Tag: Pat Toomey

• AK-Sen: It seems like Lisa Murkowski’s meetings with the Libertarian Party didn’t lead to anything conclusive (while David Haase sounded amenable, the state party sounds opposed), as the signals she’s putting out now seem to point more toward a write-in campaign, if anything. According to Roll Call, she’s “strongly considering it” and will have an announcement as early as tomorrow. In case you’re wondering about TX-22-style hilarity ensuing, the Alaska Division of Elections confirms that a voter can spell her name incorrectly and still have the vote count, which makes the prospect of a write-in campaign for Linda Mukrosky somewhat more doable.

• CO-Sen: Ken Buck may have dirty boots, but he’s been busy scrubbing his website sparkly clean. The Michael Bennet camp has been observing lots of minor changes to Buck’s website to make it more mainstream-y, with softer-sounding rewrites on his issues page on Afghanistan, stem cell research, and immigration.

• DE-Sen: In another sign that the GOP primary between Mike Castle and Christine O’Donnell isn’t dialing down, both Castle and the Tea Party Express (on behalf of O’Donnell) are both extending their previous ad buys, starting today and running through next Tuesday’s election. Again, kudos to Hotline’s Jeremy Jacobs, who knows not only the Size Of The Buy but the complete breakdown (Castle, for instance, spent $75K in the Salisbury broadcast market, $27K on statewide cable, and $43K on radio, while the TPX spent $32K on cable only). He also susses out that at the current trajectory, the TPX will reach only slightly past the halfway point on its promise to spend $250K on O’Donnell, unless they want to blow a lot of money at the last minute in the pricey Philadelphia market. Meanwhile, TPM checks out how TPX’s ongoing moneybomb for O’Donnell has been going, who has raised $89K since TPX got involved. Despite O’Donnell’s frequent attacks on Castle’s use of out-of-state money to power his campaign, they highlighted their $250+ donors, and a grand total of one (of 56) was a Delawarean.

• FL-Sen, FL-25: Biden alert! With Kendrick Meek having raised some bucks at a New York appearance with Bill Clinton last night, now he turns his attention to an upcoming fundraiser with the VPOTUS. (Expect to see the usual GOP carping about “Big Hollywood,” seeing as how the fundraiser is in Hollywood. Hollywood, Florida, that is.) 25th District candidate Joe Garcia will also be a beneficiary.

• PA-Sen: The Philadelphia Inquirer has a rundown of Pat Toomey’s past history of earmarks, in of course blatant contradiction with the pledges of austerity that define his current campaign… yet another Republican example of government largesse for me, but not for thee. In his first term in PA-15, Toomey won $9 million in earmarks, including $3 million for one company (Air Products & Chemicals) that then became his single biggest campaign contributor.

• CA-Gov: Steve Poizner seems to have finally gotten the message, if a few months on the late (and tepid) side. The Republican primary loser gave his endorsement to Meg Whitman yesterday… via press release.

• MI-Gov: Local pollster Mitchell Research is out with what appears to be their first poll of the general election in the Michigan gubernatorial race; like most pollsters, they find Republican Rick Snyder with a solid lead. He’s ahead of Democrat Virg Bernero 53-26.

• OH-Gov: Bill Clinton will be in Ohio on behalf of (Hillary endorser) Ted Strickland on the 14th, also the day of his first debate with John Kasich. Clinton will stump for Strickland in both Cleveland and Columbus.

• NC-08: With the DCCC having rolled out a GQR internal poll yesterday giving Larry Kissell a decent lead (48-36) in the 8th (on top of Kissell releasing his own internal in late August with a 49-32 lead), GOP rival Harold Johnson offered up his own poll today to show he’s still in this thing. His poll from POS finds Kissell still leading, but by a more surmountable margin: 39-34.

• NV-03: Politico has details on EMILY’s List weighing into the 3rd, with a two-week TV ad blitz going after Joe Heck on women’s health issues (like his vote against mandated insurance coverage for the HPV vaccine). While the article doesn’t have a link to the ad, let alone the Size Of The Buy, it does have a very interesting look at the advanced micro-targeting they’re using, focusing on very specific TV shows as well as Hulu and Facebook users.

• OH-16: Someone get Jim Renacci a high school history textbook, stat! When asked at the candidates’ first debate what he’d like to do about civil rights, the Republican challenger to John Boccieri retreated to Rand Paul-style teabagger boilerplate, saying “We need to get our federal government out of the way,” and that it was better dealt with as “local issues.” Yeah, because local and state governments in the 50s and 60s were the paragons of tolerance and virtue during the civil rights movement, and that federal government just came in and screwed everything up…

• DGA: If you’ve been wondering what they’re up to at the DGA, they’re out with a strategy memo that outlines the next few months. Wisely, they’re most concerned with the states with the greatest population and hence greatest redistricting impact, meaning that the smaller states with Dem-held open seats (Kansas, Wyoming, etc.) have already probably been on the losing end of their triage decisions.

• TX-St. House: We at SSP have been remiss in focusing on state legislatures in the last few months (for the same reason everyone else has — it’s hard to get good intelligence on them, and there’s too dang much to focus on just at the national level alone), but Burnt Orange Report has done a bang-up job profiling the race for the Texas state House, one of the few legislatures where the Dems are on the offensive and have a slim but legitimate shot at a flip. They’ve written up summaries of the 21 hottest races, all helpfully collected in one place at the link.

• SSP TV:

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias ad rolling out his biggest gun: backing from Barack Obama

• PA-Sen: Not one but two ads from Pat Toomey ads with pretzel logic about how his time on Wall Street tells him that one shouldn’t bail out Wall Street

• WI-Sen: Ron Johnson ad hits Russ Feingold again for being a career politician

• TX-Gov: Bill White talks about border security

• VT-Gov: Dem group Green Mountain Future hits Brian Dubie on support for keeping local nuclear plant open

• FL-24: First Suzanne Kosmas ad hits Sandy Adams on teh crazy, especially the 17th Amendment

• GA-08: Jim Marshall ad tries to outflank Austin Scott on the right on the immigration issue

• MI-01: DCCC’s 2nd IE ad goes after Dan Benishek on Social Security

• NY-25: Dan Maffei’s first ad is anti-Ann Marie Buerkle, using Sarah Palin endorsement against her

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi’s second ad this week focuses on his time as a military doctor

• Rasmussen:

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 38%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 60%

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 42%, Meg Whitman (R) 46%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 42%, Carly Fiorina (R) 47%

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 38%, Rand Paul (R) 51%

• DE-Sen: Wow, the mounting establishment/teabagger war in the GOP Delaware primary is actually getting physically violent. A Christine O’Donnell supporter got into a scuffle with a tracker from the state GOP party who was videotaping O’Donnell at a candidate forum

• IL-Sen: The Constitution Party is still trying to get back on the ballot in Illinois, maybe most notably in the close Senate race where Randy Stufflebeam would be their candidate. They’re going to court to get back on the ballot after the state Board of Elections kicked them off for not having enough valid signatures.

• NV-Sen: School’s out for the summer/ school’s out… forever! The latest daily nugget of crazy from Sharron Angle is her recounting last week of her struggles back in the state legislature in 2003 against a supplemental budget bill that would have paid for emergency funding to make sure that the state’s public schools could actually open at the start of the school year. Meanwhile, Harry Reid is continuing his apparently successful advertising strategy of letting Angle say the usual things she says, and just turning them straight into his own ads against her, as with his newest ad launched this week.

• NY-Sen-B, NY-Gov: Despite the utter lack of drama in the big races in the Empire State, Quinnipiac just keeps polling it. (I guess that’s OK; we’ll take good news where we can get it.) In the governor’s race, Andrew Cuomo beats Rick Lazio 57-25 and Carl Paladino 60-23. (Unfortunately, there aren’t GOP primary numbers, as it’d be interesting to see, as other pollsters have seen, whether Paladino might actually be able to overtake the insufficiently-crazy Lazio for the nomination.) In the Senate race, Kirsten Gillibrand beats Bruce Blakeman 44-26, David Malpass 45-24, and Joe DioGuardi 43-28.

• CO-Gov: If either Dan Maes or Tom Tancredo is going to drop out and stop their tragic pas de deux, it’d better be soon. Friday, it turns out, is the last day before the November ballot printing is finalized. Meanwhile, here’s the kind of headline you don’t want to see when you’re already fighting public perception that you’re a bit of a paranoid wackjob who thinks that bicycles are a United Nations plot:

GOP gubernatorial candidate Maes backs off claims of undercover police work

• KY-Gov: The establishment slate for Kentucky Republicans for the off-year gubernatorial race (only a year from now!) seems like it’s officially coalesced. David Williams, the state Senate president, will run for Governor, and Agriculture Commissioner Richie Farmer (who’d been a rumored governor candidate himself) will run for Lt. Governor. They’ll still have to get past businessman Phil Moffet, running under the teabagger banner, in the GOP primary before facing Steve Beshear, who’ll be seeking re-election. A recent poll had Farmer and Beshear neck-and-neck, but there hasn’t been any Beshear/Williams polling yet.

• MA-09: Mac d’Allesandro’s against Stephen Lynch in the Dem primary in the 9th is raising some decent cash in the late innings. Since July 1st, the SEIU, MoveOn, and Act Blue have raised $178K for d’Allesandro.

• PA-06: DNC DGA head Tim Kaine heads to Philly to fundraise on Manan Trivedi’s behalf, as part of a tour on behalf of Asian-American Dem candidates. Trivedi’s also had help on the stump this week from Bob Casey and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

• RGA: Good thing the RGA already has an unprecedented amount of money squirreled away… because they’re going to have to give a decent chunk of it to Chris Bell, the ex-Rep. who was the 2006 Dem gubernatorial candidate in Texas. A Travis County judge ordered the RGA to pay Chris Bell a cosmic $2 million because of campaign finance violations in the ’06 election (where the RGA gave an undisclosed $1 million to Texans for Rick Perry).

• WATN?: This isn’t really FL-Sen anymore, but Jeff Greene is insisting on staying in the limelight even as his vomit-covered yacht sails into the sunset. In fact, the phrase “vomit-covered yacht” is really what’s at stake here; he says he’s following through with a libel suit against the St. Petersburg Times and Miami Herald over their reporting of his many foibles. Good luck proving actual malice!

• Maps: They’re rapidly scrolling their way down the front page, so if you haven’t had a chance to check out jeffmd’s maps of Alaskan elections past, do it now. Begich/Stevens, Murkowski/Miller, and Young/Parnell all played out in similar ways, geographically, so if you’re wondering what Scott McAdam’s path to a win might look like, check it out.

• Ads:

• NH-Sen: We told you a few days ago that Ovide Lamontagne was finally going on the air; his first ad is a talk-to-the-camera introductory spot.

• PA-Sen: The DSCC is out with another ad, attacking Pat Toomey on the derivatives trading issue.

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold’s new ad is testimonials from a variety of (as C. Montgomery Burns would say) Joe Lunchpails and Sally Housecoats.

• IN-02: Jackie Walorski is out with an introductory bio spot.

• NE-02: Tom White is also out with an introductory bio spot, carefully steering clear of anything Democratic-sounding.

• NJ-03: John Adler may actually win the advertising day today, with a negative spot that slams Jon Runyan for his tax break for his “farm” (a.k.a. McMansion plus one donkey).

• NV-03: Dina Titus hits Joe Heck for comments that “it’s not Congress’s role to create jobs.” (This comes on top of the AFSCME’s huge buy of anti-Heck ads.)

• Rasmussen:

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon (D) 33%, David Vitter (R-inc) 54%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 39%, John Kasich (R) 47%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 37%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%  

Ipsos for Reuters (8/27-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Joe Sestak (D): 37

Pat Toomey (R): 47

Undecided: 15

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Ipsos strikes in another state with another of their interesting both-LV-and-RV polls. The enthusiasm gap seems as big here in Pennsylvania as it does anywhere: the LV model spells certain doom for Dems, with Joe Sestak falling into a double-digit deficit against Pat Toomey, while the RV model (MoE 4%) says this is still a perfectly salvageable race, with Toomey leading Sestak 40-37. (Unfortunately, the LV model is the one that counts in the end.) Any remaining Arlen Specter fans won’t feel vindicated by this poll: if Specter were running against Toomey, he’d be losing just as widely, 52-40.

Maybe realizing that the strategy he used so effectively and efficiently against Specter in the primary (wait, wait, wait some more, and then unleash a massive, expertly targeted salvo in the closing weeks) won’t work if he gets himself in too deep of a hole beforehand, Joe Sestak is breaking open the piggybank and going on TV. His first ad is anti-Toomey spot, working the Wall Street angle (already thoroughly explored by the DSCC). It’s a buy through Sept. 6th, for a total of $111K, with ads running in the Pittsburgh, Johnstown, Harrisburg, and Wilkes-Barre markets (not Philly, where presumably he’s better known).

Dan Onorato (D): 34

Tom Corbett (R): 49

Undecided: 16

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Same deal with the gubernatorial race: the LV model yields a 15-point lead for GOP AG Tom Corbett over Dem Dan Onorato. Switch over to a registered voter model, and it’s only a not-bad 43-37 advantage for Corbett. Again, plans of getting all those RVs to magically show up aren’t really hopes you should hang your hat on, at this point in the game, though.

• WI-Sen: Know how you can tell that this hypocrisy-on-government-aid problem (see the last couple digests for backstory… Ron Johnson’s company Pacur has been repeatedly expanded with the help of government loans, y’know, the kind that of meddling in the free market that we have to get rid of) is putting a scare into the Johnson camp? Now he’s been rewriting history on Pacur’s website to adjust the founding date of his company, from 1977 to 1979. Johnson had previously claimed that the railroad spur built (with federal help, natch) to his company was in early ’79, before Pacur was founded. (Pacur’s predecessor company was founded in ’77; it changed names in ’79.)

• CO-Gov (pdf): Republican pollster Magellan is out with a new look at the Colorado gubernatorial race; they find the combined Dan Maes + Tom Tancredo vote still less than the John Hickenlooper vote. It’s Hickenlooper 46, Maes 27, Tancredo 17. (That’s a lot fewer undecideds than today’s Rasmussen poll; see below.)

• FL-Gov: Ah, the sweet smell of unity. Well, sort of… the state party finally got around to having its fete for newly-minted gubernatorial nominee Rick Scott, the one canceled last week for lack of, well, unity. Insiders like state House speaker Dean Cannon and next state Senate president Mike Haridopolos toasted Scott, despite the fact that up until last Tuesday they were working hard to defeat him. There was someone important missing, though, that kind of defeats that whole “unity” thing… it was Bill McCollum, who confirmed yet again today that he’s “staying out of” the governor’s race. Meanwhile, DGA head Nathan Daschle (here’s a guy who knows how the game is played) is out with a bit of concern trolling of his own, offering unsolicited advice to RGA head Haley Barbour and other interested Republicans that they probably don’t want to be seen campaigning next to Scott.

• NM-Gov: Biden alert! The Veep will be bringing his patented comedic stylings to the Land of Enchantment to host a fundraiser for Diane Denish, whose once slam-dunk gubernatorial bid has deteriorated into a jump-ball.

• NY-Gov: State GOP party chair Ed Cox is having a helping heaping of crow from breakfast, having to get behind Rick Lazio for the GOP gubernatorial nod… out of fear of the possibility of the even more objectionable Carl Paladino winding up with the nomination. (Remember, Cox recruiting Suffolk Co. Exec Steve Levy to not only get in the race but switch parties to do so, only to watch him crash and burn.) Cox issued a letter urging local party leaders to get behind Cox, filled with magnanimous praise, perhaps none more so than when he calls Lazio “credible.”

• AR-04: Rounding out their tour of the state, Talk Business Journal/Hendrix College take a look at the 4th, the only non-open seat in all of Arkansas. Despite the rough poll numbers that they found for the Dem candidates in the 1st and 2nd, they find Mike Ross in solid shape, probably thanks to an underwhelming opponent in the form of Beth Anne Rankin. Ross leads 49-31, with 4 going to Green candidate Joshua Drake.

• FL-08: In yet another example of Alan Grayson zigging when other Dems zag, he’s out with an internal poll, and it puts him in surprisingly strong shape against Daniel Webster, thanks in large part to a strong performance by “other” (presumably the Tea Party candidate). The PPP poll gives Grayson a 40-27 lead over Webster, with 23 for “Other” and 11 undecided. That’s all in the face of a new ad campaign from Americans for Prosperity, who are out with ads in the Orlando market attacking both Grayson and FL-24’s Suzanne Kosmas. (AFP, of course, is the front group for the right-wing billionaire Koch family, and the DCCC has recently filed IRS complaints against AFP for engaging in political advocacy despite its tax-exempt status.)

• FL-22: Allen West is out with a second TV ad focusing on economic issues, like that burdensome debt. (He’s talking about national debt, not his own debts.) Still, most of the buzz in this race right now seems to be about his latest round of unhinged remarks on his campaign website’s blog, in which he called opponent Ron Klein, calling him, among other things, a “cretin,” “little Lord Ron,” a “pathetic liberal,” “little Ronnie,” and “a mama’s boy” to Nancy Pelosi.

• IA-05: Rep. Steve King declined to debate opponent Matt Campbell in about the douchiest way possible: when Campbell showed up at a King town hall to ask King why he wasn’t willing to debate, King said that Campbell had “not earned it.”

• MI-01, MI-07: Well, it looks like the fake Tea Party is truly finished in Michigan. The Michigan Court of Appeals today upheld the Board of Canvassers’ decision them off the ballot because of irregularities in submitted signatures. There were Tea Party candidates ready to go in the 1st and the 7th, both competitive districts where Dems would be glad to have some right-wing votes siphoned off from the GOP candidates.

• MO-04: Rep. Ike Skelton is the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, and he wants you to know it. Instead of focusing on the endless jobs-jobs-jobs mantra like many Dems, he’s focusing on military issues and his commitment to veterans. His first two ads featured testimonials from a Marine mother and an Army veteran, and his third ad attacked GOP opponent Vicky Hartzler over her apparently insufficient support of the military.

• NC-11: Two Democratic House members out with internals? Let’s hope this is actually a trend. Buried in a CQ article about his new TV ad (with a buy in the “high five digits”), there are also some details about Heath Shuler’s most recent internal poll. The poll, taken by Anzalone-Liszt, gives Shuler a 51-34 lead over Jeff Miller. More ads are likely to follow, as Shuler leads Miller in the cash department, $1.4 million to $70K.

• NY-13: Rep. Mike McMahon’s getting some big name help on the stump. Bill Clinton will join McMahon for a Friday rally on Staten Island.

• NY-20: Scott Murphy’s dipping into his big war chest with another TV spot, this one focusing on his job-preserving efforts. Murphy opponent Chris Gibson, meantime, dropped a bombshell in his first debate against Murphy last week: that government intervention exacerbated the Great Depression rather than mitigated it (a theory advanced by Amity Schlaes and approximately, oh, zero other respected economists).

• PA-10: What’s up with former US Attorneys in Pennsylvania turning out to be thin-skinned, poor campaigners? There’s the Mary Beth Buchanan implosion, of course, but now video has turned up of Tom Marino’s recent encounter with protesters at a Williamsport appearance. Marino yells back to protestors “What do you do for a job?” and “What kind of welfare are you on?” (No word on whether these questions were punctuated with “You hippies!”)

• VA-05: Here’s a guy we haven’t thought about in a long time: Ross Perot. Yet, Tom Perriello is dusting off Perot and holding him up as a guy he liked, especially in terms of his deficit hawkishness. He did so in the context of meeting with the local Tea Partiers (where he also reiterated his support for canning the Geithner/Summers economic team), probably in an effort to find some common ground with them.

• State legislatures: The DLCC has a memorandum out that lays out where they’ll be focusing their efforts this year (and thus what they consider to be the most competitive state legislative chambers). The 10 chambers they’re emphasizing on defense are the Alabama Senate, Colorado Senate, Indiana House, Nevada Senate, New Hampshire Senate, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House, Wisconsin Assembly, and Wisconsin House. They’re also going on the offense in the Michigan Senate, Kentucky Senate, Tennessee House, and Texas House..

• WA-Init: SurveyUSA has polls of a handful of initiatives that’ll be on the ballot in November. Most significantly, they find continued (although reduced, from their previous poll) support for I-1098, which would create a state income tax for high earners. It’s currently passing, 41-33. Meanwhile, Washingtonians quite literally want to have their cake and eat it too: they’re favoring I-1107, by a 42-34 margin, which would end sales taxes on candy and end temporary taxes on bottled water and soft drinks.

• Dave’s App: Just in time for the school year, here’s a new time-wasting opportunity: Dave’s Redistricting Application now has partisan data for Pennsylvania. (There’s also partisan data for CA, MD, NC, NM, NY, and TX.)

• Polltopia: PPP wants to know where you think they should poll next. Interesting options include Maine and West Virginia (where there’s the tantalizing prospect of House races being polled, too).

• Ads:

• MO-Sen: Anti-Roy Blunt ad from Robin Carnahan

• NH-Gov: Positive jobs-jobs-jobs spot from John Lynch

• FL-02: Allen Boyd hits Steve Southerland on Social Security privatization, 17th Amendment

• IN-09: Anti-Baron Hill from Todd Young

• IN-09: Anti-Todd Young ad from Baron Hill (Social Security privatization… sensing a theme here?)

• MN-06: Bio ad from Tarryl Clark

• MN-06: Michele Bachmann wants you to know that she hates taxes

• NJ-12: Emergency Committee for Israel ad against Rush Holt (“modest but real” buy)

• OH-15: Positive bio ad about Steve Stivers’ military service

• PA-11: Paul Kanjorski’s first TV ad, hitting Lou Barletta over what a shithole Hazleton is

• SC-05: Bio ad from Mick Mulvaney (his first ad)

• WI-07: DCCC ad attacking Sean Duffy over Social Security privatization (their first independent expenditure ad anywhere)

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 36%, Dan Maes (R) 24%, Tom Tancredo (C) 14%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 39%, Rob Portman (R) 44%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 39%, Pat Toomey (R) 45%

• AZ-Sen: Bad news! For John McCain! J.D. Hayworth still hasn’t conceded. He’s still waiting for those late-breaking absentee ballots to help him make up that oh-so-narrow 56-32 margin, apparently.

• CT-Sen: This doesn’t seem like it’ll end well for Linda McMahon, whose stance on WWE has been that it’s harmless soap opera. Harley McNaught, the father of recently-deceased pro wrestler Lance Cade (who died of heart failure at age 29 in the wake of painkiller addiction), is going on the offense against McMahon in response to her comments that she “might have met him once.” McNaught said that he’d been to several functions with his son where they’d met McMahon and she’d known him by name, and also ripped the company’s “Wellness Program,” which he says was more about PR than about helping employees.

• DE-Sen: There’s no third-party fallback option for teabagger Christine O’Donnell, challenging Mike Castle for the GOP Senate nomination. The Constitution Party had nominated O’Donnell for its ballot line, but didn’t even receive a ballot line after its membership dwindled to 287(!) members. (That’s less than something called the “Blue Enigma Party,” which still qualified for the ballot.) O’Donnell still can mount a write-in campaign after losing the primary to Castle (which she already did in the 2006 race after losing the primary to Jan Ting).

• KY-Sen: Our James L. summed this up pithily: “Douche Day Afternoon.” Losing Dem Senate candidate Dan Mongiardo’s latest statement of semi-support for Jack Conway was that Conway was “not the best” but that “he’s a heck of a lot better” than Rand Paul, whose “scare[s him].”

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): The newest Franklin & Marshall poll is another one of their choose-your-own-adventure specials, which shows the dimensions of the enthusiasm gap the Dems are facing, especially in the Keystone State. In the Senate race, Pat Toomey leads Joe Sestak 40-31 among likely voters, but only 31-28 among registered voters, which isn’t much different from where we left off with their last general election poll in May. And in the gubernatorial race, it’s similar, with Tom Corbett leading Dan Onorato 38-27 among LVs, but only 29-28 (probably the best showing I’ve seen in a head-to-head in this race) among RVs.

• FL-Gov: With Hayworth and Murkowski already mentioned today, it’s just turning out to be the big day of GOP disunity and sour grapes all around. While figures like Jeb Bush and state party chair John Thrasher have gotten behind Rick Scott without any major hedging, Bill McCollum is continuing his sulk, flat-out not endorsing Scott.  

• KY-Gov: The aptly-named Republican Agriculture Commissioner, Richie Farmer (I guess “Rich Farmer” was a little too overly descriptive), is still mulling over a run for Governor in next year’s off-year election against Dem incumbent Steve Beshear, where early polling has shown he’d be competitive. He’s also been linked to a possible Lt. Gov. bid, as running mate to state Senate president David Williams.

• SC-Gov: In another sign that a chunk of the local political establishment prefers Dem Vincent Sheheen to GOPer Nikki Haley, Sheheen just got the endorsement of 30 mayors around South Carolina. Most of these mayors are in nonpartisan elected positions, although one, Greer mayor Rick Danner, said he was a two-time voter for Mark Sanford.

• VT-Gov: Faced with the unenviable task of certifying her own gubernatorial primary loss, SoS Deb Markowitz says that the final certification of the super-close race in Vermont will be done on next Tuesday. All five candidates appeared amicably at a unity rally yesterday, but only shortly after Doug Racine’s campaign manager called Peter Shumlin’s declaration of victory premature, saying to wait until Tuesday. Shumlin currently leads Racine by 192 votes.

• AL-02: Rep. Bobby Bright caused some hyperventilating today when it came out that, in meeting with constituents, had punted on the issue of whether or not he’d be voting for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker next session. He did so by listing a number of reasons why that might not be an issue, including the decidedly morbid “heck, she might even get sick and die.”

• CA-18: I don’t know who looks worse in this situation, Mike Berryhill (the Republican launching an uphill, but generally credible, challenge to Rep. Dennis Cardoza), or his former campaign consultant John Villareal. Apparently they parted ways in unpleasant fashion, as Villareal blasted Berryhill’s campaign as a lost cause… but did it in the form of a somewhat unhinged-sounding, 25-minute long rant posted to YouTube.

• OH-17: Jim Traficant may still yet be able to beam himself back into Congress. He just got an extension from Jennifer Brunner, giving him more time to prove that he did collect enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot as an independent. He previously got bounced for the ballot for not having enough valid signatures.

• OR-05: Hot on the heels of a too-good-to-be-true internal from Scott Bruun giving him a small lead a few days ago, Rep. Kurt Schrader hauled out his own internal from Lake Research giving him a pretty comfortable lead: 46-35. The poll’s from late July, though, so one wonders if there’s a more recent one that he’s not sharing.

• PA-08: The ubiquitous POS is out with an internal poll on behalf of ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, giving him a 7-point lead (48-41) over Democratic sophomore Rep. Patrick Murphy. Murphy hasn’t been one of the Dems’ top worries in Pennsylvania, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks, the Dem brand in Pennsylvania seems to be waning particularly quickly.

• VA-05: Tom Perriello, in an interesting bit of distancing from national Dems that’s ambiguous enough that it works from both right and left, called for the replacement of Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner, at a local town hall. He didn’t say who his preferred replacement would be (Robert Reich, anyone?).

• Ads: Lead-off ad of the day is from Alan Grayson in FL-08; the Hotline actually says it makes Grayson look “angelic” and they refer to it as the most positive ad they’ve seen so far from anyone. That Grayson… always zigging when everyone else is zagging. Other Dems out with their first TV ads for themselves today include Kathy Dahlkemper in PA-03, Julie Lassa in WI-07, and Tom Hayhurst in IN-03.

All the GOP ads today are anti-Dem ads being run by third party groups: America’s Future Fund running against Bruce Braley in IA-01, the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm against Mike McIntyre in NC-07, and Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity running against Gabrielle Giffords in AZ-08 and a weird two-fer (aimed at the Phoenix market, I guess) attacking both Anne Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell in AZ-01 and AZ-05. NWOTSOTB, on any of the ads.

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 40%, Meg Whitman (R) 48%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 40%, Charlie Crist (I) 30%

• UT-Gov: Peter Corroon (D) 29%, Gary Herbert (R-inc) 60%

• UT-Sen: Sam Granato (D) 29%, Mike Lee (R) 54%

• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: ColoradoPols has an interesting question up at their site: who’s crazier, the Republicans’ candidate in the Senate race or the Governor’s race? (In fact, that’s a good question for the comments here… not just Colorado, but for a whole number of other states too.) The DSCC would like the answer to be “Ken Buck,” the whole Dan Maes UN-bicycle-plot thing notwithstanding: they’re out with a new ad working the Paul/Angle-style “too extreme” angle, here focusing on Buck’s support for eliminating the 17th amendment.

• PA-Sen: This is going to be a hard one for Pat Toomey to explain without some high-impact semantic gymnastics. At the Pennsylvania Press Club yesterday, Toomey said “I’ve never said I favor privatizing Social Security.” The DSCC promptly rolled out 36 different newspaper articles in which Toomey favored privatizing Social Security. We Ask America did offer some sustenance for Toomey, though: they find him leading Joe Sestak 48-35.

• FL-Gov: Here’s a bad sign for the Republican Party of Florida (aka RPOF, pronounced “rip-off”), who poured a lot of money into carrying Bill McCollum across the finish line in the primary and will have to keep propping him up for November. They’re down to $54K in their federal campaign finance account (after plowing much of their holdings into outside committees backing McCollum). Maybe they’d been counting on a reimbursement check from disgraced former state party chair Jim Greer to help fill their coffers a bit, but here’s the ultimate ignominy: Greer’s $7K check to reimburse the party for overcharges bounced.

• LA-03: Politico has a preview of the Republican primary in the open seat 3rd (which will be decided this Saturday, don’t forget). Former state House speaker Hunt Downer is pretty universally considered frontrunner, but he faces a double-teabagging from attorney Jeff Landry and engineer Kristian Magar, who are pointing to his decades as a Democrat, and his snubbing of Tea Party events. Downer’s fate could rest on whether he clears the 50% mark and avoids a runoff, as he could face more trouble against just one opponent.

• MI-01, MI-07: It looks like the Tea Party won’t be getting a ballot line in Michigan, after a 2-2 decision by the state’s Board of Canvassers. (The tie means they’re kept off the ballot.) Republicans brought the challenge pointing to possible Democratic involvement in getting the Tea Party on the ballot (to the extent that a member of the Oakland County Dem leadership helped them). This probably has the greatest impact in the competitive races in the 1st and 7th, where the Tea Party had had candidates ready to go (Lonnie Lee Snyder and Danny Davis, respectively), presumably who would eat into the GOP’s vote share.

• NJ-06: Who knew that when Facebook was created that it’d become a preferred venue for leaking internal polls? Anna Little, the surprise victor in the NJ-06 GOP primary, is now touting a poll from National Research showing her trailing Rep. Frank Pallone 40-34.

• OR-05: One other GOP internal poll kicking around today: state Rep. Scott Bruun, is out with a poll via local Republican pollster Bob Moore giving him a 41-38 lead over freshman Rep. Kurt Schrader.

• Ads: The big ad of the day may be Harry Reid’s newest attack on Sharron Angle in NV-Sen, using her own words to seize on her claims that the state aid package was “money laundering.” Ted Strickland in OH-Gov is also out with a new ad, hitting John Kasich again on his ties to Lehman Brothers. Two House members facing credible challenges this year are also out with their first ads of the season: Republican Lee Terry in NE-02, focusing on his hatred of pork, and Democrat Martin Heinrich in NM-01, focusing on his constituent services.

• Outside Money: The Washington Post has a fantastic new little tool, in the form of a sortable chart that keeps track of outside expenditures by unions, Republican front groups, assorted weirdos, and all other manner of interest groups outside the two parties. Fun fact: did you know that Robert Kirkland (who spent $2.1 million) is #5 overall in total IEs for 2010 (on behalf of his brother Ron’s losing GOP primary run in TN-08), more than the Club for Growth, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, or even the DSCC?

• Rasmussen:

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 37%, Bill Brady (R) 46%

• MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan (D) 40%, Roy Blunt (R) 51%

• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber (D) 44%, Chris Dudley (R) 45%

• LA-Sen: That ginned-up internal poll that Chet Traylor released a few days ago (showing him within 12 of David Vitter) seems to have served its intended purpose, for what its worth: the contributions have started coming in at a much greater pace over the last few days. He pulled in $30K in three days, almost doubling up on the $42K he raised over the previous duration of his campaign (and most of which he blew on his new anti-Vitter radio ad). And this can’t please Vitter, either: a local paper is reporting to Vitter’s troublesome ex-aide, Brent Furer, traveled back from DC to Louisiana several times on the public’s dime, at points that just happened to coincide with his various trials on charges of drunk driving.

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle seems to be wandering all over the map in search of a position on Social Security privatization, one that’s extreme enough to satisfy her teabagging core supporters but not so extreme that it scares off, y’know, old people. She’s removed the words “transitioned out” from her website (regarding Social Security) but, when pushed yesterday, said that she hasn’t changed her view that that’s how she feels about it (despite running ads claiming that she wants to “save” Social Security).

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak, meet Raul Labrador? As you probably know, there’s a common-sense rule of thumb that you don’t release your internal polls unless they show you, y’know, ahead of your opponent. Nevertheless, somebody (unclear whether it was the DSCC or the Sestak camp) leaked NBC a Peter Yang internal of the race giving Pat Toomey a 2-point lead over Sestak, 46-44. Obviously, that’s not designed to create a sense of Sestak’s inevitable victory as most internals are designed to do, but it’s pushback against this week’s PPP poll, where the switch to LVs hurt Sestak’s numbers, probably oriented toward letting contributors know that this race is still in play. The DSCC has also been nailing Toomey on the rather arcane issue of derivatives, which had a key role in inflating the asset bubble that popped and left all our faces covered in pink sticky goo in 2008. Somehow I doubt more than 1% of the nation can offer a cogent explanation of what derivatives (especially credit default swaps) do, but at any rate, they’ve tracked down three separate times when Toomey as Congressman, on the House floor, praised the use of derivatives, something he’s lately tried to distance himself from.

• WA-Sen: We’re up to 67% reporting in Washington, with the numbers not really having budged from Tuesday night (still 46 Patty Murray, 34 Dino Rossi, 12 Clint Didier), but more than three-quarters of the remaining precincts are in the Dem-friendly King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties, so look for some future budging. Meanwhile, here’s a comparison that only true politics junkies will get… remember Fred Heineman? (The one-term Republican House member from NC-04 swept in in 1994, who then said that his $183,000 salary made him “lower-middle-class” and that the middle class extended up to $750K, and promptly got swept out in 1996.) Dino Rossi has apparently decided that he should be Washington’s answer to Heineman, as he essentially said that one-third of Washingtonians make over $200K per year. More specifically, he said 2.5 million Washingtonians would benefit from keeping the Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $200K/yr. (In reality, 105K households, or 1.6% of the state’s population, fit that profile.)

• CA-Gov: Here’s an iceberg in the way for the serene cruise of the Queen Meg: activists at a convention of state conservatives this weekend plan a rude welcome for her. They plan to lambaste her on her non-extreme positions on an Arizona-style immigration law in California, and her support for greenhouse gas-limiting Proposition 19 23. Also, here’s some quantitative evidence for something that I’ve long suspected: Whitman has so oversaturated the airwaves with advertising that it went well past the point of having its desired effect and is now just getting people pissed off at her. A Jerry Brown staffer leaked that nugget from internal polling, finding that her own advertising has helped Whitman with 8% of voters and hurt her with 27% of voters.

• IA-03: Hot on the heels of the David Rivera story in FL-25, here’s another uncomfortable blast from the past for another Republican House candidate: records reveal that Brad Zaun, the GOP’s nominee against Leonard Boswell, had to be told by West Des Moines police to stay away from his ex-girlfriend after a late night visit to her house to pound on her windows and call her names.

• MO-03, MO-04: Odd little pollster We Ask America seems to be entering another period of being prolific, as now they’re out with a couple House polls from the underserved state of Missouri. They find Russ Carnahan fairly comfortable against Republican challenger Ed Martin in the 3rd, leading 48-39, but find veteran Dem Ike Skelton in a tighter race in the 4th, leading Vicky Hartzler 45-42. Skelton still draws the support of 27% of Republicans and 37% of indies, crucial to surviving this dark-red district.

• CfG: The Club for Growth is starting to switch gears from primaries (where they seem to have had a more productive run this year than in previous cyles) to the general. They’ve endorsed four Republican challengers who all cleared the primary bar: Stephen Fincher in TN-08, Todd Young in IN-09, Mick Mulvaney in SC-05, and Tim Griffin in AR-02.

• Ads: The most attention-grabbing ad today seems to be from Indiana Dem Joe Donnelly, who already tried to distanced himself from “the Washington crowd” in his previous ad. Now he’s basically thrown in the towel on trying to fight the messaging war and just start running with Republican memes, touting his opposition in his newest ad to “Nancy Pelosi’s energy tax.” Other ads worth checking out today include an RGA ad for Duke Aiona in HI-Gov, a Joyce Elliott ad in AR-02, a Michelle Rollins spot in DE-AL, and a Mike McIntyre ad in NC-07.

• Rasmussen:

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D) 45%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 44%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 36%, Brian Sandoval (R) 52%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 48%, Dino Rossi (R) 44%

• DE-Sen: Looks like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg had to show some of that patented post-partisanship, having endorsed Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania yesterday. He offered a counterpoint in the form of an endorsement of Mike Castle in Delaware as well, and is doing a New York-based fundraiser for him tonight.

• IN-Sen: That grinding sound you hear is old-school Republican Dan Coats shifting gears, trying to fit into the Tea Party template. Having won the Republican Senate nomination in Indiana probably with big help from the split among teabagger votes between Marlin Stutzman and John Hostettler, he’s now working on outreach to that set, trying to keep the focus on financial issues.

• LA-Sen: Chet Traylor (who’s been seen polling in the single digits in polls we’ve seen so far of the Republican Senate primary) is out with an internal poll that purports to have him within striking distance of incumbent David Vitter. The poll by Verne Kennedy gives Vitter a 46-34 lead, keeping Vitter down in runoff territory. However, there’s a huge caveat: that number comes after voters were informed about Vitter’s use of prostitutes and employment of sociopathic aides, and there’s no word of what the non-informed toplines were. Meanwhile, Traylor seems to be gaining little momentum on the fundraising front: he’s filed a fundraising report showing he’s raised $42K since announcing his bid last month, and has $41K on hand.

• NH-Sen: Bill Binnie, with little time left to catch up to Kelly Ayotte in the GOP primary, is defying orders from state party boss John Sununu to keep everything positive, and is rolling out two negative ads against Ayotte. Both ads focus on her time as Attorney General and her failure to pick up on anything wrong at Financial Resources Mortgage, which engaged in large-scale fraud and then collapsed.

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin hasn’t wasted any time on the fundraising front. He’s raised $410K already since declaring his candidacy last month, which may not initially seem like much but will go a long way in the cheap markets in West Virginia. Likely GOP opponent John Raese has raised only $30K, although he’s also poured $320K of his own money into the race.

• IA-Gov, IA-Sen: Local GOP blog The Iowa Republican commissioned some polls of Iowa through Voter/Consumer Research. In a non-surprise, the Republicans are leading. Terry Branstad leads Chet Culver 53-35 in the gubernatorial race and Chuck Grassley leads Roxanne Conlin 59-33 in the Senate race. (Down the ballot, though, things look OK for Dems in the AG, Treasurer, and Supreme Court races.)

• OH-Gov: This goes in the “nice work if you can get it” file. In further evidence of the high-dollar revolving door between politics and academia, there are more details out on John Kasich’s rich-guy sinecure at Ohio State University over the last decade. For instance, during 2008 he made $50K from OSU, but worked about four hours a month there, essentially making $4,000 for each visit to campus.

• PA-Gov: While the Dems got good news yesterday in the Senate race in Pennsylvania with the dropout of the Green Party candidate, they got bad news in the gubernatorial race today with the dropout of John Krupa. Krupa was running as the Tea Party candidate, but had to pull the plug after a GOP petition challenge left him with too few signatures.

• AZ-03: It looks like Ben Quayle’s week or two in the sun is pretty much over after a one-two punch of salacious website revelations and his own incompetent TV ad; conventional wisdom is treating him as having plunged out of front-runner status in the GOP primary in the open seat 3rd. Self-funding businessman Steve Moak seems to have that role now, followed by underfunded but better-known state Sen. Jim Waring. (The article alludes to polling, but irritatingly doesn’t offer any specifics.)

• FL-17: The Miami Herald offers interesting profiles of all nine Democrats competing in the primary to replace retiring Rep. Kendrick Meek. This dark-blue seat may be, of all the nation’s open seats, the one we’re most starved for information about, so it remains to be seen whether we can get an upgrade from Meek (who voted with an eye always toward his next promotion) in this seat.

• New York: Wow, there’s a serious race to the bottom going on among the New York House delegation, with regards to Cordoba House: Mike McMahon, Tim Bishop, and even non-endangered Steve Israel all offered statements saying they should look elsewhere to build. This is playing out most interestingly in NY-24, where Richard Hanna — one of the few conspicuously moderate Republicans on the front lines this year — offered support for the project last week. Then Dem Mike Arcuri came out in opposition… and Hanna, realized he was getting outflanked on the right, did a 180 and is now against it too. While it’s nice to see a GOPer getting caught in such a transparent and ad-worthy flip-flop, is this the kind of high-ground-ceding way we want to do it?

• NRCC: Everyone seems abuzz that the NRCC is out with its list of 40 targeted districts today and its plan to spend $22 million (more than their current $17 mil CoH). It’s worth noting, though, that unlike the DCCC’s $49 mil list of 60 districts from July, these aren’t even reservations (which require deposits – or a willingness to seriously piss off television stations if you try to cancel), only a telegraphing of their plans, so things may change. (They may also roll out more in two steps, as did the DCCC.) Most of the buzzing is about what got left out. (Where are the defenses in LA-02 and HI-01? There’s a grand total of one defensive buy: the open seat in IL-10.) National Journal also has an interesting analysis of the method behind the NRCC’s madness, noticing that they’re playing Moneyball, focusing on the cheaper media markets and letting some of the more expensive East Coast markets slide.

• Ads: Lots of ad miscellany today, starting with big buys from Karl Rove-linked GOP group American Crossroads, which is spending $425K on an anti-Michael Bennet piece in CO-Sen, and $500K on a pro-Rob Portman (doesn’t he have his own money?) spot in OH-Sen. Dina Titus and Betsy Markey, freshman Dems in tough defenses in NV-03 and CO-04, are both on the air with new spots with a similar strategy: go negative on TARP (they’re inoculated from it, not having been in Congress in the previous cycle). Finally, Scott Murphy is dipping into his huge cash stash with his first ad in NY-20, a feel-good piece featuring his enormous family that (like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s ad) traffics in the metaphor that Washington sometimes eats too much (although luckily this ad doesn’t show anyone pooping).

• Rasmussen:

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 37%, Rob Portman (R) 45%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 37%, Pat Toomey (R) 46%

PPP (pdf) (8/14-16, likely voters, 6/19-21 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 36 (41)

Pat Toomey (R): 45 (41)

Undecided: 20 (18)

(MoE: ±4.1%)

PPP gave us some advance warning yesterday that this would be the time when they switched to a likely voter model (from their earlier hybrid model, which was lightly screened but more like a registered voter model), and that the switchover would be turbulent for some Dems. This race is the one they were primarily talking about: the switch drops Joe Sestak from a tie to a 9-point deficit against Pat Toomey.

One of the most eye-catching numbers here is that PPP finds a voter universe that went by 1 point for John McCain in 2008 (a marked contrast to Barack Obama’s 10-point victory), but they also point out that their last sample in June was also +1 for McCain. Instead, it’s one that has fewer Democrats in it (46 Dem/44 Republican), and one that’s more negatively disposed toward Sestak (28/38, compared with 36/33 for Toomey) and Obama (40/55, with an unusually high falloff in Obama voters who now disapprove of him — that number is usually about 7% nationally, but 15% here in this sample). The one bit of good news here for Dems is that the undecided voters lean Democratic (they went for Obama 52-36), and many of them are likely to gravitate toward Sestak once he’s on the air and garnering more attention. But for now, Sestak has a long way to go to catch back up.

• CO-Sen: On the Democratic side, we have a heart-warming love-in between Michael Bennet and Andrew Romanoff, bitter rivals until about 48 hours ago. Romanoff said supporting Bennet was “an easy call,” while Bennet praised Romanoff for his stances on the issues, especially campaign finance reform. On the Republican side, well, there are no plans for a comparable unity event between Ken Buck and Jane Norton. Buck did raise some eyebrows with news that he went the full-on Paulist last year, though, lauding the gold standard and saying the main thing that would keep us from doing it is because there isn’t enough gold available to do so (well, maybe we could stimulate the economy by hiring hundreds of thousands of grizzled prospectors to go out and find us that gold…).

• DE-Sen: Is this a sign of unprecedented confidence in Delaware, as the GOP is spinning it… or worries that they need to bolster their preferred candidate Mike Castle, over unelectable-in-November Christine O’Donnell in the primary? The national party is sending three full-time staffers to work on the ground game in Delaware, which is three more than they do most cycles.

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek is out with an internal poll from Diane Feldman, giving him an 8-point lead over Jeff Greene, 38-30, after a week in which Greene’s yacht (and the vomit that it was caked with) seemed to be the main story figuring in the press about the Senate race this week. (Perhaps confirming these numbers: Greene is now engaged in the last refuge of a guy about to lose a race, which is to start threatening libel suits, here against the St. Petersburg Times for its look into his real estate transactions.) Meek’s also bolstered by two new anti-Greene IEs for TV spots, for a total of $260K from “Florida Is Not For Sale.”

• KY-Sen: The GOP seems to have let Rand Paul off his leash a little in the last few weeks, but between his Fancy Farm performance and some new items, they may be rethinking a return to his undisclosed location. Paul just said that eastern Kentucky’s drug problem (where meth runs rampant and marijuana growth is common) is not “a pressing issue,” and he topped that off by ditching local affiliate Fox reporters after taping a national Fox TV appearance in Lexington, in their own studio.

• PA-Sen: If you’ve been wondering where the DSCC was going to launch its first IEs of this year, Pennsylvania seems like it’s a good place to start. They’re spending $452K on running an ad highlighting Pat Toomey’s Wall Street background (good for 300 GRPs in Philly, 400 in Pittsburgh, and more in selected smaller markets). This will let Joe Sestak focus on marshalling his resources, as is his wont, while keeping the pressure on Toomey, who’s been advertising continually.

• SC-Sen: In case you were wondering if South Carolina could get any more farcical, Dem nominee Alvin Greene just finally got indicited on his pending obscenity charges for showing porn to a college student in a computer lab. I have no idea what the trial’s timetable is, but maybe Dems could actually get a new candidate in there if he’s convicted before November?

• CO-Gov: Ruh roh. The Colorado rumor mill has Dan Maes, the guy who swore he wouldn’t drop out, meeting with the state GOP about… dropping out. They’ve already been conspicuous in their silent non-support of Maes, who won Tuesday’s primary. Despite the meeting, though, Colorado Pols still seems to think that the posture from the Maes camp is one of a man who isn’t dropping out, and he’s meeting with them to try and get some additional support. At any rate, something would need to happen by Sep. 3, at which point the November ballot is finalized.

• MD-Gov: Fundraising numbers are out in Maryland. Republican Bob Ehrlich has almost kept pace with Dem incumbent Martin O’Malley over the course of this year, with Ehrlich raising $3.2 million and O’Malley raising $3.3 million in ’10 (and O’Malley couldn’t fundraise until April, because of the legislative session). O’Malley’s been building up funds for a longer time, though; O’Malley’s CoH advantage is 3:1, with $6.7 million banked compared to $2 million for Ehrlich.

• WY-Gov: Hmmm, this should turn the dominant media narrative about next week’s Wyoming GOP gubernatorial primary into “OMG! Palin/Bush proxy battle!” The Bush in question, though is George H.W. (41) Bush, who extended an endorsement today to Colin Simpson, the state House speaker and son of his long-time pal ex-Sen. Alan Simpson.

• MI-01: The final count’s over in MI-01, and it’s Dan Benishek by a whopping 15 votes, over state Sen. Jason Allen. The ball’s in Allen’s court now; he has until Sunday morning to file a written request for a recount that would need to allege mistakes or fraud.

• TX-17: Here’s an interesting stance from Republican challenger Bill Flores, especially considering this is a red enough district that it may be one of the few places in the country where John Boehner has positive ratings. But in response to questions whether he’d support His Orangeness for Speaker if the GOP had a majority in the House, Flores ducked the question, saying he’d cross that bridge if he got elected.

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 43%, Dan Maes (R) 31%, Tom Tancredo (I) 18%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 47%, Linda McMahon (R) 40%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 42%, Nathan Deal (R) 51%

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 45%, Tom Emmer (R) 36%, Tom Horner (I) 10%