Tag: VA-05

• CO-Sen: Isn’t this the second time this has happened in about a month? Tom Tancredo says something ridiculous, Republican candidate with an eye on the general repudiates the statement, then walks back the repudiation once he realizes that the teabaggers’ widdle feewings might get hurt. This time it was Ken Buck (on whose behalf Tancredo called Barack Obama the “greatest threat to the United States today” last week); he might have been helped along in his flip-flopping after Jane Norton, who’s losing the primary because Buck outflanked her on the right, started going on about how she agreed with Tancredo,.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio’s having a good day so far: he rolled out a ridiculously big fundraising number for the second quarter: $4.5 million raised. No mention of his CoH, though. (All eyes turn to Charlie Crist, though, for his first report after switching to an indie bid, to see whether that shrank or expanded his pool of donors.) Rubio’s second bit of good news is an endorsement from Crist’s former right-hand-man, temporary Sen. George LeMieux. (Since LeMieux reportedly has designs on Bill Nelson’s seat, and he seems to prefer running as a Republican and not on the Crist For Florida line, what else is he going to do, though?)

• NH-Sen: I know, I know, straw poll, terrible gauge of broad public support, take with salt, bla bla bla. Still, here’s a barometer of where the hardcore Live Free or Die crowd currently stands: Ovide Lamontagne dominated the straw poll at the Taxpayer Reunion Picnic, an annual gathering of those who were teabagging long before it was cool. He won 109 to 74 over Jim Bender, a rich guy who’s going the crazy viral ad route. Establishment candidate Kelly Ayotte and moderate outsider Bill Binnie were at 23 and 10.

• WA-Sen: Clint Didier, apparently aware of the stink lines of rank hypocrisy radiating off him, said that he’s swearing off farm subsidies in the future. (Seeing as how it made him look like the worst possible caricature of the teabaggers’ mantra of “I hate the gub’ment! Except when it’s giving me money for doing nothing!”) Apparently that was enough absolution for Rep. Ron Paul‘s satisfaction, as he threw his backing behind Didier this weekend.

• WV-Sen: Rep. Shelly Capito Moore is at least honest about being scared about running for Senate (almost certainly against highly popular Gov. Joe Manchin), although she isn’t couching it in terms of being afraid of Manchin per se, instead saying “I’m afraid to lose momentum that I think I provide for the state.” At any rate, she says she’ll make her (seeming unlikely) decision whether to run in the next few days, probably coinciding with the clarification on the election’s when and how, to be decided in a July 15 legislative special session.

• AZ-Gov: Ain’t that a kick in the head? State Treasurer Dean Martin, who was regarded as something of a frontrunner when he jumped into the GOP primary earlier this year, is suspending his campaign, ostensibly because he didn’t want to be a distraction to Gov. Jan Brewer as she fights lawsuits over SB 1070. In reality, Martin never really caught fire, first when rich self-funder Owen Buz Mills grabbed the not-Brewer mantle and then, mostly, when Brewer suddenly became belle of the right-wing ball when she signed SB 1070.

• FL-Gov: Bill McCollum apparently didn’t want to be touting his fundraising numbers, but they’re out anyway, thanks to a court filing pertaining to Rick Scott’s challenge to the state public financing system. At any rate, McCollum’s sitting on a paltry $800K in cash, a mere blip compared to what Scott can pull out of his own wallet. Of course, Scott could still pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, by antagonizing pretty much the entire RPOF by trying to hang ex-state party chair Jim Greer around McCollum’s neck… and by staking his pro-life credentials on a family who are loudly preferring that he shut up about them.

• GA-Gov: InsiderAdvantage, which offered its poll of the GOP primary last week, has a matching Dem poll today. The question for Dems isn’t whether Roy Barnes gets the most votes but whether he avoids a runoff, and they seem to err on the side of “no runoff:” Barnes is at 59, with Thurbert Baker at 15, and Dubose Porter and David Poythress both at 2, behind someone by the name of Bill Bolton (at 3). Meanwhile, on the GOP side, it seemed like something of an oversight that this endorsement hadn’t happened before, but Sarah Palin finally added Karen Handel to the ever-growing list of Mama Grizzlies. UPDATE: Thurbert Baker just got a top-tier endorsement, from Bill Clinton. It may be too late for that to matter much, though, because at this point Baker needs to not only win all the undecideds but peel away a significant number of Barnes voters. (H/t TheUnknown285.)

• MI-Gov: Motor City endorsements aplenty in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Michigan: Andy Dillon got the backing of former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer, who many observers thought would have made the strongest candidate had he run. Virg Bernero got endorsements from Detroit’s two House members, John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

• MN-Gov: Republican nominee Tom Emmer seems to have dug a large hole for himself with his proposal to start including tips toward restaurant servers’ minimum wage requirement (which has the effect of slashing their hourly base pay); he’s planning on doing a “listening tour” with servers as atonement. Also adding to Emmer’s worries is blowback from his Sarah Palin endorsement, which helped him upset Marty Seifert at the GOP convention but is now already being used as a cudgel in general election advertising (courtesy of Matt Entenza). Meanwhile, Entenza’s Democratic rival Margaret Anderson Kelliher is running her first TV spot; the total buy is for only about $50K, though.

• NE-Gov: Democrats in Nebraska seem to be actively considering just punting the ball, rather than trying to find a replacement candidate for nominee Mark Lakers. On the plus side, that would free up local Democratic money for other ventures (like the race in NE-02), in what was destined to be a thorough loss even with Lakers in the race. On the other hand, Tom White’s challenge to Lee Terry would probably benefit from having, well, something at the top of the ballot.

• PA-Gov: If Tom Corbett is trying to position himself as a moderate for the general election, well, this isn’t the way. He’s publicly using the Sharron Angle line of argumentation that unemployment benefits cause more unemployment, because, naturally, people would rather live on their meager checks than go out and get one of those many abundant jobs that are out there. The ads write themselves… presuming the Democrats ever get around to actually writing them.

• TN-Gov: A mysterious 527 (is there any other kind?) has emerged to pour money into the Tennessee GOP primary. There’s no word on who’s the power behind the throne for Tennesseans for a Better Tomorrow, but they’ll be advertising on behalf of Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who’s back in third in the polls and needs a surrogate to do the dirty work of negative advertising against Bill Haslam.

• AZ-03: Jon Hulburd’s fundraising (and self-funding ability) is the main thing keeping this red-district open seat race at least somewhat on the map for the Dems; he’s announcing $250K raised last quarter. (No word on CoH.)

• CO-04: Freshman Rep. Betsy Markey had a strong quarter, raising $530K and sitting on $1.5 million CoH. In this Republican-leaning district, she’ll need every penny of it to get through this year.

• KS-04: Democratic State Rep. Raj Goyle, whose fundraising skills have put this dark-red open seat onto the map, is out with an introductory TV spot. Seems a little earlier for that, doesn’t it? We’d guess that he’s concerned about the primary (remember that there was a SurveyUSA poll a few weeks back that showed him not that far ahead of Some Dude with, well, a more ‘Merican sounding name) and not wanting to go the route of historical footnote Vic Rawl.

• MO-08: Tommy Sowers, if nothing else, is showing a lot of hustle in his long-shot bid against GOP Rep. Jo Ann Emerson in this dark-red rural district. He says he’s passed the $1 million mark for funds raised over the total cycle (nothing specific on 2Q or CoH, though).

• NJ-03: Democratic freshman Rep. John Adler seems to be putting some fundraising distance between himself and Jon Runyan. Adler raised $415K in 2Q to break the $2 million mark for CoH, while Runyan has about $500K in cash.

• NY-01: Randy Altschuler’s got a whole lotta cash: he’s reporting $1.8 million CoH. A lot of that is coming right of the Altschuler family piggy bank, though. He raised a decent $257K last quarter, but loaned himself another $500K on top of that.

• OH-16: Yikes! GOP nominee Jim Renacci must have some deep-pocketed connections from the high-stakes world of Arena Football, because he’s reporting $725K raised last quarter. (No word on CoH.)

• PA-04: This is kind of a small haul to be touting (touting may not be the right word, actually, when even your own campaign adviser calls it “not half bad”), but maybe it’s a good amount when you weren’t even supposed to have won the primary in the first place. Keith Rothfus, who blasted establishment fave Mary Beth Buchanan in the GOP primary, says he has $200K CoH (up from $157K in his pre-primary report … no word on what he actually raised).

• VA-05: Finally, here’s the delicious cherry on top of the shit sundae of fundraising reports: Tom Perriello announces that he raised $660K last quarter, giving him $1.7 million CoH. No word yet from Robert Hurt, but with $121K on hand in his May 19 pre-primary report, I can imagine it’s not in Perriello’s ballpark. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has an interesting compare-and-contrast enterprise in how Perriello and fellow vulnerable freshman Dem Glenn Nye are approaching their re-elections (Perriello emphasizing his base, Nye emphasizing his independence); clearly, based on these numbers, playing to the base can pay off, at least at the bank.

• CA-LG (pdf): We’re still sweeping up from that last installment of the Field Poll. In the Lt. Governor’s race, there’s surprisingly good news for Dems, with Gavin Newsom looking solid against appointed GOPer Abel Maldonado, leading 43-34. The Attorney General results aren’t that surprising: Republican Los Angeles Co. DA Steve Cooley has a narrow edge over SF DA Kamala Harris, 37-34.

• Illinois: It looks like we’ll never have another Scott Lee Cohen scenario again (or for that matter, probably not even another Jason Plummer scenario). Pat Quinn signed into law new legislation requiring, from now on, that Governor and Lt. Governor tickets are joined together before the primary, not after.

• Rasmussen:

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 30%, Dan Coats (R) 51%

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D-inc) 46%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 47%

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There’s no shortage of pollsters looking at California, and now Canadian firm Ipsos (on behalf of Reuters) piles on. They find, like most pollsters, single-digits leads for the Democrats in both major races: Jerry Brown leads Meg Whitman 45-39 in the gubernatorial racer, while Barbara Boxer leads Carly Fiorina 45-41. They also find the proposed ballot initiative legalizing marijuana failing but by a close margin, 48-50.

• CO-Sen: The endorsement that seemed to blow everyone away yesterday was Bill Clinton’s unexpected backing of Andrew Romanoff, who’s mounting a primary challenge to appointed incumbent Michael Bennet in the Senate primary. It may not be that surprising, though, given Clinton’s willingness to go to bat for lost causes who backed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008, which Romanoff did. It sounds like Clinton’s intervention will be limited to fundraising e-mails, though, rather than stumping with Romanoff.

• FL-Sen: The criminal case against former state GOP party chair Jim Greer is interesting enough on its own. But it could get even more interesting if Charlie Crist gets called to testify as a witness, which could happen, as his name is on a list of potential witnesses that’s being circulated.

• IL-Sen: Mark Kirk, having offered some weak excuses (“I wasn’t thinking”) at his public appearance yesterday to apologize for his resume embellishments, tried to get back on the offensive against Alexi Giannoulias, rolling out two ads. That includes one that tries to get back to the whole “mob banker” meme. Giannoulias, however, isn’t letting the resume flummery issue die; he rolled out his own attack ad today keeping Kirk’s misrememberments front and center.

• KY-Sen: Charming: Lt. Gov. Dan Mongiardo, who narrowly lost the Democratic primary to AG Jack Conway, isn’t going to endorse anyone in the Senate race. Also, he said he isn’t planning to run for Governor next year. (Steve Beshear is running for re-election, but dropped Mongiardo from the ticket in favor of Louisville mayor Jerry Abramson, perhaps assuming that Mongo would already be Senator by 2011.)

• NC-Sen (pdf): SurveyUSA (6/23-24, likely voters):

Elaine Marshall (D): 40

Richard Burr (R-inc): 50

Mike Beitler (L): 6

Undecided: 5

(MoE: ±4%)

We haven’t been intentionally ignoring this poll from last weekend, just kept dropping the ball on getting it onto the front page. At any rate, this is one of those weird instances where Rasmussen sees a better race for the Dems than does SurveyUSA, although that may have to do with Rasmussen’s odd tendency to see huge post-primary bounces.

• NV-Sen: Last night’s title heavyweight bout was between Sharron Angle and Jon Ralston on Ralston’s public affairs TV show. Angle tried to emphasize her softer side, walking back earlier vague threats about armed insurrection, but still voiced support for Social Security phaseout and, maybe even more fatal for Nevada, support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.

• WV-Sen: Don’t get too comfortable in assuming that the West Virginia election to replace Robert Byrd won’t be held until 2012. There are vague rumblings that, despite the SoS’s decision, there might be a legislative special session this year to move the election date to November 2010. Bear in mind, though, that Dems thoroughly control the legislature so they’d be doing it only if they thought there was an advantage to doing it now instead of ’12. As Aaron Blake points out, Joe Manchin is not only the heir apparent to the Senate seat but also the Governor, who has the power to move the special session agenda, so the whole thing is really up to him. (Manchin might figure his heavy popularity is more of an advantage in a shortened election season, instead of a multi-year ramp-up to 2012.) At any rate, Manchin seems content to take his time, wanting to wait until after Byrd’s funeral next week to make any moves.

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton is flying in the face of conventional wisdom (conventional wisdom that ignores the success of recent pro-tax ballot measures in Oregon and freakin’ Arizona) by making tax increases for the wealthy a cornerstone of his gubernatorial campaign. Dayton also just landed endorsements from 2006 gubernatorial candidates Mike Hatch, and ex-Rep. Bill Luther.

• ID-01: Raul Labrador, the gift that just keeps on giving. Labrador, who just had to walk back criticisms of John Boehner, is now facing reports that he recently tore into John McCain at a pre-primary appearance and voiced his support for J.D. Hayworth. On a related note, the NRCC just promoted 16 more Young Guns to the top tier of their fundraising pyramid, but despite having won the primary here, Labrador‘s name is still nowhere to be seen on the list.

• KS-04: Here’s some trouble for Wink Hartman, the businessman competing with Mike Pompeo for the GOP nomination in this Todd Tiahrt-held open seat. Pompeo’s camp is making hay out of reports that Hartman, whom they’ve accused of carpetbagging in from Florida, is still taking a valuable homestead exemption on his expensive house in Florida, which would require that to be his primary residence.

• LA-02: State Rep. Cedric Richmond seems to have a big advantage in his quest to win the Democratic nomination in the 2nd; he’s released an internal poll taken by Zata|3 (which you might remember polling the Arkansas primaries on behalf of Arkansas Business Journal), giving him a 53-13 lead over fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta. No general election numbers for the battle against Republican Rep. Joe Cao were released.

• VA-05: Rep. Tom Perriello is out with what might get my vote for the best candidate TV ad of the cycle so far. (Well, the best ad not featuring Dale Peterson, I suppose.) It’s attention-grabbing and light-hearted enough to break through the clutter, while still staying on-message on the issue of jobs.

• WA-02: Talk about an utter polling fail. John Koster, the Republican challenger to Rep. Rick Larsen, is touting a poll with a lead over Larsen but isn’t giving the name of the pollster or even the specific numbers (saying he’s “in the neighborhood of 53 to 47 percent” – wow… no undecideds?). Larsen’s camp is saying the poll is crap, and they have a little more than the usual platitudes to back that up: Larsen was actually one of the persons polled, and he helpfully jotted down all 12 questions the poll asked. One of them identified Larsen as… a Republican.

• DCCC: Here’s some good news; now that they’re down to the final day of the quarter, the DCCC is actively twisting some arms to get recalcitrant House Dems to cough up their DCCC dues. So far, through the end of last month, House Dems have given $19.5 million over the cycle to the DCCC… but deadbeats still abound.

• CA-Sen: Business Week is out with an interesting list of all the Silicon Valley CEOs who are backing Barbara Boxer… or maybe more to the point, the ones who aren’t backing Carly Fiorina, being in the best possible position to evaluate her legacy of fail at HP. Pro-Boxer names include Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and even Cisco’s John Chambers.

• FL-Sen: Well, if nothing else, maybe this’ll help Marco Rubio’s teabaggin’ average-guy cred: like so many other Americans, he’s facing foreclosure on his home. Well, make that “one of” his homes, so maybe that’s not so average. Court documents show he’s facing a foreclosure suit on a house he co-owns in Tallahassee along with FL-25 candidate David Rivera. Rubio contends that he and Rivera just paid off the $9K delinquency yesterday (after Politico started asking questions).

• NV-Sen: So here’s why the GOP is keeping Sharron Angle under wraps while giving her the Eliza Doolittle treatment behind the scenes: an impromptu interview with a KLAS TV reporter turned into Angle getting tied into knots over Social Security “transitioning out” and then cutting the interview short when getting asked about UN withdrawal. It was followed up by a denunciation from a nameless campaign spokesperson who called the reporter “an idiot” and “another term that can’t be repeated.” Meanwhile, the whole massage/sauna thing keeps being an issue, with Angle now saying that the wacky rehabilitation program that she backed has nothing to do with Scientology… it’s a natural homeopathic method that just happens to have been developed by L. Ron Hubbard.

• WA-Sen: Here’s some more momentum for Clint Didier’s tea-flavored campaign: Sarah Palin is doubling down on her backing. He’ll be getting at least two appearances with her, who previously endorsed him before Dino Rossi’s entry into the race. He also got some sort-of good news from the NRSC, saying that they promised (having gotten burned on the Crist/Rubio and Norton/Buck fronts) that they wouldn’t take any sides until there was actually a nominee. (He also took a few whacks at the EPA in the interview, fed up with their “unburdensome regulations.”)

• MD-Gov: I’m not sure what Brian Murphy, the random right-wing businessman who’s running in the GOP primary against Bob Ehrlich, had in mind when he released this internal poll, taken for him by a polling company called Polling Company; it shows him trailing Dem incumbent Martin O’Malley 44-25. The more interesting number is that Ehrlich trails O’Malley by only 1, 44-43. Perhaps the most salient number (the Ehrlich/Murphy matchup) doesn’t even get mentioned. Gee, I wonder why?

• OK-Gov: The newest Sooner poll has Republican Rep. Mary Fallin looking large and in charge in the open-seat gubernatorial race. Fallin leads state Sen. Randy Brogdon 59-10 in the GOP primary, and leads both Democrats by double-digits: 50-35 against AG Drew Edmondson and 49-36 against LG Jari Askins. The Dem primary is super-close, with Edmondson leading Askins only 37-36. Want to see a Dem win this race? Make sure Brodgon somehow wins the GOP primary. Edmondson leads Brogdon 41-40, while Askins leads 44-36.

• AL-07: Terri Sewell is out with an internal poll (from Anzalone Liszt) giving her a lead coming out of the primary and heading into the runoff against Shelia Smoot. Sewell, who’s the only candidate who’s done much advertising, now claims a 53-33 lead over Smoot (after winning the primary with an 8-pt. margin). The difference maker is that Smoot Sewell is winning the majority (48-38) of backers of third-place finisher Earl Hilliard Jr. (Hilliard has said he won’t be endorsing either one in the runoff.)

• FL-08: I’m not even sure where to begin with this weird story, but apparently Bruce O’Donoghue, one of the various Republicans in the primary in the 8th, is accusing the Florida Tea Party of being in cahoots with Rep. Alan Grayson, to run Peg Dunmire on their line and split the conservative vote. He’s pointing out connections between Grayson and local talk radio host and local Tea Party co-founder Doug Guetzloe, but both Grayson and Guetzloe say those connections aren’t meaningful. Recall that the loudly liberal Grayson actually did appear at a teabaggers’ rally last summer, but that seemed to mostly be about their common cause over the issue of auditing the Fed.

• NC-02: Here’s a sign that maybe we don’t need to take the Renee Ellmers campaign that seriously, at least not yet: her consultant, Carter Wrenn, is stepping on the NRCC’s message management after having gotten gifted a video of Bobby Etheridge’s freak-out with trackers. Despite the NRCC’s protestations that they have no idea who these innocent “college students” are, Wrenn says that his own conversations with the NRCC indicate that they know who they are.

• TX-23: Another slightly stale GOP internal poll (this one by OnMessage, taken in mid-May) shows, big surprise, a competitive race in the 23rd. Incumbent Dem Ciro Rodriguez leads self-funding GOPer Quico Canseco 48-45. Given that internal polls tend to get released only when they show a candidate’s best-case scenario, this may actually make me feel a little more confident about Rodriguez, whom we always knew was in for a rough ride this cycle. (H/t GOPVOTER.)

• VA-05: Huh, here’s a rapid about-face from GOP nominee Robert Hurt. Last Saturday, he said he’d “absolutely” be willing to participate in three-way debates with not just Tom Perriello but also tea-flavored independent Jeffrey Clark. Perhaps Clark was wondering why Perriello seemed very pleased with that (or maybe somebody smarter about this stuff from the NRCC gave him a call and pointed out that Clark’s votes are coming only out Hurt’s column), but now he’s reversed course and says he “cannot allow the important debate in this election to be sidetracked by a candidate who is not serious about his campaign.”

• WV-03: Here’s one other sketchy poll: an internal poll from the camp of Spike Maynard, the GOPer in the race, taken by somebody called Mark Blankenship Enterprises. (Steve Singiser wonders if there’s any familial connection to Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, the travel buddy of Maynard, but this article seems to think not.) At any rate, long-time Rep. Nick Rahall leads Maynard 42-36.

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CT-Sen: Despite having no shortage of cash, the Journal-Inquirer of north-central Connecticut says Paulist freakazoid Peter Schiff might be having trouble petitioning his way on to the ballot. What an ignominious end! Anyhow, we’ll know for sure by the end of this week. (Also, see our CT-04 bullet for another Nutmeg state petitioning debacle, only worse.) Meanwhile, Aaron Blake lays out some possible circumstances under which Rob Simmons’ zombie campaign might come back to life (though ultimately he thinks reanimation of this particular corpse is unlikely).

WI-Sen: I like what Russ Feingold is doing here: He’s putting his opponent, richie rich Ron Johnson, on the defensive by linking Johnson to Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, and charging that he hasn’t said whether he supports Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. Interestingly (at least according to Politico), Johnson’s spokesbot shot back with some pablum – and didn’t bother to say whether he does support any of these three pillars of modern society.

ME-Gov: An op-ed by George Smith in the Kennebec Journal suggests that environmental lawyer Eliot Cutler, running as an independent, could win Maine’s gubernatorial race. Cutler apparently has personal wealth, and Smith suggests he could split the GOP vote, earning the support of some of its more moderate members while the teabaggers stick with the very conservative Paul LePage. (And remember, Maine’s last governor before Dem John Baldacci was also an independent, Angus King.)

SC-Gov: So Politico has a piece claiming that the South Carolina GOP establishment, including the SC Chamber of Commerce, is going all-out to try to stop Nikki Haley from winning the run-off. But CNN notes that former First Lady Jenny Sanford is stumping for Haley, and of course third-place finisher and state AG Henry McMaster endorsed her as well.

AR-01: Dem Chad Causey is “in talks” about an endorsement with Tim Wooldridge, whom Causey beat 51-49 in the runoff.

AZ-08: Remember Randy Graf? If you don’t, all you need to know is that he craaazy. He also ran for this seat in 2006 and, after the NRCC abandoned him, got beat badly by now-Rep. Gabby Giffords. Anyhow, he endorsed veteran Jesse Kelly in the GOP primary, who was once touted but then got outshined by the later entrance of state Sen. Jonathan Paton.

CO-04: Man, I bet Cory Gardner really wishes Rep. Steve King would shut up. The other day, Gardner cancelled a fundraiser in Colorado with King after King declared that President Obama “favors the black person.” Now King is lambasting Gardner for spurning him – and claiming that Gardner agrees with what he said! Gardner of course disputes King’s claims. I don’t know if you can properly call this cat fud, but it sure smells like it.

CT-04: This sack is so very, very sad. Republican Tom Herrmann flushed his campaign down the toilet today like your kid’s dead goldfish, only there won’t be any trips to the pet store to buy a replacement. Turns out Herrmann’s campaign engaged in a little bit o’ ye olde petition fraud (something we mentioned the other day), meaning he won’t have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. I admit that I was initially skeptical of this story, but it turned out that where there was smoke, there was indeed fire.

DE-AL: Republican Kevin Wade dropped out of the race, leaving Michele Rollins and Glen Urquhart to compete in the September primary. Wade endorsed neither, but touted Some Dude Rose Izzo.

LA-02: In a story about state Rep. Cedric Richmond formally kicking off his campaign, there’s a throwaway line suggesting that state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson is still considering a run. Carter Peterson (then known only as Karen Carter) lost badly to ex-Rep. Bill Jefferson in a 2006 run-off. She also infamously supported Republican Jim Tucker to be Speaker of the Louisiana House in 2007, over (of all people) Dem Don Cazayoux.

NC-08 (PDF): Damn, I hope PPP is wrong about this. They have Harold Johnson leading beautiful maniac Tim D’Annunzio 49-39 in the runoff (which takes place next week). Surely the Ark of the Covenant can help turn the tide for Timmy D, no?

ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy’s team did some nice work in getting a bullshit third-party ad yanked off the air. The spot accused Pomeroy of supporting healthcare taxes which led to lost jobs. The only problem(s): No new healthcare taxes have gone into effect yet, and the jobs in question related to reform of the student loan system, not healthcare. Yeah, whoops is right.

NY-13: Does the name Kieran Lalor ring a bell? He ran against Rep. John Hall in NY-19 in 2008 and got pasted. He’s resurfaced of late, but this time, he’s attacking a fellow Republican, Michael Allegretti. Lalor claims to represent a group of Iraq veterans, and he’s miffed that Allegretti has pictures of himself with members of the military on his website. Lalor’s hands are not exactly clean here, as his group’s own website has a picture of Allegretti’s opponent, Michael Grimm – whom Lalor says his organization will likely endorse.

NY-14: SEIU 32BJ, an important, 70,000-strong building workers union, endorsed Rep. Carolyn Maloney, citing her work in securing $4 billion in federal money for major east side transit projects.

PA-07: What a huge – and unforced – blunder. GOPer Pat Meehan tried to accuse Bryan Lentz of having been involved in the big “bonusgate” scandal (where Dem campaign workers were paid with state money). First problem: He had no such evidence, and the press (to their credit) had no trouble realizing this. Second mistake: He held his press conference in the state capitol – where the state legislature (of which Lentz is a member) is still in session. This meant that Lentz got to watch Meehan’s presser in person – and then when Meehan was done and the cameras were still rolling, Lentz strode up to the same podium and delivered a biting rebuttal to Meehan’s bullshit. Lentz’s impressive political skillz are matched only by Meehan’s lack thereof.

VA-05: Is there a word in English which expresses the idea that a debacle for one side is actually a boon for the other? No, it’s not schadenfreude, and it’s not crisitunity, either. But in any case, this is what seems to be brewing in VA-05, where the second-place finisher in the GO primary, Jim McKelvey, finally announced that he ain’t endorsing no one – at least, not yet. We can only hope he’ll give his backing to independent teabagger Jeffrey Clark rather than state Sen. Robert Hurt.

NRCC: The NRCC is setting a $20 million goal for its “Battleground” fundraising effort from members of its caucus. In 2008, their goal was $12 million, though it’s not clear whether they actually met it. In 2006, they started at $17.5 mil but later bumped it up to $22.5 mil.

• 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.

• 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.

AR-Sen: Mark Blumenthal has a detailed post-mortem of the polling in the Arkansas senate runoff, including some off-the-record claims that both Halter’s and Lincoln’s internal polling showed Lincoln ahead. I sort of wonder why Lincoln didn’t put out these numbers, if true.

CT-Sen: Several big-name Republican fundraisers are hosting an event for none other than Joe Lieberman, to benefit his 2012 re-election campaign. Some of the hosts include Robbie Aiken, Wayne Berman, Rachel Pearson, and Kathryn Rand. Obviously an outright party switch is always possible with this fuckin’ guy.

FL-Sen: Wow, so there really is a Democrat who wants death panels (more or less). Maurice Ferre, himself 75 years old, said in a meeting with the Palm Beach Post editorial board:

“Well, you know what, when you get to be 85 or 90 years old, you’re going to die. And I’m sorry, you call it, Sarah Palin, what you want, but the fact is that it is absurd for us to be spending the types of money we’re spending to extend life three months.”

Asked what he’d do as a Senator to control such costs, Ferre said: “I would absolutely say that this is the cap on how much is available for you to spend at age 90, 87, with a heart condition of this sort, with diabetes of this sort, two legs missing and, you know, this is how much is available for you to spend. And you spend it any way you want.”

There are other ways to lose races in Florida, but this is the simplest and most direct.

KY-Sen: Mitch McConnell’s sticking in his bite-guard and gritting his teeth hard to do a fundraiser for Roark Rand Paul later this month. Believe it or not, we happened to get the advance text of Paul’s prepared remarks for the event:

Throughout the ages, the finger painter, the Play-Doh sculptor, the Lincoln Logger stood alone against the daycare teacher of her time. She did not live to earn approval stamps. She lived for herself, that she might achieve things that are the glory of all humanity. These are my terms; I do not care to play by any others. And now, if the court will allow me, it’s naptime.

NV-Sen: The Big Dog is coming to the Silver State to do a campaign rally for Handsome Harry Reid next week – who won’t actually be there because the Senate will be in session. No word on whether a fundraiser is also on tap.

PA-Sen: Pat Toomey is taking some heat for a long-ago resume item: He used to work on Wall Street – in derivatives trading, no less.

SC-Sen: Alvin Greene, the mysterious Dem senate nominee in South Carolina, says he won’t drop out of the race, in spite of the state party’s call for him to bail in the wake of revelations that he was arrested on an obscenity charge last fall. Then again, Scott Lee Cohen said he wouldn’t bow out, either.

KS-Gov: Dem gubernatorial hopeful Tom Holland picked fellow state Sen. Kelly Kultala, considered something of a rising star in KS politics, as his running mate. The two formally kicked off their campaign yesterday.

NM-Gov, WI-07: In NM-Gov, we mentioned a little while back that Dem LG Diane Denish is hitting GOP nominee Susana Martinez’s record as a prosecutor in TV ads, specifically targeting her conviction rate. A related issue is coming up in WI-07, where Dems are charging ex-prosecutor Sean Duffy with misusing his (very recently) former office to compile conviction statistics helpful to his political campaign.

SC-Gov: Mitt Romney, who endorsed Nikki Haley back in March, is heading back down to the Palmetto state to campaign for her once more. Haley faces a runoff against Rep. Gresham Barrett on June 22nd.

AK-AL: Former communications exec Sheldon Fisher is running ads against his primary opponent, GOP Rep. Don Young, portraying himself as the “new conservative choice.” Kudos to the AP for reporting that the ad buy is $40,000 in size – not much by conventional standards, perhaps, but that money ought to go a lot further in Alaska.

IN-03: So this is pretty bizarre. Ex-Rep. Mark Souder, who recently resigned on account of having an extra-marital affair with a staffer, sent an odd message on Facebook concerning his likely successor, state Sen. Marlin Stutzman. On the one hand, he says Stutzman is “probably best qualified” to fill his spot. But then, explains the AP:

In one paragraph, he says Stutzman knew nothing of the affair and therefore couldn’t have tipped off the media. In another, he mentions that Stutzman or a political consulting firm leaked word of the affair to Fox News after getting information from the staffer’s husband, Brad Jackson a Kosciusko County commissioner.

Hmm, I thought it was Mike Pence who dimed out Souder?

MD-01: Businessman Rob Fisher is going up with an ad presenting himself as an outsider in the GOP primary. He faces the better-known state Sen. Andy Harris (the 2008 loser). BIG props to Ben Pershing at the Washington Post for nailing down these details: “The spot is running on cable stations in the Baltimore and Salisbury markets, with an initial buy of more than $70,000.”

MI-07, MI-09: President Obama did some fundraisers in Michigan earlier this week – one for the DNC, and another joint event for Reps. Gary Peters and Mark Schauer.

OH-18: Zack Space is doin’ it right: He’s launching a “six-figure” buy for an ad attacking GOP opponent Bob Gibbs as a tax-hiker and self-pay-raiser. Why do I like this move? Because Space is using his use cash edge ($1.3 mil to $0.1mil) to define Gibbs, at a time when Gibbs has only just emerged from the uncertainty of a primary recount (which he won with an absurdly pathetic 20.9%). For his part, Gibbs fired back with a popgun press release, the poor man’s television ad – very poor man’s.

VA-05: True to his word, Some Dude Jeff Clark is going ahead with his plans to run as a teabagging independent, since Rob Hurt won the GOP primary to take on Tom Perriello. In fact, Clark filed petitions with the board of elections last week. Note, though, something he hasn’t yet filed: an FEC report. Meanwhile, second-place finisher Jim McKelvey, who swore he wouldn’t support Hurt if he became the nominee, is still playing coy. Election night remarks suggested he was prepared to fall in line, but he hasn’t officially endorsed. (The other four also-rans have in fact done so.)

Polltopia: Taegan Goddard relays some blind non-quotes from random “pollsters” complaining about the alleged lack of transparency in Nate Silver’s pollster ratings – in particular, the fact that he hasn’t published his database of polls. Leaving aside the delicious irony that anonymous pollsters are complaining about transparency, I think this is a red herring. As Nate points out in a post of his own, anyone can recreate his work (with a lot of time and a little money) – and his main concern is the legal issues involved in making public a database that in part relies on information drawn from for-pay services.

A super Tuesday of primaries means a super-sized Primary Roundup the day after!

Arkansas:

• AR-Sen (D): Blanche Lincoln’s 52-48 victory in the runoff over Bill Halter is being spun as a comeback, but she did, y’know, win the primary too, by a similar margin. A series of R2K polls plus the incumbent rule were the main reason most people mentally gave Halter the edge going into the runoff, but in the end, a pretty similar universe of voters showed up the second time, while the D.C. Morrison voters either split evenly or just stayed away. (C)
• AR-01 (D): Chad Causey, the former CoS to retiring Rep. Marion Berry, eked out a 51-49 runoff victory over former state Sen. Tim Wooldridge in a battle of conservadem vs. very-conservadem. Causey’s late endorsement by Bill Clinton may have helped push him over the top. (C)
• AR-02 (D): In another Dem runoff, liberal African-American state Sen. Joyce Elliott won a 54-46 victory over state House speaker Robbie Wills. They went hard negative on each other, meaning a lot of damage control before facing well-financed GOPer Tim Griffin in November. (C)
• AR-03 (R): In the dark-red 3rd, Rogers mayor Steve Womack won the GOP runoff against state Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, 52-48; Womack is almost certain to win in November. Bledsoe was the only Sarah Palin endorsee to lose last night (but then, Fiorina and Branstad were gimmees). (C)

California:

• CA-Gov (R): With only one outlier poll to the contrary, the primary between former eBay CEO Meg Whitman and current Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner wasn’t expected to be close. Poizner’s attempts to outflank Whitman on the right netted him only a 64-27 defeat; Whitman now goes on to face former Governor and current state Attorney General Jerry Brown. (JMD)
• CA-Sen (R): Yesterday wasn’t a dream for Carly Fiorina, who romped to a victory with 56% of the vote over former San Jose congressman Tom Campbell and Orange County Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. CarlyFornia gets to take on three-term incumbent Barbara Boxer. (JMD)
• CA-Lt. Gov (D): In just one of yesterday’s showings of the Northern California dominance of the California Democratic Party, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom beat LA City Councilwoman Janice Hahn 55-32, winning all but six counties. (JMD)
• CA-Lt. Gov (R): Incumbent Lt. Gov Abel Maldonado, appointed to replace now-Rep. John Garamendi, beat back a conservative challenge from term-limited State Senator Sam Aanestad by a 43-31 margin. Aanestad won the counties in his district and the OC, but not much else. (JMD)
• CA-Att. Gen (D): In this seven-way primary for the Dem nod to replace Jerry Brown who’s running for governor, San Francisco DA Kamala Harris withstood an aerial assault from Facebook Chief “Privacy” Officer Chris Kelly. Harris ended up more than doubling Harris’ vote totals, 33-16. Behind them were East Bay Assemblyman Alberto Torrico at 15%, LA County Assemblyman Ted Lieu, Santa Barbara Assemblyman Pedro Nava, and LA City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo at 10 apiece. All three Assemblyman were term-limited – better luck next time at musical chairs, guys. (JMD)
• CA-Att. Gen (R): Los Angeles County DA Steve Cooley, the lone moderate in the field of three, scores a convincing 47-34-19 victory over his more conservative opponents, Chapman University Law School dean John Eastman and Orange County Assemblyman Tom Harman. This sets up yet another NorCal-SoCal matchup for AG in November, LA County DA Steve Cooley against San Francisco (City and County) DA Kamala Harris. (JMD)
• CA-Sec. of State (R): O, RLY? No, not really. Some insiders were worried that Birther Queen Orly Taitz would inexplicably earn the GOP nod for Secretary of State, but she ended up getting thoroughly pasted by ex-NFLer Damon Dunn 74-26. While Dunn’s busy facing off against incumbent Dem SoS Debra Bowen, Orly can go back to getting thoroughly pasted (and fined) in court for filing frivolous suits. (JMD)
• CA-Init: The good news: Props 16 and 17 — pet projects for the private utilities and insurance companies, respectively — have both failed, both losing 52-48 after leading much of the night. The bad news (well, as far as most blogosphere chatter goes; as a Washingtonian with first-hand experience with the ‘top two’ system, my own feelings are a firm ‘meh’): Prop 14 passed 54-46, meaning California switches to a ‘top two’ primary system. (C)
• CA-02 (R): Longtime Republican incumbent Wally Herger survived an attempted teabagging from retired Air Force Col. Pete Siglich by a 65-35 spread. Siglich criticized Herger for his TARP bailout vote, earmarks, and, going all the way back to 2003, his support for Medicare Part D, but only spent $45,000 on the race. (JL)
• CA-11 (R): Attorney David Harmer, who carpetbagged across the border from the 10th after establishing his GOP bona fides in the special election there, captured the GOP nomination with a middling 36%. The publicity Brad Goehring got over his lib’rul huntin’ remarks seemed to catapult him into 2nd place, ahead of the other two more normal candidates, Tony Amador and Elizabeth Emken. (C)
• CA-19 (R): As in the 11th, the establishment GOPer (here, state Sen. Jeff Denham) was the victor with 36% against a fractured field. Denham, who got the backing of retiring Rep. George Radanovich, beat former Fresno mayor (and Club for Growth guy) Jim Patterson and slimy former CA-11 Rep. Richard Pombo. (C)
• CA-33 (D): Former Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, who’s LA-based 47th AD overlaps quite a bit with CD-33, beat out some minor opposition with 85% of the vote to win the Democratic nomination to succeed outgoing Dem. Diane Watson. Bass faces minor GOP opposition in November and will almost certainly be the next Congresswoman from this D+35 district. (JMD)
• CA-36 (D): Marcy Winograd’s second challenge to Jane Harman was better organized than her first run in 2006, and Jane Harman’s had her share of scandal since then, but the needle barely moved. Harman scored 58.8%, down from 62.5% in 2006, but Harman never looked like she was in any real danger last night. (JMD)
• CA-37 (D): In another case of an incumbent under 70%, scandal-ridden Laura Richardson scored a suprisingly weak 68% against three miscellaneous Democratic opponents in this Long Beach based district. (JMD)
• CA-42 (R): Who (other than Swing State Project, of course) would’ve guessed that out of all the dozens of incumbent House members up for re-election, the night’s second worst performance after Bob Inglis would come from Orange County’s Gary Miller? With problems including war record embellishment, ethical clouds, and a pro-TARP vote, Miller beat Phil Liberatore only 49-37. (C)
• CA-47 (R): Despite the presence of another Vietnamese candidate on the ballot, Garden Grove Assemblyman Van Tran still got a majority of the vote to challenge incumbent Democrat Loretta Sanchez in this majority-Hispanic district that went for Bush in 2004, but also went by 20% for Obama. (JMD)
• CA-50 (D): If Francine Busby takes another run after this one, she’s in serious danger of landing the kiss of death of being called “perennial candidate” in the press. Nevertheless, she won the booby prize of the Democratic nod against GOP Rep. Brian Bilbray over attorney Tracy Emblem with two thirds of the vote. This marks her fourth run for this seat, and her third against Bilbray (counting two races in 2006). It’s not quite Sodrel-esque, but it’s getting close. (JL)

Georgia:

• GA-09 (Special): Tom Graves was hit with some late scuttle in this race to succeed retiring GOPer Nathan Deal who resigned to run for Governor. Despite some weakness in Gainesville (Hall County), the former state Rep. beat out fellow Republican former state Senator Lee Hawkins by a 56-44 margin. The House now stands at 255 D, 178 R and 2 vacancies. (JMD)

Iowa:

• IA-Gov (R): Terry Branstad, to no one’s surprise, won the GOP primary for a fifth (!) term as Governor. The only surprise was the tepid margin; he beat social conservative Bob Vander Plaats 50-41 (with 9 for Rod Roberts). Unfortunately for Chet Culver (who may be ruing not trying some Gray Davis-style manipulation in the GOP primary), a weak Branstad win is still a Branstad win. (C)
• IA-02 (R): Move over Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky and M. Myers Mermel, because Mariannette Miller-Meeks is back in town. The ophthalmologist and 2008 nominee against David Loebsack won the GOP primary surprisingly easily (with 51%), considering she was against NRCC pick Rob Gettemy and two former Senate candidates. (C)
• IA-03 (R): The NRCC also hit the Fail jackpot in the 3rd, where their pick, former wrestling coach Jim Gibbons, lost decisively to the better-organized state Sen. Brad Zaun (who won with 42% to Gibbons’ 28%) in a race that had been expected to go to convention to be decided. desmoinesdem has a good diary up detailing the NRCC’s Iowa double-faceplant. (C)

Maine:

• ME-Gov (D): State Senate president Libby Mitchell seems on track to becoming Maine’s first female governor, winning the Democratic primary with 35%; a Bill Clinton endorsement may have helped her stand out from the ho-hum pack. She was followed by former AG Steve Rowe at 23, businesswoman Rosa Scarcelli at 22, and former state Conservation director (and former Avengers star) Patrick McGowan at 20. (C)
• ME-Gov (R): Waterville mayor Paul LePage, the Republican who’d been most closely associated with local Tea Partiers, won the GOP nomination with 38%. He finished ahead of a gaggle of moderates, including businessman Les Otten at 17, state Sen. Peter Mills at 15, ex-Collins CoS Steve Abbott at 13. Will a race between the very liberal Mitchell and very conservative LePage give a legitimate opening to centrist independent Eliot Cutler in November? (C)

New Jersey:

• NJ-03 (R): Former Eagles offensive lineman and establishment favorite Jon Runyan dispatched Tabernacle Township Committeeman and insurgent Justin Murphy by a 60-40 margin for the right to take on freshman Dem John Adler in this Burlington County-based R+1 district. (JMD)
• NJ-06 (R): Back in the egg-on-NRCC’s-face department, one of their “on the radar” candidates, Monmouth County GOP Vice Chair Diane Gooch, finds herself 61 votes behind Highlands mayor Anna Little. Winner takes on 11-term Dem Frank Pallone. (JMD)
• NJ-07 (R): Frosh GOP Rep. Leonard Lance was held to only 56% in his primary against a four-pack of underfunded teabaggers. His closest foe, businessman David Larsen, received 31% of the vote. (JL)
• NJ-12 (R): NRCC favorite Scott Sipprelle had a surprisingly close call (59-41) against the teabaggish David Corsi for the right to take on Dem Rush Holt in this central Jersey district. (JMD)

Nevada:

• NV-Gov (R): A pathetic end for a pathetic man: GOP Gov. Jim Gibbons claimed only 27% in his primary against ex-AG Brian Sandoval, who won the nod with 56%. Sandoval will try to take on Rory Reid’s lunch money in the fall. (JL)
• NV-Sen (R): Harry Reid must be doing the Angle Dance tonight, as the Dirty Harry Hand Cannon-packing, crypto-Scientologist, prohibitionist, Club for Growth-backed nutcake Sharron Angle trounced former NV GOP Chair Sue Lowden and ex-SoS candidate Danny Tarkanian by an absurd 40-26-23 spread. Harry Reid, you are one lucky bastard. (JL)

South Carolina:

• SC-Gov: State Sen. Vincent Sheheen easily claimed the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in South Carolina with 59% of the vote against the briefly-hyped SC School Superintendent Jim Rex (23%). He’ll have some time to replenish his reserves by the Republican race goes to a runoff, as state Rep. Nikki Haley weathered her recent controversies in fine form with 49% of the vote to TARP-loving US Rep. Gresham Barrett’s 22%. (JL)
• SC-Sen (D): This is just embarrassing. South Carolina Democrats had been hyping the candidacy of Charleston County councilman and ex-state Rep. Vic Rawl for months, but Rawl ended up losing to Alvin Greene, a 32-year-old unemployed ex-military guy who lives with his dad and somehow found the ten grand necessary to file for office. (And it wasn’t even close, either, at 59-41.) Do we have another Scott Lee Cohen on our hands? The morning-after news seems to suggest so, with court records confirming that Greene was charged with showing obscene pictures to a college student. This is now the second cycle in a row where SC Dems have nominated the less-than-ideal choice for Senate. (JL)
• SC-01: Oy. This is pretty damn embarrassing, too. Perennial candidate Ben Frasier (0 for 19!) upset the mildly touted Robert Burton, a former member of the Board of Commissioners of the State Housing Finance and Development Authority, for the Democratic nomination in this open seat. For the Republicans, we’re looking at a run-off between state Rep. Tim Scott (the Club for Growth’s choice), who won 31% of the vote, and legacy candidate Paul Thurmond, who placed second with 16%. (JL)
• SC-03 (R): This was a bit of a surprise. In the race to succeed Gresham Barrett in the House, businessman Richard Cash finished first with 25%, with state Rep. Jeff Duncan also advancing to the run-off with 23%. That’s something of an upset, as state Rep. Rex Rice, who placed third at 19%, was seen as a strong bet to make the run-off. (JL)
• SC-04 (R): Bob Inglis is utterly doomed. The increasingly sane GOP incumbent only won 28% of the vote in his primary against Spartanburg County Solicitor Trey Gowdy and other teabag also-rans. Gowdy ended the night with 39%, meaning that these two are headed for a run-off, but it’s hard to imagine how Inglis can survive this one. (JL)

South Dakota:

• SD-Gov (R): Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard easily sowed up the Republican gubernatorial nomination with 50% of the vote in a five-person field. He’ll face state Senate Minority Leader Scott Scott Heidepriem in November. (JL)
• SD-AL (R): This was always a hard race to fit into the usual Republican primary template, since all three of the GOP candidates (SoS Chris Nelson, and state Reps. Blake Curd and Kristi Noem) were establishment types, despite some teabaggish behavior (most notably Nelson, who’d been birther-curious). In the end, Noem prevailed, beating Nelson and Curd without a runoff, 42-35-23. Did Noem’s advertising make the difference, or did Nelson’s birtherism cost him his early frontrunner status? (C)

Virginia:

• VA-02 (R): Auto dealer Scott Rigell wrapped up the Republican nomination to face Dem Rep. Glenn Nye the Freshman Guy with 40% of the vote. Businessman Ben Loyola placed second with 27%. (JL)

• VA-05 (R): Despite being absolutely despised by the teabagging base in the district thanks to his vote for the tax hiking Mark Warner budget many moons ago, state Sen. Robert Hurt easily won the GOP nod against Democrat Tom Perriello with 48% of the vote. Hurt will have to look out on his right flank, though, as Danville businessman Jeff Clark has said that he would run as an independent if Hurt wins the nod. (JL)
  

AZ-Sen: Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? J.D. Hayworth thinks so!

CT-Sen: Dave Weigel tweeters that Rob Simmons will “make statement on the future of his campaign” at 9am today. What could this mean? A) He’s getting married to Ginny Brown-Waite; B) he’s announcing endorsements from Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik; or C) he’s bailing out of the race in the face of Linda McMahon’s zillions of dollars and new party endorsement. The Connecticut Mirror says it’s option C. If so, that would pretty much just leave Paulist weirdo Peter Schiff in the mix against McMahon.

IA-Sen: Dem Roxanne Conlin has launched her first TV ad of the campaign, a biographical spot. Of course, no word on the size of the buy. I think Conlin will need to go sharply negative against Grassley if she wants to make a real dent in his poll numbers.

KS-Sen: Todd Tiahrt’s probably wondering what exactly he did wrong on the way to (probably) losing the Republican nomination: “Didn’t I out-teabag him my whole career?” I guess it doesn’t matter. SurveyUSA now has him down 52-29 to fellow Rep. Jerry Moran in the GOP primary. Two months ago he trailed “only” 42-32. The primary here isn’t until Aug. 3rd, but Tiahrt’s consistently crappy polling is going to make it hard for him to make the case that he can turn things around before then.

NV-Sen: Because we like to keep track of such things, we note that the Tea Party Express – the shady, consultant-backed apparatus that appears to be trading on the “Tea Party” name in order to drum up business – has already spent $300K on behalf of Sharron Angle in the GOP primary. If she pulls off an upset against Chicken Lady, the TPE will have a nice notch in its belt – and will probably be able to put the fear of god into a few Republican candidates here and there.

KY-Gov: Freshman Rep. Brett Guthrie says he won’t seek the Kentucky governor’s mansion in 2011, but didn’t rule out an eventual run some point in the future (he’s 46 years old).

OH-Gov: A group backed by the DGA and the American Federation of Teachers called “Building a Stronger Ohio” is going up with a $300K ad buy on behalf of Ted Strickland which is likely to hammer John Kasich some more. (You may recall that Strickland’s first ad out of the box blasted Kasich for his Wall Street ties.) Nathan Gonzales reports that this new group has $1.7 million in funding (so far), so more and bigger buys are probably on the way.

AL-05: Turncoat Parker Griffith just loaned his campaign $75K ahead of the June 1 primary, on top of $180K he loaned himself earlier.

HI-01: In light of Charles Djou’s 40% plurality win, his conservative record, and the fact that we’ll have a normal election in November, we’re moving this race back to Tossup status.

NC-08: Now that their attempt to create a third party in North Carolina has fizzled, SEIU is scaling back their plans. Instead, they are trying to recruit former Larry Kissell staffer and Iraq War vet Wendell Fant to challenge his old boss (who of course voted no on healthcare reform) as an independent.

PA-11: Some Dude Brian Kelly managed to score 17% in the Democratic primary against Paul Kanjorski, despite refusing all financial contributions. Now, he’s gone and endorsed Republican Lou Barletta. Kanjorski was in trouble anyway, but this certainly doesn’t help.

PA-12: Mark Critz’s impressive eight-point win, combined with the fact that he’ll get square off again in November against a guy he already beat soundly (Tim Burns), has us convinced that this race should be Lean D. It’s been a very long time since anyone won a special and then lost the subsequent rematch – Wisconsin Dem Peter Barca was the last to do so, in 1993/94. However, Barca won his special by just 675 votes, while Critz cruised by over 10,000.

VA-05: Saying he would “rather see Tom Perriello for two more years than the wrong conservative there for 20 years,” teabagger Jeffrey Clark says he’ll launch an independent bid if the hated Rob Hurt wins the GOP primary.

WI-07: Dem state Rep. Louis Molepske says he won’t challenge state Sen. Julie Lassa in the primary, more or less clearing the field for her. The picture on the GOP side is less clear, where state Rep. Jerry Petrowski is still considering a bid, even though Ashland DA Sean Duffy has been running for a while (and has some establishment support).