Tag: Dan Seals

• AK-Sen: You might have seen mention at other sites of a Tea Party Express “poll” of the GOP Senate primary in Alaska that had Joe Miller within 9 points of Lisa Murkowski. Mother Jones has been digging around, trying to find the poll, and can find no confirmation of its existence or even word of who took the poll, from either the Miller campaign or TPE.

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton’s closing argument wasn’t about how great she was, but rather about her “concerns” with Ken Buck. Her interview with Politico this morning alluded to his “issues with spending and ethics.”

• IL-Sen: If all else fails, try tying your opponent to Saddam Hussein. That’s what Mark Kirk’s attempting, with an ad that accuses Broadway Bank of having made a 2006 loan to an Iraqi businessman with some sort of Hussein connections. Alexi Giannoulias pointed out that was after he’d already left the bank, but I think a better argument would be that Saddam Hussein was played in South Park Bigger Longer & Uncut by Matt Stone, who was in Baseketball with Greg Grunberg, who was in Hollow Man with Kevin Bacon.

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon is out with his very first TV ad, as he and GOP candidate Chet Traylor try to put the squeeze on David Vitter from both directions. The ad (NWOTSOTB for $115K) launches a direct hit on how Vitter “hasn’t been honest.”

• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey is out with yet another TV ad, a negative ad against opponent Joe Sestak. Their only word on the size of the buy is “significant.” The Toomey campaign has been on the air with at least five different ads for a month now, without seeming to budge the poll numbers at all. Sestak hasn’t hit the TV airwaves yet, and seems to, as was the case with his successful primary bid, marshalling his resources for a large salvo closer to the election.

• KS-Gov: Wow, check out the opponent Sam Brownback dispatched in the GOP gubernatorial primary, if you’re in the mood for serious nutjobbery. Joan Heffington alleges “CIA infiltration of western Kansas” and has faced sanctions for practicing law without a license. At any rate, having garnered 15% in the GOP primary, she’s now saying she’s a GDI (God-driven independent) and shouldn’t have gotten suckered into that whole Republican racket in the first place, and as such is launching a write-in candidacy for November.

• MI-Gov: You may remember state Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, who pulled the plug on her gubernatorial candidacy on the day of the filing deadline, saying she didn’t want to split the progressive vote (and thus giving a big boost to Lansing mayor and eventual primary winner Virg Bernero). Probably figuring that Bernero owes her big-time and also that he’d like some diversity on the ticket, Smith is now floating her own name for the Lt. Governor slot.

• NY-Gov: GOP gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino has gone ahead and pulled the trigger on creating his own ballot line, the Taxpayers Party. It still remains a completely open question as to whether he plans to run on it if he loses the GOP primary, though. (He originally said he wouldn’t be a spoiler in the race against Andrew Cuomo, but then changed to an “options open” position.)

• IL-10: Dan Seals got apparently re-endorsed by the Illinois Federation of Teachers today. (He also had their backing in the Dem primary against Julie Hamos.)

• IL-11: Rep. Debbie Halvorson didn’t start out near the top of anyone’s list of vulnerable Democrats, but she’s starting to earn her position there. Republican opponent Adam Kinzinger has issued a second internal poll (the first one was in March) giving him a lead over Halvorson. The poll from POS gives him a 51-40 edge. (The article, however, helpfully points out that POS saw Halvorson with only a 2-point lead over the hapless Marty Ozinga six weeks before the election in 2008, a race which she went on to win by 24. Update: In 2008, we wrote about that POS poll here.)

• IN-02: Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly, no stranger to occasional use of conservative framing, goes an extra step in his new TV ad hating on those immigrants, using a photo of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama when saying how he stands apart from “the Washington crowd.” John Boehner’s lurking in the photo’s background, too, so at least it’s bipartisan.

• KS-01: Wow, SurveyUSA sure likes polling KS-01, probably one of the likeliest races in the country to stay red. (Or at least KWCH-TV sure likes paying them to poll it.) They find Republican state Sen. Tim Huelskamp, who just won the primary, leading Dem Alan Jilka 65-23. (Jilka is a former mayor of Salina, which may actually make him a pretty big ‘get’ as far as this hopeless district goes.)

• NH-02: When is a lobbyist not a lobbyist? It turns out that Katrina Swett, who has denied (gasp) lobbying, in fact filled out the required federal paperwork in 1997 to register as a lobbyist, although now her defense is that she never actually got around to lobbying once she registered. Swett has previously been attacking Dem primary foe Ann McLane Kuster for her own previous lobbying work.

• TX-17: Rep. Chet Edwards got a key endorsement in this dark-red, largely rural Texas district: he got the backing of the NRA. It may seem odd to see so many conservaDems getting NRA backing, but the NRA’s policy is where there are two equally pro-gun candidates, the incumbent gets the nod.

• WV-01: Alan Mollohan 2.0? The man is actually talking like he’s eyeing a 2012 comeback, having filed FEC paperwork setting up a 2012 candidacy (although it’s unclear whether that was just to have a fundraising receptacle for donors’ funds to repay a personal loan to his committee). He also just issued a long memo to supporters, bashing, well, everyone, ranging from Republican House members who pursued ethics complaints against him while they were in charge, to Mike Oliverio, who he says defeated him in this year’s Dem primary using those discredited charges.

• Census: Next time a Republican complains to you about the ineffective, bloated government, point him in the direction of the Census, which just came in $1.6 billion under budget (out of a total $14.7 billion appropriated) as it wraps up its main phase. A solid 72% initial response rate helped save money on the inevitable follow-up process.

• Passages: Sadly, today we bid farewell to Ted Stevens, the long-serving Republican Senator from Alaska and chronicler of the inner workings of the series of tubes. Stevens died last night in a plane crash near the town of Dillingham, at the age of 86. Stevens was the survivor of a previous 1978 plane crash, which killed his first wife. We offer our best wishes to his friends and family.

• Rasmussen:

• IA-Sen: Roxanne Conlin (D) 35%, Chuck Grassley (R-inc) 55%

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 29%, Dan Coats (R) 50%

• NH-Gov: John Lynch (D-inc) 50%, John Stephen (R) 39%

CO-Sen: Colorado Dems are concerned that if Andrew Romanoff topples Sen. Michael Bennet in the primary, he’ll be badly hamstrung in the general by his refusal to take PAC money. This problem is compounded by the fact he’s been a pretty crappy fundraiser in general. Romanoff also supposedly said he won’t accept the DSCC’s help – though luckily for us, independent expenditure rules mean that he can’t tell the DS what to do. This all reminds of Russ Feingold demanding that outside groups not spend money on his 1998 re-election campaign, which he won by barely 3% in an otherwise very strong Democratic year.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is up with a quarter million dollar ad buy on behalf of Jane Norton, touting an endorsement from Jan Brewer (whose instant celebrity strikes me as something on the level of a reality TV star).

FL-Sen: So it turns out that Kendrick Meek, who was initially left off some notices, will participate in Barack Obama’s August 18th Miami Beach fundraiser. But a Meek staffer tells Politico that he wants nothing less than a “prominent role” at the event and is “expecting the president to strongly reaffirm his endorsement.” If you have to float these kinds of things via blind leaks to the beltway press… well… that doesn’t exactly evince a great deal of confidence, does it?

Meanwhile, Tom Jensen confirms empirically something I’ve felt intuitively for a while (and mentioned on our panel at Netroots Nation): Charlie Crist is better off with Jeff Greene winning the Democratic primary rather than Kendrick Meek. In particular, black voters support Meek 39-33 over Crist, while they support Crist 61-17 over Greene.

IL-Sen: It’s confirmed: A federal judge ruled that the candidates on the special election ballot to fill out the remaining months of Sen. Roland Burris’s term will be the same as those on the regular election ballot – meaning Burris won’t be able to seek “re-election” for those two extra months (something he actually had considered doing). Phew.

KS-Sen: A final SurveyUSA poll of the GOP primary shows Todd Tiahrt, who has trailed badly for the entire race, closing the gap with Jerry Moran. Moran still leads by a sizable 49-39 margin, but two weeks ago, it was 50-36, and Tiahrt has gained 10 points over the last two months. The problem is, time’s up: The primary is tonight.

KY-Sen: The Club for Growth just endorsed Rand Paul, and undoubtedly it’s because of College Libertarian Society bullshit like this which comes out of his mouth:

The Republican running to replace outgoing Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) in the coal-mining hub of Kentucky said recently that Washington has no business formulating mine safety rules.

“The bottom line is: I’m not an expert, so don’t give me the power in Washington to be making rules,” Paul said at a recent campaign stop in response to questions about April’s deadly mining explosion in West Virginia, according to a profile in Details magazine. “You live here, and you have to work in the mines. You’d try to make good rules to protect your people here. If you don’t, I’m thinking that no one will apply for those jobs.”

“I know that doesn’t sound… I want to be compassionate, and I’m sorry for what happened, but I wonder: Was it just an accident?”

CA-Gov: Fellow humans of Earth! I have traveled back through time from the year 3000! And I come to tell you that in our wondrous and awesome future, the spending record for candidate self-funding is still held by Meg Whitman! I cannot tell you how much she spent in total, lest I create a temporal paradox and cause all of you never to have been born, but I can inform you that she has already spent one hundred million of your Earth dollars! Also, everyone in the future eats Dippin’ Dots!

Meanwhile, a more chronologically closer reporter informs us that Jerry Brown has $23 million on hand.

FL-Gov: The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Florida’s public financing law, whereby candidates whose opponents spend more than $25 million (as Rick Scott has) get added matching funds from the state. Apparently this system “chills free speech” (whatever). Bill McCollum is obviously none too happy, and is weighing a possible appeal – or an attack on another part of the law which limits the size of donations he can accept.

GA-Gov: Landmark Communications, a Republican pollster which says it has no ties to either candidate, is out with the first poll of the GOP runoff. They find Karen Handel leading Nathan Deal by a 46-37 margin. Deal, meanwhile, is out with a new ad, and props to the AJC’s Jim Galloway for getting the Deal campaign to cough up that the buy is for 850 gross ratings points in the Atlanta area. One rating point is equal to one percent of a potential audience, but because the same viewer might see the same ad more than once, you need a lot more than 100 GRPs to reach your full target audience. As things go, 850 is a pretty decent-sized buy, especially in an expensive market like Atlanta.

CA-47: This really doesn’t seem wise: Rep. Loretta Sanchez, locked in a competitive race with Assemblyman Van Tran, filed paperwork for state bid in 2014. She really couldn’t have waited until after November? Now-Rep. Tom McClintock (CA-04) did something similar last cycle, and it certainly did not seem to help him (he barely eked out a win in a decidedly red district). Speaking of Tran, by the way, here’s an interesting item from late last week: He secured the backing of the grifters running the Tea Party Express – not exactly a popular gang, I’m sure, in this 60% Obama district.

FL-08: You know how they say that if you wind up in prison, you should act all crazy on your first day so that the other inmates know better than to mess with you? Well, Alan Grayson’s tack seems to have been to act crazy so as to get his opponents to act even crazier and thus blow themselves up in the process. Republican state Rep. Kurt Kelly, reacting to Grayson’s absence during a vote on an Afghanistan war funding bill, spazzed: “He put our soldiers, our men and women in the military, in harm’s way and, in fact, maybe he wants them to die.” Said a Grayson spokesperson in response: “Kurt Kelly thinks the stupider he sounds, the more Republican votes he’ll get.” Heh.

HI-01: GOP Rep. Charles Djou is out with an internal poll from the Tarrance Group showing him up 50-42 over Colleen Hanabusa. Djou has about $380K on hand to Hanabusa’s $220K. I wonder if Hanabusa will release her own internal.

ID-01: I swear, some days it really feels like Bill Sali actually is running again. This time, apprentice fuckup Raul Labrador moved his campaign headquarters outside of the 1st Congressional District – a pretty remarkable feat given that Idaho has only two CDs. If this sounds extremely familiar, that’s because it is: Sali himself did the exact same thing, situating his campaign office in ID-02 as well. Let’s hope history repeats in November, too.

IL-10: Dem Dan Seals has donated $5,000 he received from ethically embattled Rep. Maxine Waters to charity – even though she gave that money to him last cycle. I wonder if other candidates will follow suit, ala Rangel.

NY-10: Even though he’s already spent an absurd $1.1 million and held 2008 challenger Kevin Powell to just 32% in the primary, Rep. Ed Towns is taking no chances in his rematch and is attempting to get Powell kicked off the ballot. However, Powell (who has raised very little and has just $30K on hand) collected 8,000 signatures, far more than the 1,250 he needed. So unless there are massive flaws (or fraud), this is going to be difficult for Towns.

WI-08: Organic farmer, Door County supervisor, and teabagger Marc Savard, who had raised very little, dropped out and endorsed roofing contractor Reid Ribble in the GOP primary. Ribble, who leads the fundraising field (but only has about $180K on hand), still faces former state Rep. Terri McCormick and current state Rep. Roger Roth. (And here’s a rather disturbing item we missed: While we noted retired radiologist Marc Trager’s departure from the race in mid-June, we were previously unaware that he committed suicide just a couple of weeks later.)

DCCC: Obama alert! The POTUS will do a fundraiser for the D-Trip on August 16 at the Los Angeles home of “ER” and “West Wing” executive produce John Wells. Nancy Pelosi and Chris Van Hollen are also expected to attend.

CT-Sen: Linda McMahon has already spent at least $22 million on her senatorial bid – and though she has plans to shell out much more, she’s already the fourth-largest self-funder of all time. The good news is that the top three are pretty uninspiring: Jon Corzine (NJ-Sen 2000: $60 million, 50.1% in general); Blair Hull (IL-Sen 2004: $29 million, 11% in primary); Michael Huffington (CA-Sen 1994: $28 million, 45% in general). Check out the second page of CQ’s piece to see who rounds out the rest of the top 10. Only three actually won a seat in the Senate, and all of them served one term or less – by choice!

FL-Sen: Ah – live by the zillionaire asshole, die by the zillionaire asshole. Joe Trippi, who apparently thought he could make a buck by helping schmuckface Jeff Greene run negative ads against Kendrick Meek, has been axed. This is pretty unsurprising, in light of an in-depth story by the St. Pete Times which catalogs just how much of a jerkass Greene actually is. Here’s a representative sample:

Adam Lambert worked as captain of Greene’s 145-foot yacht, Summerwind, earlier this year.

“He has total disregard for anybody else,” chuckled Lambert, who said he was Greene’s 20th and 22nd Summerwind captain (No. 21 quit after a few hours with Greene).

“I don’t think I ever once had an actual conversation with him. It was always, ‘I should just get rid of you, what f—— good are you? You’re just a f—— boat driver. You’re the third-highest paid employee in my corporation and I should just get rid of you,’ ” Lambert, 43, recalled by phone from a yacht in Croatia. “It didn’t bother me. I just felt sorry for the man. He doesn’t seem very happy.”

Quite apropos of all this, Dave Catanese takes a look at the “band of others” which has come together to run Charlie Crist’s campaign. Catanese says that Crist’s team “is staffed by a collection of misfits who run the gamut from longtime loyalists to out-of-state hired guns. They have worked for Democrats, for Republicans and even for prominent independents. As with Crist, ideology appears to take a back seat to winning office.”

MO-Sen: Mostly-failed teabagger Chuck Purgason has an internal poll out (at least, I think it’s an internal) from Magellan Strategies… but that’s not really the point. There are two super-huge problems with this poll. First off, there are literally zero undecideds – Purgason claims he’s beating Dem Robin Carnahan 56-44. Secondly, releasing a general election poll just days before an almost hopeless primary looks extremely unserious. I don’t give a damn about Purgason, but I don’t think either of these issues make Magellan look particularly good.

GA-Gov: Barack Obama is visiting Atlanta to speak to a disabled veterans convention and to host a DNC fundraiser today, but Dem gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes will be visiting other parts of the state. Several prominent Dems are planning to attend the events, including Labor Comm’r Michael Thurmond (our senate nominee), and Reps. David Scott and Sanford Bishop, the latter of whom has a competitive race this fall.

NY-Gov: Steve Levy has completed his transition from widely disliked xenophobic DINO to memorable Republican loser: He said he wouldn’t seek the Independence Party’s line this fall, and formally gave his backing to Rick Lazio.  Meanwhile, Elizabeth Benjamin says a source tells her that another disgruntled Republican, the vile Carl Paladino, is doing the opposite – he’s reconsidering his decision not to run on a third-party line and may run on his own “Taxpayers Party” line if he loses the GOP primary in September. Apparently, the teabaggers are taking the long view here, hoping that they can create a “true” conservative rival to the, ah, Conservative Party, even if that means helping Andrew Cuomo win the gubernatorial race.

WY-Gov: Mason-Dixon did a poll of the Wyoming gubernatorial primaries for the Casper Star-Tribune. On the GOP side, state Auditor Rita Meyer leads with 27, followed by former U.S. Attorney Matt Mead with 24, House Speaker Colin Simpson with 17, and former legislator and state Ag. Director Ron Micheli with 12. For Democrats, former state Dem chair Leslie Petersen leads pilot and former University of Wyoming football star Pete Gosar by a 30-22 margin.

FL-08: Franking – the privilege that allows members of Congress to mail out nominally “informational” materials to constituents at taxpayer expense – is one of those things that’s usually a lame non-issue… until it’s an issue. Incumbents have been pushing the boundaries of proper franking for centuries, and it rarely gets traction in campaigns, but I really wonder if Alan Grayson’s gone too far with this one. He recently sent out a DVD to 100,000 homes in his district (at a cost of $73K) titled “Watch Congressman Grayson in Action!” featuring a few dozen clips of his greatest hits in office. Maybe the video will be popular, maybe no one will care, maybe some Republicans will howl and get ignored – we’ll see.

IL-10 (PDF): It’s a bit musty, but Mike Memoli got his hands on an internal poll from the Dan Seals campaign taken in mid-May by Anzalone-Liszt. The numbers are a damn sight better than most Dem internals, showing Seals with a 46-38 lead over Republican Bob Dold, and a 41-32 lead among independents. Despite the poll’s age, I’d be surprised if things had changed a whole lot since then, given that the air war hasn’t really been joined yet.

IL-13: Dem Scott Harper had apparently been trying to shop the results of an informed ballot test on a recent internal poll from Global Strategy Group but didn’t seem to get many bites. So he finally decided to pull a Raul Labrador and release the proper toplines, despite their utter – almost extreme – suckitude. Rep. Judy Biggert leads Harper by a 55-29 margin. The most ridonc thing is that Biggert felt compelled to put out her own, not-exactly-dueling internal in response. I say that because the numbers in Biggert’s survey (taken by American Viewpoint) show her up 61-28. This was really not a well-managed move by the Harper campaign.

KY-06: Republican Andy Barr, formerly a top legal aide to disgraced former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, is coming under fire for his shoddy handling of a response to a government records request under the state’s equivalent to the Freedom of Information Act when he worked for Fletcher. In a 2007 report, then-AG Greg Stumbo (a Dem) said that Barr’s failure to produce records on account of their alleged non-existence meant that he was responsible for “records mismanagement.” However, Stumbo’s office did not determine that Barr had actually violated the state open records law.

LA-02: The DCCC added state Rep. Cedric Richmond to its Red to Blue program on Friday. This tells me two things: First, the D-Trip doesn’t think much of Richmond’s primary challenger, fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta. Second, DC Dems are concerned enough about Rep. Joe Cao’s staying power that they’re getting involved in a reasonably contested primary, something they have largely avoided this cycle. Now in fairness, Louisiana has a very late primary – August 28th – with an absurdly late runoff on October 2nd. So I can understand wanting to avoid a pressured one-month campaign. Still, this suggests to me that this race is not the “gimme” we might have once imagined.

NY-01: Stuck behind Newsday’s paywall is a story which says that GOPer Christopher Cox has filed a lawsuit seeking to invalidate fellow Republican Randy Altschuler’s ballot petitions. This is exactly the kind of war that Democrats in New York have been hoping for. I can’t wait to read more about it. And don’t forget that there’s a third candidate in the race, George Demos, who is being publicly slammed for alleged ethical lapses while he was an SEC attorney by a former supporter, John Catsimatidis. You may recall that Cox is engaged to Catsimatidis’s daughter, which explains the old man’s turnabout.

NY-15: You’ve probably already seen this, but Barack Obama said in an interview with CBS News that Charlie Rangel should “end his career with dignity.” Really wonder if the old bull is going to keep fighting this thing.

NY-24: Mmm… donuts. The owner of a local donut shop, Michael Sadallah, filed a lawsuit trying to knock Republican Richard Hanna off the Independence Party line. Sadallah, an Independence Party member, has also donated to Rep. Mike Arcuri. Oral arguments are this week – good luck, dude!

OK-05: True Some Dude James Lankford just earned the endorsement of third-place finisher (and state Rep.) Mike Thompson, who scored 18% in the first round despite spending $900,000. Lankford took 34% and former state Rep. Kevin Calvey had 33%. Lankford and Calvey face off in an August 24th runoff.

Kansas: A rare bit of good news on the voter registration front: Over the last year in Kansas, “Democrats gained 11,260 voters, rising to 460,318; unaffiliated voters increased 38,764 to 490,395, and Republican ranks increased 3,189 to 744,975.” Obviously, that’s a pretty sizable edge for the GOP, but it’s still nice to see Dem gains both in absolute numbers and percentages outstrip the Republicans – especially in such a red state, and especially in a year like this.

CO-Sen: An unknown group called New Leadership Colorado hired Zata|3 to take a poll of the Dem primary, and survey says that Sen. Michael Bennet has a slim 44-40 lead over upstart Andrew Romanoff. As Colorado Pols points out, even though NLC claims to have no relationship with either campaign, the group’s interests must lie with Romanoff – because no one affiliated with Bennet would want to release a poll that makes him look so vulnerable. Colorado Pols also observes that Zata|3, until this cycle, was not known as a pollster but rather as a firm that does robocalls and direct mail – and wonders why they’ve been tapped to do actual surveys.

FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek is refusing to say whether he’d back gajillionaire asshole Jeff Greene should Greene win the Democratic primary. (According to Politico, Greene has “signaled he would support Meek.”) Politically speaking, if Meek crashes and burns, I wonder if he’d be better off endorsing Charlie Crist. After all, Crist is about a hundred (at least) times more likely to win the general than Greene, and since it seems he’d have to caucus with the Dems, backing him could earn Meek a chit or two down the line.

MO-Sen: A bunch of teabaggers are complaining that Michele Bachmann is coming to town to stump for her House colleague Roy Blunt – and not Chuck Purgason, the state senator who has failed to gain any traction in his primary bid. When Bachmann, the recent founder of the House Tea Party Caucus, isn’t passing purity tests, you know your movement has reached “Judean People’s Front” levels of absurdity.

NH-Sen: UNH, polling for WMUR, has AG Kelly Ayotte beating Dem Rep. Paul Hodes 45-37. That’s actually an improvement for Hodes from April’s 47-32 margin.

CO-Gov: The Denver Post has a helpful look at the American Constitution Party, the right-wing lunatic party whose line Tom Tancredo plans to run on for governor. Among other planks of their platform: repeal of the 17th amendment, repeal of the Endangered Species Act, and repeal of the Voting Rights Act. Sounds like they have a lot in common with the Republicans – they’re both the party of no!

IL-Gov, IL-10: Capitol Fax busts two Republicans for engaging in shady Internet-related shenanigans. First up, someone claiming to be with Bill Brady’s gubernatorial decided to vandalize Brady’s Wikipedia page, turning it into a campaign press release, more or less. Of course, the encyclopedia’s trusty editors quickly reverted these ridiculous edits – which only led to a revision war, as Brady’s stupid minions kept trying to push their nonsense. The page is now locked. As Capitol Fax reiterates, all this shit is permanent. As in, you get to look like an idiot forever.

Meanwhile, in suburban Chicago, GOPer Bob Dold’s campaign doesn’t seem to understand this lesson. He put up an item on his Facebook page the other day saying he supports Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Roadmap for America’s Future” – you know, the economic “plan” which calls for destroying Medicare and Social Security, among other things. After Dan Seals lacerated Dold’s punk ass for this, Dold took the post down. But the enterprising ArchPundit was smart enough to grab a screen capture while the post was still live. Explaining the deletion, a Dold hack said, “It’s Facebook. We put things up and take things down all the time.” Um, no – you don’t actually get to do that. Trust me on this one – I’m from the Internet.

TN-Gov: Dem gubernatorial candidate Mike McWherter is up on the air with his first ad, a positive bio-ish spot. NWOTSOTB, of course.

NC-07: Barf: Kelsey Grammer, that rare breed of Hollywood Republican, is coming to North Carolina to do fundraisers for GOPer Ilario Pantano, who is running against Rep. Mike McIntyre. Pantano, as you probably know, is best known for emptying two magazines from his M-16 into two Iraqi prisoners, killing them both, because he wanted to “send a message.”

NY-15: We’ll probably stop following this whip count soon, but anyhow, freshman Dem Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick is now the third House incumbent to call on Charlie Rangel to resign. If the floodgates do open up on this, any latecomers to the bandwagon will see diminishing returns on their calls for resignation.

PA-06: Yesterday, we mentioned a Jim Gerlach internal which had him up 54-29 over Manan Trivedi. Well, the team down at the SSP Records & Storage went dumpster diving through our deep archive to dig up an old Gerlach internal from September of 2008. That survey showed him up 57-28 over Some Dude Bob Roggio. (SSPR&S believes that this might have actually been the very first “Some Dude” reference on SSP.) You will recall that Gerlach beat Roggio by just 52-48.

TN-06: That’s interesting: Veteran Brett Carter launched a TV ad touting his military experience. Then veteran Ben Leming launched a TV ad, touting his military experience. What’s interesting is that both of these guys are running in the Democratic primary – in a seat largely written off by national Dems. NWOTSOTB for either candidate, but both men have limited cash-on-hand (Carter $100K, Leming $35K).

DNC: The DNC just transferred $2.5 million to a number of sister organizations, including the DSCC, DCCC and three marquee gubernatorial campaigns (FL, MD and PA). Click the link for the complete breakdowns.

Even the mailman takes off today. But not SSP….

AR-Sen: Mitch Berry, the son of retiring Dem Rep. Marion Berry, is stepping up his fight against Bill Halter’s purported war on common sense. Berry’s PAC, Arkansans For Common Sense, just filed a $150,000 media buy against Halter, bringing their total expenditures in this race to nearly $350K. (J)

NV-Sen: Salon notes that hard-charging teabagger Sharron Angle has been handing out her own newspaper-style pamphlet at campaign events, titled “The Angle Examiner.” Underneath eye-grabbing headlines like “Reid Waterboarding the Economy” are photos of Angle in various action poses, including one in which she’s firing her .44 Magnum, which she calls her “Dirty Harry Hand Cannon.” Salon editorializes that “the breathless tone of its writing, and the very un-slick design, makes it seem like one more piece of evidence that Angle may not be quite ready for prime time.”

Ready or not, Angle is getting some big help in the closing days of her insurgent campaign. The Club for Growth filed a half-million dollar expenditure report with the FEC, the bulk of which is being spent on direct mail and attack ads hitting front-runner Sue Lowden. At the same time, the Tea Party Express has upped their media buys supporting Angle by another $50K. (J)

AZ-Gov: Get a load of this tyranny. GOP Gov. Jan Brewer says that she “has removed” state AG Terry Goddard, a Democrat running against her this fall, from defending the state against possible litigation by the federal Department of Justice surrounding the state’s “papers please” immigration law. Apparently, Brewer thinks that Goddard is “colluding” with the DoJ after learning that he met with DoJ lawyers shortly before they met with the governor’s legal advisors. This is a routine practice for Justice Department attorneys when considering legal action against a state, but Brewer will have none of it. Goddard, for his part, insists that he will be “definitely defending the state” in any challenges to the law. (J)

NY-Gov: Ex-Rep. Rick Lazio scored the Conservative Party’s endorsement, but he didn’t exactly do it in fine fashion. Chairman Mike Long pushed the party convention a week ahead of the GOP confab, in the hopes of pressuring the Republicans to nominate Lazio instead of recent ex-Dem Steve Levy. But this move ruffled quite a few feathers, it seems, and supporters of Levy and ultra-creepbag Carl Paladino conspired to also put Erie County Conservative chair Ralph Lorigo on the ballot as well. This means that if Lorigo sees it through, Lazio could face a contested primary for the Conservative line. That would mean two different primaries for two different parties with two different sets of opponents for Lazio at the same time! I also have to wonder whether Long will also face backlash over his continued meddling in NY-23 as well. Ah, the Republicans: They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

CA-36: Not taking any chances, Dem Rep. Jane Harman is out with an incendiary ad against her primary opponent, activist Marcy Winograd. The ad, which began airing on local cable stations and FIOS last Thursday, hits Winograd for wanting to “kill the defense budget” and to “destroy Israel.”  Kudos to the Politico’s Alex Isenstadt for inquiring about the size of the ad buy, but shame on the Harman campaign for declining to provide details. (J)

CA-42: Teabagging accountant Phil Liberatore pumped another $375K of his own cash into his race against GOP Rep. Gary Miller. Liberatore has now spent half a million trying to unseat Miller, who has spent “only” $337K. There are also a couple of Some Dudes in this race. The primary is June 8th.

FL-10: Even though the House ethics office cleared Bill Young in the PMA lobbying scandal back in February, a criminal investigation is apparently underway at the Justice Department. (You may recall that several lawmakers were accused of steering defense-related earmarks to PMA clients, in exchange for campaign donations.) Dem Charlie Justice seems to be overplaying his hand here (if he even has one), calling for Young to resign from office.

GA-09: Sure, anyone can file a lawsuit, but banks aren’t Orly Taitz, and they usually only sue debtors when they mean it. So it’s a bit startling to see that a local bank is suing Tom Graves, the leading candidate in the GA-09 runoff, to recover an unpaid $2.25 million business loan. They’re also accusing him of fraudulently transferring some property in order to frustrate the bank’s collection efforts. This sounds pretty serious, and could be a real game-changer. The second round of this special election is on June 8th, where Graves, a former state rep., faces Lee Hawkins, a former state senator. (Graves led 35-23 in the first round.)

ID-01: Walt Minnick just rolled out a list of 100 key supporters across his district, including a bunch of prominent Republican donors and elected officials, like some county commissioners and the former head of the National Cattleman’s Beef Association. Whoo-eee!

IL-10: Biden alert! The VPOTUS will do a fundraiser for Dan Seals on June 21st in Chicago.

NC-08: It’s always the sign of a successful campaign when the candidate starts threatening to sue members of his own party for defamation. That’s what SSP fave Tim D’Annunzio is doing, claiming that the state GOP chair is spreading lies about him. Oh, and he wants $5 million. God speed, little Timmy!

NY-01: Bill Clinton will be doing a $2,400-a-head fundraiser for Rep. Tim Bishop in Manhattan this Thursday, while Henry Kissinger will be doing the same for Republican Chris Cox. (Cox is the grandson of Richard Nixon, who of course was BFF with Kissinger back in the day.) P.S. Note to CQ-Roll Call: There is no “furor” about this dumb Sestak job non-story.

SC-02: GOP Rep. Joe Wilson raised an unbelievable amount of cash after his infamous State of the Union outburst, and he’s spending at an equally prodigious clip, too. Wilson’s pre-primary fundraising report, filed with the FEC, indicates that his campaign brought in $190,000 in a six-week period following the end of March, but he also spent over $450,000 out of his war chest, leaving him with under $1.9 million cash-on-hand. All told, Wilson has spent a whopping $2 million on his re-election campaign already, despite not facing any primary opposition. (J)

UT-02: Rep. Jim Matheson scored the backing of the 18,000-strong Utah Education Association teachers union. It so happens that his primary opponent, Claudia Wright, has been a teacher for 30 years.

NRCC: A good observation by Steve Benen, who points out that the NRCC has recently begun lowballing expectations. While Republicans had for months been acting as though they were sure to retake the House, NRCC recruitment chair Kevin McCarthy has reduced his oddly specific takeover from 45 to 37 – just short of what the GOP would need for the majority. Benen wonders if the NRCC is playing a deep game here, trying to goad supporters into giving their all, lest they become complacent. But in the wake of PA-12 and other embarrassments in primaries, maybe the Republicans really have dialed back their hopes a bit.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist, who’s been trying to sound more conservative for the last few months, seems to have changed tack again, trying to sound, well, independent… and that’s leaving many speculating that it’s a prelude to, say, an independent bid for the Senate. Crist is now portraying himself as standing up for “the people” against the GOP legislature, as he just vetoed a leadership fund bill and is poised to veto a controversial bill that would abolish teacher tenure and tie teacher pay to test scores. Polling has shown Crist in so-so shape in a three-way race, but it’s still a better bet than the GOP primary is for him at this point. Crist has until April 30 to decide whether to pull the trigger on an indie bid.

• LA-Sen: Bayou Buzz is saying that Republican incumbent David Vitter may still wind up with some conservative opposition in the Senate race, despite having scared off all the top-tier possible opponents. Former state Sen. (and 2006 Insurance Comm. loser) James Cain, who’s well-connected with the religious right, is “seriously considering” making the race. Cain says he’d prefer to run in the GOP primary, but is also considering running as a teabagger independent — which, if it splits the right-wing vote, could make things considerably more interesting for Dem Charlie Melancon.

• UT-Sen: Freshman GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz, whose name had briefly been associated with a possible primary challenge to Bob Bennett, still doesn’t think much of Bennett’s chances at the state convention, even though Bennett faces lower-caliber opposition than Chaffetz. Chaffetz drew some parallels to the same dynamic that helped him beat long-time Rep. Chris Cannon in 2008, and Cannon concurs, saying that the same movement has evolved since then.

• FL-Gov: I hinted at this yesterday, but these numbers are worth elaborating: Republican AG Bill McCollum raised $1.4 million last quarter, compared with $1.1 for Democratic CFO Alex Sink, suggesting that the same momentum change that we’ve seen in polls lately may be playing out in fundraising too. Sink still leads in receipts over the election cycle, and has the edge in cash on hand (she has $5 million).

• GA-Gov: One other gubernatorial race where the Democratic candidate is fundraising like mad is Georgia; ex-Gov. Roy Barnes raised over $900K this quarter and is sitting on $2.84 million CoH. That puts him well ahead of the top Republican, Insurance Comm. John Oxendine, who reports $2 million CoH but only raised $75K during the last quarter. Republican ex-SoS Karen Handel raised $400K in Q1, but is sitting on nearly $600K.

• PA-Gov: Little-known state Sen. Anthony Williams raised some eyebrows with his big cash haul last quarter ($1.7 million for the quarter), but it’s a little less amazing now that it’s been revealed that much of that came from one huge contribution from a not-very-appealing source: $750K came from Democrats for Education Reform, who are a school-choice group. Another interesting co-inkee-dink: Williams’ campaign manager is, in his spare time, president of a Philly charter school.

• CT-05: Sam Caligiuri and Justin Bernier have gotten some wealthy company in the GOP primary in the 5th, from businessman Mark Greenberg. He says he’s pledging $1 million of his own money for the race (although that may come in installments, as he currently reports $403K in his account).

• FL-08: You may recall our amazement the other week to find that there’s a Whig running in FL-25… well, apparently they’re proliferating all over Florida, as now there’s one running in FL-08 as well. CQ talks briefly with Steve Gerritzen, who plans to go all William Henry Harrison on Alan Grayson’s ass.

• MI-01: Sounds like Bart Stupak was speaking mostly out of frustration when he said he was considering retirement a few days ago, or maybe he got the attention he was seeking in response. In today’s Detroit Free Press, he’s sounding much likelier to run, saying he’s “not ready to quit yet,” and that he has “every intention” of running again. He still has to have his biannual sitdown with his family about whether to do it or not, though.

• NH-02: Sorry, Charlie… you’re going to need more money than that. GOP Ex-Rep. Charlie Bass reported $155K, with $262K CoH, in his quest to reclaim his old seat. Dem Katrina Swett also reported yesterday, with $325K last quarter and over $1 million CoH (mostly leftover from her Senate bid that never happened). Bass also lags Ann McLane Kuster, who reported $285K last quarter.

• PA-07: State Rep. Bryan Lentz seemed to have a pretty easy path to the nomination in the 7th, and that path got even easier, with the dropout of environmental lawyer Gail Conner from the Dem field. That leaves only political consultant Teresa Touey in the way, and Lentz is challenging her signatures.

• SC-01: Carroll Campbell III got a big endorsement in his bid for the GOP nomination to replace retiring Rep. Henry Brown, from ex-Gov. David Beasley. That makes two ex-Govs backing him (as it would be pretty awkward if he didn’t have his dad’s endorsement). (UPDATE: Ooops, my apologies. The elder Campbell died several years ago.)

• CO-AG: This is a little down in the weeds, but it may be the first big test of whether joining the frivolous Republican AG lawsuit against the feds over HCR is a net positive or negative. Republican AG John Suthers just drew a top-tier challenge, from Democratic Boulder County DA Stan Garnett. Garnett was motivated to get in largely by Suthers’ participation in the lawsuit.

• NARAL: NARAL rolled out a bunch of endorsements for Democrats going on the offense in House races. Most interestingly, they waded into the LA-02 primary, endorsing state Rep. Cedric Richmond (who still faces fellow state Rep. Juan LaFonta; the winner faces Joe Cao in November). They also supported Dan Seals (IL-10), Paula Brooks (OH-12), Suzan DelBene (WA-08), and Steve Pougnet (CA-45).

• Redistricting: If you like big charts with lots of population numbers and vote percentages (and if you’re at SSP, you probably do), here’s a post for you. Josh Goodman looks at California population changes on a county-by-county level and finds heaviest growth in Republican-leaning counties, but the growth is mostly Hispanic. Here’s the nice succinct conclusion, which I think applies everywhere and not just California:

The most rapid growth is in Republican places, but, in many cases, it’s among people who are likely to be Democratic voters. What that might mean is that this round of redistricting will produce short-term Republican gains, but, over the long haul, these Republican places won’t be Republican anymore.

• WATN?: Mahoney, Foley, and Spitzer, oh my! All three losers are in the news today as they publicly ruminate about comebacks. Ex-Rep. Tim Mahoney says people have been urging him to run for his old seat, which he lost to Republican Tom Rooney (and with Chris Craft out, hell, he may actually be their best option). Meanwhile, the guy Mahoney beat, Tom Mark Foley, has been gauging interest for his own comeback, running in 2011 for West Palm Beach mayor. Rounding out the trifecta of sex scandal survivors, Eliot Spitzer is still keeping his name in front of the press, saying that Kirsten Gillibrand presents an appealing target but sounding more plausibly interested in a run for state Comptroller.

AZ-Sen: From the Good News for John McCain Dept.: Fresh off the news that he won’t face a primary challenge from fellow Dem Nan Stockholm Walden, Tucson City Councilman Rodney Glassman resigned his seat in order to officially launch his run against Johnny Mac… or J.D. Hayworth, if we’re lucky.

DE-Sen: Mike Castle has hit the un-sweet spot: His repeal-curious approach to healthcare reform has “irritated” some teabaggers (their word), but of course it also risks turning off some of the moderate voters he’ll need to win over in order to prevail. Of course, if Chris Coons has any chops, he should be able to work up the Dem base over Castle’s “no” vote on the bill itself.

WA-Sen: The DSCC launched some attack site against Dino Rossi last week – does anyone ever visit those? – and now Rossi is complaining about the site’s contents. The Hotline says it makes him “sound like a candidate.” To me, he sounds more like a whiner. Like I say, I doubt anyone actually reads those sites.

CA-Gov: Peter Schurman, a founder of MoveOn.org, says he plans to challenge Jerry Brown in the Democratic primary.

CT-04: Easton First Selectman and Republican congressional hopeful Tom Herrmann says he raised $383K in his first 23 days in the race, and also has $365K on hand. But here’s what I’m not getting: In his intro press release, he said he started the race with $300K in the bank. The only way that’s possible, it would seem, is with a self-donation or loan. So there may be less here than meets the eye, in terms of fundraising prowess.

FL-13: Air Force veteran and Dem Rick Eaton says he’ll challenge GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan. He joins James Golden in the primary field.

FL-22: Some creepy comments from GOPer Allen West about his opponent Rep. Ron Klein, telling a gang of teabaggers:

Make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That’s the only way that you’re going to win. That’s the only way you’re going to get these people’s attention. You’ve got to put pressure on them and make them understand that you’ve got to come back and live the laws that you establish. Don’t let them be a ruling class elite. You’ve got to let them know that the clock’s ticking.

GA-07: Winger talk radio host Jody Hice plans to join the GOP field to replace retiring Rep. John Linder.

HI-01: So the DCCC is in fact getting into the race… at least, with an ad hitting Republican Charles Djou. P’co says the buy is about $34,000 –  just a toe-dip.

IL-10: Whoa mama joe: Dan Seals says he raised $663K in Q1 and has $460K on hand. (The low-ish CoH figures are undoubtedly due to the February primary election.) GOPer Bob Dold! did well, too, taking in $505K ($378K on hand), but Seals sure wins bragging rights for this quarter.

NY-15: Charlie Rangel is getting another primary challenger: Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV, son of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the guy Charlie Rangel ousted in a primary in 1970. The younger Powell challenged Rangel once before, in 1994, losing 58-33.

VA-11: Fairfax County Supervisor Pat Herrity is touting an internal poll from the Tarrance Group of 400 likely Republican voters showing him with a 42-21 primary lead over businessman Keith Fimian. There don’t appear to be any general election numbers showing matchups against Rep. Gerry Connolly.

RNC: So the RNC had a gangbusters fundraising month in March, raking in $11.4 mil. Bully for them. But what’s odd is that they’re released this information yesterday – a full two weeks before monthly FEC reports are due. This is not the normal practice of the RNC (or any party committee), which typically only puts out nums much closer to the 20th of each month. Undoubtedly, the embattled Michael Steele had his green eyeshade guys working around the clock in the hopes that a good financial press release would take some heat off of him. Not working.

• CA-Sen (pdf): The apparently nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California has put out another statewide poll, and the numbers look very similar to those in the Field Poll last week. Barbara Boxer is in a dead heat with Tom Campbell, down 44-43, and not faring much better against Carly Fiorina, where Boxer leads 44-43. (She led Campbell by 4 and Fiorina by 8 two months ago.) Boxer’s doing better against Chuck DeVore, with a 46-40 edge. The big change from the Field Poll is that PPIC finds Fiorina actually in the lead in the GOP primary, the first pollster to see that in a while; she’s up 24-23-8, an improvement from January’s 27-16-8 Campbell edge. Are reluctant social conservatives getting off the fence and behind Fiorina, sensing DeVore isn’t gaining traction? Or did the Demon Sheep ad actually sway some ovinophobic voters?

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway’s on the air with a TV spot in the wake of the health care vote, trying to get some mileage out of Democratic primary opponent Dan Mongiardo’s stated opposition to the bill that passed.

• NY-Sen-B: Wall Street exec David Malpass, fresh off his smashing success as chief economist of Bear Stearns, looks like he’s doubling down on trying to be the GOP nominee to go against Kirsten Gillibrand. He’s promising $1 million of his own money to kick-start his campaign, where he first needs to get out of a primary against Bruce Blakeman and Joe DioGuardi.

• UT-Sen: It’s all still anecdotal, but the preliminary reports for how caucus night went for Bob Bennett sound pretty bad. Observers report strong anti-Bennett sentiment in general, although what might save him is that there was no coalescing behind any of his particular challengers. Turnout was maybe twice that of caucuses two years ago, suggesting a highly-motivated anti-Bennett base.

• CA-Gov (pdf): PPIC also has California gubernatorial numbers, again similar to the last Field poll. Meg Whitman’s outspending of Jerry Brown by a 200:1 margin or so is definitely paying temporary dividends, as she’s leading the gubernatorial race 44-39 (up from a 41-36 Brown lead two months ago). Brown leads Steve Poizner 46-31, basically unchanged from two months ago, suggesting this change is pretty Whitman-specific and not an across-the-boards phenomenon; Whitman leads Poizner 61-11.

• GA-Gov: Republican Governor Sonny Perdue is engaging in a remarkable end-run around Democratic AG Thurbert Baker, appointing a “special attorney general” to join in the suit against the health care reform brought by Republican AGs after Baker refused to do so and called it “political gamesmanship.” If nothing else, the fireworks between Perdue and Baker ought to raise Baker’s profile (who’s currently lagging in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, but might be poised to make an impact if he switched to the mostly-vacant Senate race).

• MA-Gov: Here’s some trouble for independent gubernatorial candidate Tim Cahill: the SEC has charged that John Kendrick, an executive with Southwest Securities, won $14 billion in bond deals after co-sponsoring a fundraiser for Cahill. That’s a violation of federal rules against contributions to officials who oversee bond sales. The SEC says that the Cahill campaign (which is returning the contributions) didn’t break any laws by accepting the money, though.

• OH-Gov, TX-Sen: Two more GOPers who still seem to be charging full speed ahead on “repeal” are Ohio’s John Kasich and, more interestingly, John Cornyn, who’d been cited in Ezra Klein‘s piece yesterday, on the GOP’s rapidly dialed-down rhetoric, as supporting only piecemeal tinkering but now seems to be reversing course again.

• WY-Gov: Whoops, that was a short-lived candidacy-to-be. Wyoming Democrats looking for a gubernatorial candidate are back to square one after attorney (and gubernatorial progeny) Paul Hickey reversed course and said “no” to a run.

• CO-07: Tom Tancredo weighed in with an endorsement in the Republican primary field in the 7th and, guess what… he endorsed the white guy. He gave the nod to former John McCain campaign official Lang Sias, despite Tancredo’s general antipathy toward all things McCain.

• HI-01: State Sen. Colleen Hanabusa is finally making some moves in the special election to replace resigned Rep. Neil Abercrombie. She’s out with her first TV ads, for the all-mail-in election with a May 22 deadline.

• NY-13: More blowback for Rep. Mike McMahon for his “no” vote on HCR, which could cost him the Working Families ballot line and/or get him a primary opponent. NYC council speaker Christine Quinn has backed out of a previously planned fundraiser for McMahon, citing his vote.

• SC-05: The NRCC seems to be feeling confident about state Sen. Mick Mulvaney, their challenger to Rep. John Spratt in the reddish 5th. They’ve promoted him to the 2nd level (“Contender”) in their 3-tiered fundraising pyramid scheme for challengers.

• Illinois: We Ask America seems to be taking great pains to confirm that, yes, they really are a legitimate pollster. I don’t know if they’re helping their case by releasing results with two significant digits, but they have a lot of Illinois House race data; we’ll leave it to you to decide how much salt you want to apply. Perhaps weirdest, they have teabagging businessman Joe Walsh leading Melissa Bean in IL-08 by 38.33%-37.61%. They also have leads for GOPers in the 11th (Adam Kinzinger leads Debbie Halvorson 42-30, way worse than Kinzinger’s own recent internal) and the 14th (Randy Hultgren leads Bill Foster 38-36), while Dems lead in the 10th (Dan Seals beats Bob Dold 40-37) and the not-on-the-radar 17th (Phil Hare leads pizza parlor owner Bobby Schilling 39-32).

• CA-Init: It’s been confirmed that the initiative to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana in California has qualified for the ballot in November. A 2009 Field Poll shows such an initiative could actually pass, with 56% of Californians supporting such an initiative. Of course, it’s unclear how such a change in state law would mesh with federal law, but if nothing else, it may help motivate a lot of bong-toting slackers to get off their couches to vote in November who otherwise might not vote (and cast votes for Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer while they’re at it).

• DCCC: Freshman Rep. Jared Polis has been a strong fundraiser (and has his own fortune, too), and he’s looking to spread the wealth. His joint fundraising committee, the Jared Polis Majority Fund, has already distributed $400K this spring to the DCCC, to vulnerable incumbents (Frank Kratovil, Betsy Markey, Scott Murphy, Bill Owens, Tom Perriello, Harry Teague, Dina Titus), and to four up-and-comers (Ami Bera, Steve Pougnet, John Carney, and David Cicilline).

• DNC: I guess the DNC is feeling its oats these days, or just figuring that the best defense is a good offense: they’ve doubled the number of GOPers on the receiving end of pro-HCR attack ads for their “no” votes. They’ve added Pat Tiberi, Lee Terry, Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, and Charlie Dent.

• Census: Remember the Census? It’s back! In Pog form!

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio seemed to beat Charlie Crist to the punch on calling for repeal of the health care reform bill passed over the weekend, but now the allegedly-moderate Crist is getting in on the act too, saying he opposes the entire bill and supports the lawsuit by Republican AGs (including Florida’s Bill McCollum) against the package.

• KY-Sen: I really can’t decide who I’d rather have in my corner. Rand Paul has the backing of lots of crackpots with computers and open wallets, as he had another online moneybomb yesterday to the tune of $262K. Trey Grayson, on the other hand, has the backing of establishment favorite… Dick Cheney?

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B: Earlier in the day, there were rumors that the state GOP in New York was desperately trying to get someone from the GOP field against Kirsten Gillibrand (which doesn’t have any top-tier talent, but at least has a bunch of warm bodies) to switch over to the even more unenviable task of facing off against Chuck Schumer, where they’ve got nobody. Their favored candidate for that job seemed to be former Bush spokesperson Dan Senor. Maybe that rubbed Senor the wrong way, or maybe there’s more to the story, but either way, that changed by mid-day today, as Senor suddenly said he not only wasn’t running against Schumer but not running for anything, period, saying the timing wasn’t right for him. (Well, maybe they’ll have better luck getting David Malpass to switch over.)

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): More up-and-down numbers from Franklin & Marshall this month, as their latest look at the Senate race finds Pat Toomey beating Arlen Specter 33-29 among RVs. Last month, Specter (currently at a terrible 30/45 favorable) led by the same 33-29 margin. (Recall that for the last couple months, F&M was releasing separate numbers for RVs and LVs. They seem to have dropped that unwieldy formulation in favor of RVs only, for now.) They find Toomey beating Joe Sestak 27-19 in the general, Specter beating Sestak 32-12, and in the forgotten GOP primary, Toomey defeating pro-life activist Peg Luksik 30-4. They do only the primaries in the slow-to-take-shape Governor’s race, finding Dan Onorato leading among Dems at 11, followed by Jack Wagner at 7, Joe Hoeffel at 5, and Anthony Williams at 4. Tom Corbett leads state Rep. Sam Rohrer 28-4 on the GOP side.

• UT-Sen: Last night was caucus night in Utah, where precincts chose delegates to the state convention which may or may not be Bob Bennett’s Waterloo. It’s hard to gauge, at this point, how things turned out for Bennett last night; the convention, which will determine whether he can avoid (or even make it to) a primary will be real proof. With filings closed in Utah, Democrats left a lot of seats unchallenged in the dark-red legislature, leaving 15 of 75 House seats and 2 of 15 Senate seats without Ds.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi was spotted in DC yesterday to meet with Michael Steele about a possible Senate run. He isn’t expected to make a decision until close to the June 11 primary, though (which seems odd, since he’d be basically starting from scratch at that point to go against Patty Murray’s mammoth war chest).

• IL-10: Bob Dold doesn’t need this. Turns out that Dold, who cozied up to the teabaggers in his primary run and touted his opposition to abortion (in order to squeak past moderate state Rep. Beth Coulson), has turned on a dime and is now calling himself “pro-choice” and “a fiscal conservative and social moderate” in order to run against Dan Seals in the general in this D+6 district.

• MA-10: Republican flavor-of-the-month Scott Brown has weighed in on the GOP primary in the open seat in the 10th, not coincidentally the district where he fared the best in the special election. And he chose new over old, opting for state Rep. Jeff Perry instead of long-ago state Treasurer Joe Malone.

• MI-01: Connie Saltonstall’s primary challenge to Bart Stupak may have lost some of its raison d’etre over the weekend, but it’s still proceeding full speed ahead with some new supporters that may be able to make it rain money for her: Planned Parenthood and NARAL’s PACs. NOW had previously endorsed Saltonstall as well.

• NJ-12: Scott Sipperelle, the random businessman running against Rush Holt in the D+5 12th, apparently has money to burn as he’s already hitting the TV airwaves, with an ad blasting Holt for his health care vote. It’s a cable buy, though (in case you were having visions of him blanketing the NYC and Philly markets), so it could be a tiny expenditure aimed at getting free media for all we know.

• SD-AL: Even with Scott Hildebrand having folded his hand quickly on a threatened Stephanie Herseth Sandlin primary challenge, it sounds like another less-known Dem is getting in on it. Rapid City doctor Kevin Weiland is sounding out a run.

• VA-05: “We’ve given the word ‘mob’ a bad name.” The gas line at the Perriello household was mysteriously cut, after Rep. Tom Perriello’s gutsy HCR vote. Um, oooops… that was the Bo Perriello household, as several local teabaggers mistakenly posted the Congressman’s brother’s address on their websites and urged protesters to stop by for a friendly visit. The guy who posted the address (and refused to take it down after finding out it was the wrong Perriello) is now publicly “shocked” that one of his ilk would resort to violence. Oh, and the FBI is investigating. Tom Perriello, on the other hand, displayed only sangfroid, saying “If the worst thing that happens is that special-interest groups spend millions of dollars against me and my most ardent opponents organize against me, it’s hardly a ‘cry me a river’ moment – as long as people act civil and within the law.”

• WV-01: In the choice between conservadem and even-more-conservadem in the Democratic primary in the 1st, it’s becoming pretty clear which one is which: state GOP chair Douglas McKinney praised Alan Mollohan’s opponent state Sen. Mike Oliverio, saying he “has always been a conservative guy. He votes with the Republican on committees. We’ve joked for years he needs to come over to the party who thinks like he does.”

• HCR: Are some of the saner GOP members of Congress starting to come to their senses as the fog of war starts to dissipate? (Or are they just seeing the shift in the polls and engaging in some pre-emptive ass-covering?) The oft-blustery Rep. Pete King is urging his fellow GOPers to “get constructive” and “stop demonizing” health care reform and the Dems. And Chuck Grassley, almost single-handedly responsible for bogging the bill down and giving legs to the “Death Panel” lie in the August of Dems’ discontent, is now happily talking up his own positive contributions to the bill, regarding tax-exempt hospitals.

• DNC: The DNC is wheeling out a seven-figure budget for running ads in the wake of health care’s passage. It’s two-pronged, with attack ads against vulnerable Republicans who voted “no” (I guess the “voted no” part is redundant): Mark Kirk, Jim Gerlach, Dave Reichert, Mike Castle, and Joe Cao. And “thank you” ads are planned for vulnerable Dems, tentatively including John Boccieri, Dennis Cardoza, Brad Ellsworth, Paul Hodes, Tim Walz, Bob Etheridge, Tom Perriello, Leonard Boswell, Betsy Markey, and Gerry Connolly.

• SARAH’s List: Shortly after tweeting for her supporters not to retreat, but RELOAD, Sarah Palin’s website posted a map with gunsights targeting 20 Representatives for her supporters to shoot. Or to work to defeat for re-election, I suppose. It’s pretty much all the districts that went for McCain in 2008 and where there was a “yes” on HCR, without much regard for the race’s actual vulnerability or whether it’s an open seat: AR-02, AZ-01, AZ-05, AZ-08, CO-03, CO-04, FL-02, FL-24, IN-08, IN-09, ND-AL, OH-06, OH-16, PA-03, PA-10, SC-05, TN-06, VA-05, WV-01, and WV-03.

• Teabaggers: Quinnipiac released another poll showing the peril and promise of the teabagger movement for the GOP, as seen in the contrast between the basic generic ballot (44 R, 39 D) and one with a third-party element thrown in (36 D, 25 R, 15 T). Various commenters, like Ed Kilgore and TPM’s Zachary Roth are paying close attention to the poll, wondering, as they’ve done in the past, if there really even is a new-and-different “Tea Party” movement or if it’s just a new name for the most-extreme, riled-up part of the Republican Party that’s always been there (through the militia movements of the 90s and the Birchers of the 60s).

• NRCC: The NRCC claims to have pulled in $7 million last night at their annual fundraising dinner. That’s a lot of scratch, but bear in mind much of that’s in “pledges,” mostly from House members, some of whom haven’t had a good track record of helping the NRCC in the past.

• Census: Two neat Census-related maps worth checking out. One is a constantly-updated real-time map at the Census website which shows the response rates by state and municipality so far. (While the national return rate so far is 16%, the best municipality return rate so far is the civic minded folks of Westside, Iowa at 74%. And despite the popular image of it being full of paranoid militia types living in the hills who would rather use fiat money than fill out a Census form, Montana has the best return rate of any state, at 33%.) The other map is much sadder, courtesy of the Prison Policy Initiative: it shows state-by-state how much distortion of districts occurs through the counting of prisoners where they’re incarcerated rather than where they’re actually from.

• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: After some flirtation with the idea of switching over to the open seat Governor’s race, or even endeavoring to become Lt. Governor, former State House speaker Andrew Romanoff announced yesterday that he’s going to keep doing what he’s doing (despite having made little headway at it so far): challenging appointed incumbent Michael Bennet in the Democratic Senate primary. Romanoff also threw his support to Denver mayor John Hickenlooper in the gubernatorial primary.

• FL-Sen: I wonder if we’ll see more of this from insurgent Democratic candidates. Former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre, looking for some sort of angle to use against front-running Rep. Kendrick Meek for the Democratic Senate nomination, has come out against the current health care reform plan (although not against HCR in general), calling it “a special interest plan that raises taxes and favors insurance and pharmaceutical companies.”

• KS-Sen: The PMA scandal has mostly left House Democrats tarred with its brush, especially crusty old-school guys from that Appropriations clique, like John Murtha and Pete Visclosky. However, it’s now expanding to take in a key Republican member on Appropriations – one who’s in a tight battle for a promotion to the Senate and can’t afford to get besmirched in any way. The House ethics panel is now looking at the links between Rep. Todd Tiahrt’s donations and defense earmarks.

• NY-Sen-B: Rasmussen checks out the race that’s suddenly on everyone’s mind (and that doesn’t even exist yet, although Harold Ford Jr. just took a monthlong leave of absence from Merrill Lynch to “explore” the race – I wonder if he’ll be doing most of his recon by helicopter). They find numbers very similar to local pollsters Marist and Siena: Kirsten Gillibrand beats Ford, 48-23 (with a surprisingly large 10 for “some other,” presumably Jonathan Tasini although maybe it’s more just “anybody else, please”). Where Rasmussen parts ways with the other pollsters is Gillibrand’s high favorables (and high knowns, period): they have her at 59/27.

• OH-Sen, OH-Gov: Take this with a bag of quick-melting rock salt, if you choose, as it’s a poll commissioned by Ohio Right to Life and conducted by Republican pollster Wenzel Strategies. Still, the numbers clock in pretty close to what Rasmussen has been seeing lately. They see John Kasich with a 43-33 lead in the Governor’s race, and Rob Portman up in the Senate race: 37-31 over Lee Fisher and 40-35 over Jennifer Brunner.

• MD-Gov: One more poll, and it actually shows a Democrat in reasonably good shape. Incumbent Gov. Martin O’Malley is up 9 points against the GOP’s best possible offering, potential candidate ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich, 48-39, according to local pollster Gonzales Research. (Gonzales saw it an 11-point race last September.) O’Malley’s approvals (46%) could use some improvement, but considering that Ehrlich hasn’t sounded likely to get in (although he might be doing a rethink given last night’s events), there are certainly many other races higher on the worry-about list.

• AL-05: If Rep. Parker Griffith thought he’d be welcomed with open arms into the Republican fold, well, he’s got another thing coming. The only good news for him from last night’s meeting of the Madison County (i.e. Huntsville) Republican Executive Committee was that, in the end, they decided not to attempt to get Griffith removed from the primary ballot as a Republican. The real question of the meeting, though, was whether it would be better strategy for Republicans to try to beat him in the primary or via an independent candidacy in November.

• AR-02: Democratic candidates who sound committed to running to replace retiring Rep. Vic Snyder are already piling up – and we haven’t even gotten to Lt. Gov. Bill Halter or ex-Gen. Wesley Clark yet. State House Speaker Robbie Wills today stopped short of saying he’s running, but says he’s “excited” about running. State Sen. Joyce Elliott also sounds very likely to run, while Public Service Commissioner Paul Suskie is in the “seriously considering” stage.

• AZ-03: On the other side of the aisle and of the country, Republicans from the deep local bench are piling into the open seat race in the 3rd, vacated by Rep. John Shadegg. Paradise Valley mayor Vernon Parker is ending his long-shot gubernatorial campaign and heading over to the 3rd, and he’s being joined by state Sen. Jim Waring (who’s dropping his state Treasurer campaign to do so). They join already-in state Sen. Pamela Gorman and state Rep. Sam Crump.

• IL-10: State Rep. Julie Hamos and Dan Seals continue to split key endorsements in their primary fight for the Democratic nod in the open 10th. Hamos got the endorsements of both the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times, while Seals picked up the smaller-circulation Daily Herald’s endorsement.

• ND-AL: Add one more confirmed name to the list of GOPers sniffing out the at-large House seat in North Dakota, hoping John Hoeven’s Senate bid gives them some coattails against the entrenched Democratic incumbent, Rep. Earl Pomeroy. Former House majority leader Rick Berg kicked off his campaign yesterday.

• TN-04: Rep. Lincoln Davis has been pretty much assured a bumpy ride, thanks to Tennessee’s rapidly-reddening status. He got a new Republican challenger today, in the form of attorney Jack Bailey. It’s unclear whether the never-before-elected Bailey will be stronger than physician Scott DesJarlais (or can even get past him in the primary), but he’s a former Hill staffer (ex-CoS for Missouri Rep. Scott Akin) so he probably still has a full Rolodex for fundraising purposes.

• TN-08: State Sen. Roy Herron keeps looking like he’ll have an easy path to the Democratic nomination to replace retiring Rep. John Tanner. Former state Rep. Phillip Pinion, an oft-floated name, said he wouldn’t get into the race.

• OR-Init: Oregon voters have a chance to deal a major setback to the coalescing conventional wisdom that voters prefer service cuts to tax hikes to plug state budget gaps, with Measures 66 and 67. The state legislature passed raises in the $250,000-plus tax bracket and certain corporate income taxes, which are now subject to a people’s veto (via an all-mail special election with a deadline of Jan. 26). Well-regarded local pollster Tim Hibbitts, paid for by a coalition of local media, finds both measures passing: 52-39 for 66 and 50-40 on 67.

• Mayors: One other election result from last night: Jefferson Co. Commissioner William Bell defeated attorney Patrick Cooper in a runoff, to become Birmingham, Alabama’s new mayor, 54-46. Cooper had won the most votes in the general, but Bell seemed to consolidate previously-split African-American votes.

• Polltopia: One more interesting follow-up on the increasing democratization of polling (on the heels of yesterday’s piece by Mark Blumenthal): the Hill looks at the increasing move by groups like Firedoglake and the PCCC toward commissioning polls – and even has an anecdote about PPP’s Tom Jensen getting berated by a nameless Beltway person for broaching the unmentionable and polling potential alternatives to Harry Reid.

• Social media: At some point during the flurry of activity yesterday, Swing State Project shot past 1,000 Twitter followers (gaining more than 100 yesterday alone). Not a follower yet? Check us out. You can also receive SSP updates via Facebook, if you’re one of those Luddites who like to read things that are longer than 140 characters.