning they still control that chamber 59-39 (with 2 GOP-leaning indies). Both were in fairly red territory, but the Dems had felt they had a potentially strong candidate in HD-15 in Harrisonburg mayor Kai Degner. Degner lost to Tony Wilt, 66-34. In Chesterfield County in Richmond’s suburbs, Roxanne Robinson beat William Brown with 72%.

Elway Poll (6/9-13, registered voters, 4/29-5/2 in parens):

Patty Murray (D-inc): 47 (51)

Dino Rossi (R): 40 (34)

Undecided: 13 (15)

Patty Murray (D-inc): 47 (50)

Paul Akers (R): 33 (26)

Undecided: 20 (24)

Patty Murray (D-inc): 46 (50)

Clint Didier (R): 32 (24)

Undecided: 22 (26)

(MoE: ±5%)

Elway’s last poll of the Washington Senate race, taken before Dino Rossi made his entry official, had seemed a little optimistic; a 17-point lead is pretty showy in a state where a Republican is guaranteed at least 40% in a statewide race just for showing up (but where 50% is nearly impossible). A 7-point lead is very plausible.

I’d be curious to see Elway (or anyone else… maybe PPP will finally poll Washington?) take a look at the Republican primary, which in the wake of the robust showing for support for Clint Didier at the state convention last weekend and the ‘meh’ that greeted Dino Rossi, looks like it could turn very interesting. (OK, the “top two” primary, which would require polling Murray, Rossi, Didier, and Paul Akers all in one big pile.) In fact, with a Sarah Palin endorsement boosting him, Beltway Republicans are actually starting to have to take notice of Didier: he’s going to be meeting in DC this week with staff from the RNC and the NRSC (which just finished laboriously recruiting Rossi into the race).

UPDATE: Apparently Elway has polled the “top two” primary as well, but those numbers didn’t start making the rounds until later today. The results (bearing in mind that all candidates are thrown together in one pool) are: Murray 43, Rossi 31, Didier 5, and Akers 2. For those who don’t like to do their own math, that combined GOP vote is 38. Didier is also out with a breathless tweet today announcing that he just met Ron Paul today while in DC! It was teh awesome! It makes him “want to fight harder for Liberty!” (Well, except for Liberty from all those farm subsidies…)

• LA-Sen: Two different polls have very different pictures of the Louisiana Senate race, which is moving into the foreground with Charlie Melancon getting a lot more media exposure criticizing BP while David Vitter acts as one of their biggest defenders. PPP (in a poll leaked to Roll Call, although I’m not sure if it’s a Melancon internal or on someone else’s behalf) finds Melancon within single digits, trailing Vitter 46-37. On the other hand, Republican pollster Magellan gives Vitter a 51-31 lead. (Magellan has been doing a lot of recent public polling of Republican primaries; this is for the general, though, and I’m not sure if they’re working for Vitter, for some other GOP interest, or just acting sua sponte.) Both polls find extremely high continued support for offshore drilling, not a surprise since that’s Louisiana’s bread and butter.

• NH-Sen: Yesterday was Kelly Ayotte’s day to testify before the state legislature about what she did and didn’t know about the collapsed mortgage banker FRM; for the most part, she staked out claims of not knowing anything about them (saying that the buck stopped with her, but the buck never made it to her AG’s desk). Legislators seemed underwhelmed by her responses, and even GOP state Rep. Rip Holden criticized her, saying she needed to accept some blame for the state’s failings.

• PA-Sen: Politico, always hungry for inside-baseball campaign drama, is highlighting a story titled “Sestak silence worries Pa. officials,” detailing concerns the local establishment has with Joe Sestak not sufficiently linking up with them as he pivots toward the general election. It’s actually an interesting article, but Pa2010‘s Dan Hirschhorn captures the overarching tone of it with his own meta-piece, “The Sestak-as-crazy-campaigner meme returns.”

• SC-Sen: Today’s 538 look at the South Carolina puzzle focuses on how Census microdata suggests that the Greene/Green difference may not have been the racial dogwhistle that people think it is: nationwide, a higher percentage of Greenes are white than are Greens. (H/t to our commenter KCinDC, who pointed out this same data point over the weekend.) In fact, the first name “Alvin” may be a clearer dogwhistle instead. (And, of course, there’s the danger in extrapolating national data to the state level, where things may be much different in South Carolina.)

• WA-Sen: As I’ve opined before, attacking Dino Rossi for having made money off foreclosed properties, and teaching other people how to do it, has a whiff of “what else have you got?” But what’s really weird here is that he just keeps scheduling more appearances at more real estate seminars, as he’ll being doing today. (Today’s burning question: “Is now the time to buy a waterfront home?”) If I were the NRSC, I’d be worried about how committed he is to a race he seemed to get dragged kicking and screaming into in the first place, if he’s still doing real estate seminars instead of campaigning 24/7. Is the Senate race a way to keep his name in the spotlight so he can get more money for more real estate seminar appearances?

• AK-Gov: P’oh! Former state official Bob Poe was the first Dem to get in the gubernatorial race (back when it would have been against Sarah Palin). But not having made much progress on the fundraising front against the higher-profile Ethan Berkowitz and Hollis French in the Democratic primary, he pulled out of the race yesterday.

• CA-Gov, CA-Sen: There’s a poll of the California races out from CrossTarget research on behalf of right-wing new media outlet Pajamas Media, so you might keep the salt shaker handy (especially remembering their decidedly optimistic polling of the MA-Sen special). That said, though, the gubernatorial numbers look perfectly plausible, with Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman 46-43. The Senate race may be a little further off the mark, pegged at a 47-47 tie between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. Speaking of Whitman, she just wrote herself a check for another $20 million from her seeming bottomless reserves, bringing her total self-funding investment to $91 million. The main Whitman story that’s in the news today, though, presents a different picture of her from the rather serene Queen Meg that appears in all her advertising: it turns out she settled with an eBay employee for six-figures after shoving her during an argument.

• FL-Gov (pdf): When you’re reduced to leaking your own internal poll that has you tied with your opposition, well, let’s just say you’re in a world of hurt. But that’s what Bill McCollum is doing today to prove his continued relevance in the Florida GOP gubernatorial primary. His poll by McLaughlin & Associates has McCollum tied at 40-40 with Rick Scott.

• IA-Gov: As expected, the religious right isn’t planning to do much of anything to help Terry Branstad defeat Chet Culver in November. The Iowa Family PAC, who had backed Bob Vander Plaats, confirmed (as they’d threatened months ago) that they won’t endorse Branstad.

• CO-04: Credit GOP nominee Cory Gardner with having some sense of decency (or at least knowing when it’s not expedient to hitch his wagon to the crazy train). After Iowa Rep. Steve King’s comments about Barack Obama’s racist “default mechanism,” Gardner abruptly canceled a $100/person fundraiser he had scheduled for Saturday with King. (King, for his part, is doubling down on the crazy, with his impassioned defense of racial profiling yesterday.)

• KY-06: The Andy Barr campaign is out with an internal by the Tarrance Group showing him within sorta-striking distance of Democratic Rep. Ben Chandler. Chandler leads Barr 45-38. Chandler’s spokesperson said that Chandler “has a strong double-digit lead” in his own polling, but didn’t offer a polling memo.

• NC-08: The list of GOP Beltway figures piling on to support Harold Johnson instead of Tim D’Annunzio is a veritable House GOP who’s who. John Boehner and Eric Cantor are headlining a Thursday Capitol Hill fundraiser for Johnson, with Pete Sessions and Greg Walden also atop the list. Obviously plans for this must predate today’s PPP poll showing the huge disparity in viability between Johnson and D’Annunzio, so the NRCC has clearly had their eye on this one for a while.

• OK-02: Rep. Dan Boren is out with an internal poll as he faces a tough fight in a dark-red district… but he doesn’t seem concerned enough with his minor GOP opposition to even poll on that. Instead, he’s focused on a late-breaking primary challenge from the left from state Sen. Jim Wilson. His poll from Myers Research gives him a 68-24 lead over Wilson.

• OR-01: Tis the season for internal polls, I guess: there’s also one floating around out there from Rob Cornilles, the little-known but NRCC-touted businessman running against Rep. David Wu in the Portland suburbs. The Cornilles poll, by local Republican pollster Moore Information, gives Wu a 46-40 lead over Cornilles, suggesting that Wu is at least in for a tougher-than-usual challenge even if he has the district’s D+7 lean working in his favor.

• SC-06: The strange saga of the South Carolina Democratic primary is also playing out in the 6th, where Democratic House Whip Jim Clyburn easily beat Gregory Brown. Clyburn, who’s led the charge that Senate candidate Alvin Greene was a plant, is crying “foul” here as well, though, pointing out that Brown has been linked to a Republican consulting firm. The Brown campaign paid $23K to Stonewall Strategies (run by former Joe Wilson aide Preston Grisham) for “marketing;” Brown says he worked with them because they were the only ones willing to take him on as a client. Several African-American state legislators tell TPM that they’ve talked with Brown and figure that his campaign, while quixotic, was still “on the level.”

• TN-08: Allegedly humble gospel singer Stephen Fincher has gone negative against his opposition in the GOP primary, not the usual sign of a confident frontrunner. He’s launched a new ad against physician Ron Kirkland, attacking Kirkland for allowing thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates when he was head of the American Medical Group Association. He’s also charging that the Jackson Clinic, which Kirkland ran at the time, gave $8K to state Sen. Roy Herron, who’s now running for the Democratic nod in the 8th.

• VA-05: The hope of party unity for state Sen. Robert Hurt seems to be running into quite a few hitches, in the wake of his 48% victory in the GOP primary against fractured teabagging opposition. The Lynchburg Tea Party leadership says they won’t back Hurt (although they seem to be not backing anyone rather, than supporting right-wing indie Jeffrey Clark). TPM also claims that Jim McKelvey, who courted Tea Party support en route to finishing a distant second in the GOP primary, won’t be backing Hurt either.

• NRCC: Rep. Mike Rogers has a pretty easy job this year: he’s in charge of incumbent retention for the NRCC. He says there are, at this point, only nine incumbents who are in need of continued financial support: Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, Charles Djou, Joseph Cao, Pat Tiberi, Jim Gerlach, Charlie Dent, and Dave Reichert. (You’d think he’s been looking at our House Ratings page or something.) There’s one other stray bit of good news for the NRCC: they’ve finally settled their several-years-old embezzlement case, paying a $10K civil penalty for improper reporting; they’ve also received a payout from their insurance company, covering $500K of their lost $724K in funds.

Meanwhile, wags have been having some great fun at the expense of the name of the NRCC’s offense program, named, of course, “Young Guns.” Despite the fact that the average Young Gun is 50 years old. Only 7 of the 105 members of the program are women, so maybe at least the Gun part is right.

• DCCC: Roll Call looks at the DCCC’s continued outreach to K Street. An “adopt a member” strategy is being cooked up where sympathetic lobbyists will work directly with the most embattled members to shepherd them through the electoral cycle.

• WATN?: If you’re wondering whatever became of ex-Rep. John Doolittle, who retired in shame in 2008 after getting caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, it turns out he won’t be facing any charges. The DOJ has finally closed the case on Doolittle, who had previously been named as a co-conspirator in the case against aide-turned-lobbyist Kevin Ring.

Public Policy Polling (6/12-13, likely voters, 4/1-5 in parens):

Alexi Giannoulias (D): 31 (33)

Mark Kirk (R): 30 (37)

LeAlan Jones (G): 14 (NA)

Undecided: 24 (30)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

Let’s start with the good news: Mark Kirk seems to have gotten badly damaged by the continued pile-up of discrepancies in how he’s described his military service. Kirk’s 7-point erosion from the April poll in which he led is a substantial drop. (I’d say he’s fared much worse than Richard Blumenthal, if we want to talk false equivalence, but I suppose Blumenthal has also suffered about 7 points worth of damage… he just started out with a 30-point lead, so he can afford to absorb a few blows.) The drip-drip-drip is still continuing for Kirk too, with the Pentagon now confirming what documents leaked to Nitpicker first revealed: that he was cautioned twice for mingling politics with military service, and had to sign a waiver before serving on active duty in Afghanistan. Only 10% of PPP’s sample thinks Kirk has been “truthful about his military record,” with 45% saying no and 45% unsure.

Now for the bad news: Alexi Giannoulias is such a flawed candidate that he seems woefully unable to capitalize on Kirk’s self-inflicted damage. In fact, he too lost ground since the most recent poll, suggesting that while the Broadway Bank kerfuffle is receding in the rearview mirror, it’s still weighing on voters’ minds. While Kirk’s favorables are now a terrible 23/31, Giannoulias puts up an identical 23/31.

Now switching back to good news: Giannoulias’s decline seems, at least in part, due to the introduction of a new variable, the Green Party candidacy of LeAlan Jones. Third wheels rarely perform as well on Election Day as they do in early polling, especially when they’re an option in a close race between two candidates who require a lot of nose-holding (see Chris Daggett in last year’s New Jersey gubernatorial race as Exhibit A). Since those Green Party votes would likely break in Giannoulias’s favor, the large Green vote here is actually something of a positive sign. Throw in the new developments that we discussed yesterday with the likely third-party right-wing candidacy of Mike Niecestro, who isn’t polled here and whose votes are likely to come almost entirely out of Kirk’s column, and you can see a rather clear path to victory for Giannoulias — even if it doesn’t involve him breaking 50%.

• CT-Sen, CT-Gov: Leftover from last Friday is the most recent Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut. Without much changing from their previous poll other than some within-the-margin-of-error gains for Linda McMahon, the poll is very digestible. Richard Blumenthal leads McMahon 55-35 (instead of 56-31 in late May), leads Rob Simmons (who has “suspended” his campaign) 54-33, and leads Peter Schiff 56-29. McMahon leads Simmons and Schiff in the GOP primary 45-29-13. They also included gubernatorial primaries (but not the general): for the Dems, Ned Lamont leads Dan Malloy 39-22, while for the GOP Tom Foley leads Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel 39-12-2.

• IL-Sen: With a growing sense that many Illinois residents would prefer to vote for neither Mark Kirk nor Alexi Giannoulias, a new right-winger with money to burn looks like he’s daring to go where Patrick Hughes didn’t. Mike Niecestro says he’s a “disgusted Republican who has had it with the people the party throws at us,” and differentiates himself from Kirk on cap-and-trade and immigration. Just another random teabagger who’s all talk and no $$$? No, Niecestro says he already has the 25,000 signatures he needs to qualify before the June 21 deadline, and also has $1 million of his own money ready to go, along with another $100K he’s raised elsewhere. Even if he winds up pulling in only a few percent off Kirk’s right flank, that could be what that Giannoulias needs to squeak by in what otherwise looks to be a close race.

• NV-Sen: Jon Scott Ashjian is turning into something of the white whale for the Nevada GOP. Even though his candidate lost the primary, Dan Burdish, former political director for Sue Lowden, is still filing complaints with the SoS’s office to get Ashjian off the ballot. It doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere, though; Ashjian himself has qualified for the ballot, easily meeting the low 250-vote signature hurdle even though the “Tea Party” didn’t meet the signature requirements for its own ballot line. Of course, competing right-wing third party the Independent American Party is still trying to get Ashjian off the ballot too, and now the teabaggers in general have turned on Ashjian (who never really had much support from them in the first place) since one of their own, Sharron Angle, managed to snare the GOP nod.

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has yet another poll out of both the Senate races in New York. There’s still very little of interest to report. Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 48-27, David Malpass 49-24, and Joe DioGuardi 47-29. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary over Blakeman and Malpass, 21-7-3. Chuck Schumer leads Jay Townsend 60-26 and Gary Berntsen 59-27. Townsend leads Berntsen in the other GOP primary, 20-15.

• SC-Sen: Vic Rawl, who lost the Democratic nomination to the baffling Alvin Greene last week, is now formally contesting the results of the election. The state party’s 92-member executive committee will meet on Thursday to hear evidence, but it’s unlikely they’ll do anything, as there’s no precedent in South Carolina for throwing out a primary election’s results.

• WA-Sen: The state GOP convention was over the weekend in Washington; unlike, say, Utah or Connecticut, there’s nothing at stake here, but the general sense in terms of signage, applause, and the like, was that the party’s activist base is pretty jazzed about Sarah Palin-endorsed Clint Didier, and much more tepid about Dino Rossi than they were in 2008, when he was a more apt vehicle for their resentments. A straw poll at a Patriot Coalition event associated with the convention (a subset of a subset of the most hardcore base, so take with much salt) gave Didier a 99-12 edge over Rossi.

• AL-Gov: Artur Davis isn’t giving up on being a douchebag just because he lost the gubernatorial nomination; he said he isn’t sure how Ron Sparks is going to be able to win the uphill fight in the general election, and that Sparks will need something “broader than bingo” to win. Also, this is a very strange time to be making any major staff changes, let alone plunging into what Reid Wilson is describing as “turmoil:” fresh off the triumph of (probably) making the GOP gubernatorial runoff against Bradley Byrne, Robert Bentley just sacked his campaign manager, communications director, and new media director. Bentley is bringing in members of the Mike Huckabee camp to take over (with Huckabee son-in-law Bryan Sanders the new CM), but it seems like his small-time help didn’t get demoted, but instead rudely shown the door by the new bosses.

• CO-Gov: Businessman Joe Gesundheit Schadenfreude Weltschmerz Gschwendtner has pulled the plug on his Republican gubernatorial bid, without endorsing anybody else. He wasn’t able to round up enough signatures to qualify, which is odd, considering that people only need to be able to spell their own names, not his.

• FL-Gov: With his once-clear path to the GOP nomination suddenly looking to be on life support, Bill McCollum got some help from a key GOP establishment figure: Mitt Romney. Romney will appear at two Sunshine State fundraisers today, handing out endorsements like candy to a number of other Republicans in better position too.

• IA-Gov: You may recall that, in the wake of Terry Branstad’s closer-than-expected victory over social conservative Bob vander Plaats, we lamented that the Dems didn’t try any Gray Davis-style meddling in the primary to get the more-conservative, less-electable guy over the top. Well, it turns out they did try a little of that; the Dems launched an independent expenditure committee called “Iowans for Responsible Government” that ran ads on Fox News and sent direct mail attacking Branstad for tax hikes and putting his face on a liberal Mt. Rushmore next to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. While it didn’t seal the deal, it may have contributed to the underwhelming showing by Branstad.

• MI-Gov: AG Mike Cox won the endorsement of Michigan Right to Life, a big endorsement that will help him as he fights for the social conservative vote in the GOP primary with Rep. Peter Hoekstra. Cox might be the Republican we most want to face out of the GOP field; Rasmussen joined the crowd today in finding that he polls the weakest against either Democrat.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Siena also polled the gubernatorial race; again, nothing noteworthy here, other than Andrew Cuomo having lost a few points since last time. Cuomo leads Rick Lazio 60-24, and leads Carl Paladino 65-23. Party-endorsed Lazio leads Paladino (assuming he can successfully petition onto the ballot) in the GOP primary, 45-18. Meanwhile, the race may get slightly more interesting as gadflyish New York city councilor Charles Barron seems to be moving forward on his quixotic plans to create a whole third party (New York Freedom Democratic Party) for a challenge to the left, mostly to protest Cuomo putting together an all-white ticket.

• OH-Gov: Incumbent Dem Ted Strickland won the NRA endorsement today, instead of GOP ex-Rep. John Kasich. That may seem a surprise, but Strickland has a lifetime “A” rating from the NRA while Kasich was always an unusually anti-gun Republican.

• GA-12: The Hill details how Rep. John Barrow’s fundraising from fellow Dems has fallen way off this year, perhaps an indication of blowback over his “no” vote on HCR. He’s only gotten money directly from five Democratic colleagues and five others’ PACs, compared with 53 in 2006 and 22 in 2008. (An alternative explanation, of course, is that he’s in no major trouble in the general election this year and that money may be more needed elsewhere.) Barrow still has the AFL-CIO’s endorsement, and about a 20:1 CoH advantage over primary challenger Regina Thomas. Speaking of one of his minor GOP opponents, Carl Smith, the fire chief of the small town of Thunderbolt, has a less-appealing resume now that he just got canned by his city council, which opted to stop paying for a fire department and return to an all-volunteer operation.

• IN-03: The Indiana state GOP met over the weekend to pick a nominee to fill the spot left behind by the resigned Rep. Mark Souder. It wasn’t much of a surprise: they picked state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, an up-and-comer who gave Dan Coats a challenge in the GOP Senate primary. Stutzman won on the second ballot, with state Rep. Randy Borror a distant second. It was a double pick: Stutzman will be replace Souder as the GOP candidate in the general election, and also will be the GOP’s candidate in the special election that will also be held on Election Day in November (which, assuming he wins, will allow him to serve in the post-election lame duck session).

• NC-02: Rep. Bob Etheridge, usually one of the more low-key members of the House, had an embarrassing flip-out in front of two GOP trackers/college students asking him if he “supported the Obama agenda,” grabbing one of them and his camera. Etheridge subsequently issued a statement apologizing.

• Polltopia: PPP is soliciting opinions on where the poll next, both multiple-choice and open-ended. Let ’em know what burning questions you’d like answered.

• AR-Sen: Bill Halter is “mulling” an endorsement of Blanche Lincoln, and wants a sit-down with her before doing so. Frankly, it’d be a big surprise if he didn’t endorse her: it didn’t seem like any more negative a race than usual by today’s standards; labor made its point and is probably eager to move on; and Halter would probably like to run for something else at some point.

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon has, well, a crisitunity on his hands with the oil spill in the Gulf. It gives him the chance to go on the offensive against David Vitter (who’s been trying to limit BP’s liabilities, and who’s also taken to Twitter to tout Louisiana seafood (now pre-blackened) as safe). But he has the tricky task of keep his district’s oil-and-gas dependency in mind; he’s aggressively calling Vitter a “liar” now… but only because Vitter has been saying that Melancon supports the Obama administration offshore drilling moratorium.

• NC-Sen: Bob Menendez continues to play favorites in the NC-Sen runoff, although it wasn’t with a large sum of money: Menendez’s PAC (not the DSCC) gave $5,000 to Cal Cunningham last week, as well as the same amount to Blanche Lincoln.

• SC-Sen: The slow-motion trainwreck of Alvin Greene’s media rollout continues apace in South Carolina, with last night’s go-nowhere interview with Keith Olbermann taking the cake. (Gawker concludes he may actually be, instead of a plant, just “some random dude.” Glad to see our phrasing’s catching on.) Jim DeMint is, for his part, denying that he put Greene up to this, while other Republicans are helpfully suggesting that Democrats may have put Greene up to it instead, in order to give Vic Rawl a visibility boost (because unopposed candidates don’t appear on the ballot). The Rawl campaign has had elections experts look over the voting patterns to try to figure out what happened, and they’ve already raised one odd red flag: the strange shift from the early absentee votes (where Rawl dominated) to votes cast on Election Day (which Greene won).

• UT-Sen: Bob Bennett, after hinting at it several weeks ago, went ahead and endorsed Tim Bridgewater today. Bridgewater is one of the two quasi-insurgents who finished ahead of Bennett at the state GOP convention, and will be competing in the primary against Mike Lee.

• CA-Gov: I think Godwin’s Law might not yet have been enacted when Jerry Brown was Governor the first time, but he might want to familiarize himself with it, after he was caught referring (apparently in jest) to Goebbels in reference to Meg Whitman’s saturation advertising. Speaking of which, Whitman just launched her first TV ad post-primary, in which (big surprise) she hates on taxes.

• FL-Gov: Looking for something that’ll stick against moneybags Rick Scott, Bill McCollum is now trying to attack him on his pro-life credentials, saying that Columbia/HCA hospitals performed abortions while Scott was CEO.

• OR-Gov, OR-Sen: SurveyUSA is out with a poll in Oregon that has a whiff of outlier to it (as any poll that’s about six points to the right of Rasmussen tends to): they find Republican candidate Chris Dudley leading Democratic ex-Gov. John Kitzhaber 47-40. Part of the problem for Dems might be that the poll has third-party Progressive candidate Jerry Wilson racking up 6%, which is assumedly coming out of Kitzhaber’s column. But the crosstabs have Dudley winning 44-43 in the Portland area, which, given that area’s sheer blueness, seems very odd (as counterpoint, Gordon Smith won the Portland area (Multnomah, Clackamas, and Washington Counties) 50-46 in 2002 en route to a 56-40 victory statewide, the Republicans’ high-water mark for about the last 25 or so years). They also have Ron Wyden leading Jim Huffman 51-38 in the Senate race (with 4 for a Libertarian and 2 for a Green), which also seems strange.

• SC-Gov: Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who crashed and burned his car/plane in 4th place in the GOP gubernatorial primary, threw his support to 2nd place finisher Gresham Barrett for the runoff. He said Barrett was the only one he “could trust.”

• TX-Gov: The Green Party has agreed that it temporarily won’t put forth any candidates until there’s been a hearing in the lawsuit filed by the state Democrats. The lawsuit concerns whether the Greens unlawfully accepted a corporation’s help in obtaining the signatures it needed to (surprisingly) qualify for a ballot line in Texas.

• AL-02: The Tea Party Express weighed in with an endorsement in the Republican runoff in the 2nd, and they aren’t supporting the NRCC-backed establishment candidate, Montgomery city councilor Martha Roby. Instead, they’re backing billiards entrepreneur Rick Barber. Their beef with Roby seems to be that she backed a budget pushed by then-Montgomery mayor, now-Rep. Bobby Bright.

• KS-02: You may remember Sean Tevis, who became a netroots fave based on his clever cartoon depictions of his campaign and raised a surprising amount of money that almost let him knock off an incumbent in a red legislative district. Well, he’s moving up a level this year; he’s decided to run in the 2nd, against Lynn Jenkins (or Dennis Pyle, if he successfully teabags Jenkins). He still faces two other Dems, Cheryl Hudspeth and Thomas Koch, in the primary.

• NC-08: The SEIU looks like it’s going through with its strange plan to launch a third-party bid against Larry Kissell in the 8th; they submitted 34K signatures to qualify Wendell Fant for the ballot, much more than the necessary 17K. (The SEIU had previously tried to get a whole third party a ballot line, but that signature drive came up short.) Perhaps even stranger, Fant hasn’t agreed to run, at least not yet; he didn’t show up at the ballot-submitting press conference. Fant, it turns out, is an ex-Kissell aide who may have an axe to grind after getting dismissed for using a work computer to work on his own VA case.

• NJ-06: Diane Gooch, the self-funder who was expected to easily win the GOP nomination in the bluish 6th to go against Rep. Frank Pallone, is instead finding herself having to request a recount. Anna Little has declared victory, based on the 78-vote margin, after spending $22K to Gooch’s $430K.

• NV-03: Americans for Prosperity has Dina Titus in its sights; they’re taking out a $100K ad buy on network and cable (thanks, LVRJ, for actually reporting the details!), still harping on Titus for her vote in favor of health care reform.

• NY-13: Because the Republican/Conservative field in the 13th had some wiggle room to get even more messed-up, now another guy is trying to get in on the action. It’s Lou Wein, who’s going to try to petition his way onto the ballot against Michael Grimm and Michael Allegretti, each of whom have their own clique of powerful backers. Wein is more of a loose cannon — he’s best-known for winning 4% statewide in a 1990 gubernatorial bid on the Right-to-Life line, as well as an unsuccessful 1977 mayoral bid —  but if he can pick up the teabagger banner, he might make some waves here.

• VA-05: Jim McKelvey’s up to something weird here; we just don’t know what yet. He says he’s going to make up his mind this weekend whether or not to endorse Rob Hurt, to whom he finished 2nd in the GOP primary. His latest action is a head-scratcher: he’s starting his own PAC, the Take Our Country Back PAC, in order to “seek out, support, educate, train and elect conservative candidates on the local and state level in the fifth district and throughout Virginia.”

• Arizona: Here’s an interesting piece of data that should hearten Terry Goddard and Rodney Glassman: there’s been a surge in Latinos registering as Democrats since the passage of Arizona’s new immigration law. This shouldn’t be a surprise, as it closely mirrors what happened in the wake of California’s Prop 187 in the 1990s. The surge is also demographics-driven, given the fast Latino growth in Arizona, and in fact nationwide: the Census Bureau reports that, for the 2009 estimate, minorities will make up 35% of the nation, way up from 21% of the nation in the 2000 census. While much of that comes from increases in Latino births, a lot of it also has to do with more Americans self-identifying as multiracial.

• Governors: Josh Goodman does some number crunching and guesses that, with all the open seats and expected turnover this year, we’re on track to have 28 new Governors. That would be an all-time record for gubernatorial turnover (the previous record, 27, goes back to 1920).

• When Animals Attack: Best wishes for a quick recovery to Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose photo op went awry yesterday, ending with him getting stabbed in the hand by the horn of a large mohair goat. Apparently the most dangerous place to be is not between Weiner and a camera… so long as you’re a goat.

• AR-Sen: Here’s a non-surprise. Americans for Job Security, who poured $1.8 million into anti-Bill Halter ads during the primary, say they probably aren’t going to be doing any further work on behalf of Blanche Lincoln. The anti-labor group already got what it wants (two anti-labor candidates), so its work is done. Also worth noting, Nate Silver points out what a tough lift a Bill Halter victory would have been, revealing something called the ‘blogginess’ index (a factor of being white, liberal, and college-educated), on which Arkansas scores very low and Pennsylvania scores pretty high (by way of explaining how Pennsylvania was more responsive to a labor/netroots primary challenge — although I’d point out that actual labor and netroots support wasn’t the main factor in pushing Joe Sestak past Arlen Specter, whereas it was the driving force in Halter’s bid). I’m not sure if he noticed or not, but the rank ordering of the states on that index is quite similar to the graph of most liberal-to-conservative Democratic electorates that Andrew Gelman introduced last week.

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton is making a rhetorical rush to the right, if her new advertising is any indication: it’s all about stopping “Obamacare” and “yanking it out by the roots,” and it’s playing mostly in the dark-red Colorado Springs market. Wondering why? She’s probably seeing the same thing in her polling as what Republican pollster Magellan (who are getting quite active in offering public polls of Republican primaries where they don’t have a horse in the race) is seeing. They have a poll out today showing Weld County DA Ken Buck leading Norton, 42-32.

• IL-Sen: Worse to worst for Mark Kirk? It looks like frustration with his constant politicizing of his military service was present even within the Department of Defense, as a DoD memo has surfaced that expressed “concerns arising from his partisan political activities during his last two tours of active duty.” Kirk was required to get a waiver before deploying to Afghanistan in 2008, which required him to write out “an acknowledgment of limitations required for all candidates on active duty.”

• NC-Sen: This is kind of an out-of-the-blue endorsement, but it may help Elaine Marshall gain a little traction with the national netroots. Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner is apparently OK with endorsing outside her own state’s boundaries, as she offered her support to Marshall.

• NV-Sen: Echoes of Rand Paul’s still-in-progress post-primary makeover? Jon Ralston notices that Sharron Angle’s wacky website just got scrubbed, with no discussion of her positions at this point (no mention of Social Security elimination, for instance). Meanwhile, the GOP signals that they’re going to actively get involved in breaking out the message massage oil and work on rehabbing Angle: RNC head Michael Steele has pledged his support. RNC funds will go to the Nevada GOP rather than directly to Angle, whose campaign actually was in the red ($139K CoH, $179K debt) on May 19. (Compare that to Harry Reid’s $9.1 million.) And Angle’s reaching out to the GOP establishment, too, to the extent that she says she’s willing to accept campaign help from John Ensign, a flip-flop from her pre-primary position. Fitting, though, since she’s been a big proponent of embracing radioactive waste in Nevada. (And while I don’t ordinarily like to honk my own horn, after looking back through the SSP attic, I have to remind everybody that I forecasted an Angle primary victory back in October.)

• SC-Sen: There’s a growing sense that something’s amiss with Alvin Greene’s entry to the race, to the extent that Jim Clyburn explicitly called him a “plant” today and asked for a probe. The real puzzle is the timeline on Greene’s obscenity arrest, obtaining a public defender because of his indigence, and then his filing for the race:

The South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, which operates the state’s public defender program, makes clear that courts take into account “the number of people in your household, whether you own any real estate, or have money in the bank” when deciding whether to assign a public defender to a defendant.

Greene has claimed that he paid the $10,400 filing fee out of his savings from his military pay. But he was discharged from the Army in August 2009 and says he hasn’t held a job since then.

So, in economic terms, the timeline goes like this: Greene’s military paychecks stopped in August. Three months later, he filed an affidavit with a South Carolina court claiming to be indigent. And four months after that he walked into the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters with a personal check for $10,400.

Losing gubernatorial candidate Robert Ford (who’s African-American) also sheds some light on how Greene might have won despite his complete unknownness: apparently, in South Carolina, “Greene” (as opposed to “Green”) is understood to be an African-American last name. With South Carolina’s Democratic electorate with a black majority, voters with no other information about the two choices might vote based purely on that.

• UT-Sen: After previously having had some nice things to say about him, 4th place finisher Cherilyn Eagar went the whole way and endorsed Tim Bridgewater for the GOP Senate primary against Mike Lee.

• WI-Sen: Republican businessman Ron Johnson, who has some personal wealth to draw on in his bid against Russ Feingold, is launching his first television ads. A source tells SSP that this is a one-week statewide ad buy for about $350K.

• AL-Gov: Second-place finisher Robert Bentley is out with an internal poll (by Dresner Wicker) giving him a big lead in the runoff against Bradley Byrne, 45-29. That’s somewhat plausible, since Bentley seems likelier to consolidate the votes for the most conservative options, Roy Moore and Tim James, than is “moderate” Byrne. (Of course, since James is paying for a recount, it’s not a done deal that Bentley’s in the runoff.)

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis, facing a primary from teabagger Dan Maes (who pulled even with him at the state convention), now says he “doesn’t remember” serving on the board of pro-choice group Republicans for Choice. However, paperwork filed with the FEC lists him on the group’s letterhead as a board member from 1996 to 2005… that’s ten years.

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley is out with an internal poll giving her a big lead heading into the runoff against Gresham Barrett, 62-28 (suggesting she’s gotten the majority of the gains from the primary, where she led 49-22). Barrett‘s staying in (despite a sandbagging by the RGA), and he’s already out with a TV ad, where he appears with a drill sergeant who calls him “a Christian family man who won’t embarrass us.” I’m not sure if that cringeworthy line is supposed to be an anti-Mark Sanford dogwhistle or an anti-Haley dogwhistle; maybe it’s intended to do double-duty.

• GA-09: Despite losing the runoff in the special election in the 9th, Lee Hawkins is continuing to fight on; he’ll also challenge Rep.-elect Tom Graves in the regularly scheduled July primary. Hawkins didn’t fare as poorly as expected, staying within 56-44, and may be counting on the late-breaking news about Graves’s attempts to dodge a lawsuit over an unpaid business loan continuing to be a story in coming months.

• ID-01: Greg Smith & Associates released a poll (apparently not on any candidate’s behalf), showing Raul Labrador leading Democratic freshman Walt Minnick, 36-24. Recall, though, that this is the same pollster that found Minnick leading “the Republican” candidate 50-20 before the primary (and the link also helpfully provides a list of other times Smith has been way off the mark).

• VA-05: This should put to rest any notions that ex-Rep. Virgil Goode was considering a third-party independent teabagger-powered run in the 5th, or that he might throw his backing to one of the minor-league third-partiers running. Goode endorsed establishment Republican Rob Hurt to go against Rep. Tom Perriello.