Tag: Pat Toomey

• 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: It looks like the Michael Bennet camp, and his Beltway backers, are taking the recent polling surge by Andrew Romanoff in the Dem Senate primary, very seriously. Barack Obama just did a remote appearance on behalf of Bennet, for five minutes at a Bennet town hall.

• KY-Sen: Well, he finally got around to it. It was buried in the fifth and final paragraph of a press release. Nevertheless, Dan Mongiardo finally endorsed Dem primary victor Jack Conway. Despite previous rumors that he was holding out on his endorsement to get his $77K campaign debt paid off, a Mongiardo spokesperson says he didn’t receive anything in exchange for the nod.

• PA-Sen: Bill Clinton will be in Scranton to campaign for Joe Sestak next Tuesday. Frankly, that’s a really good fit of candidate, backer, and locale. I wonder if Paul Kanjorski will be allowed to tag along, though? Seems like he could use some Clinton love, too. (No, not that kind of Clinton love.) On the GOP side, Pat Toomey got some campaign fundraising help in Philly from moderate Maine GOP Senator Susan “Comrade of the Month” Collins, who seems to have forgiven or conveniently forgotten all those Club for Growth attempts to knife her in the back.

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray seems to be taking a page from the John Hickenlooper campaign in Colorado, dropping a huge amount of money right now on advertising reservations, all the way through November, while they’re still cheap. She spent $3.4 million, nearly half her CoH, on ad buys in July. She can count on her coffers being replenished, though, as Barack Obama will be hosting a fundraiser for her later this month.

• WI-Sen: Dueling ads in Wisconsin. Russ Feingold is out with a sobering ad rattling his saber at Wall Street, while Ron Johnson levels accusations of being a “career politician” at Feingold. Double NWOTSOTB.

• CO-Gov: Is there blood here in the water, or what? Colorado Ethics Watch just filed a complaint with the state bar, which could lead to disciplinary action against Scott McInnis’s license to practice law in Colorado, over his plagiarism scandal. McInnis’s former campaign manager (until last December, so he was out long before the scandal) also just asked McInnis for a refund of all the contributions he’s given him. The DGA is also starting to pour money into this race, striking while the iron is hot; they’ve plowed $100K into a new third-party group airing a new anti-McInnis attack ad. And if you were thinking that Dan Maes might turn out to be a reasonable alternative to McInnis, guess again. He ventured not just into Michele Bachmann territory (about how we’ll all have to live in tenements and take mass transit to work) but clear into UN-black-helicopters-are-fluoridating-my-water territory. And what’s the nerve center of the one-world-government’s scurrilous plot against Coloradan sovereignty? Denver’s program for public bike shares and more showers for bike-riding commuters!!!!1!

“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty.”

• GA-Gov: This seems like a big Deal for Nathan: the third-place finisher in the gubernatorial primary, state Sen. Eric Johnson, is backing ex-Rep. Nathan Deal in the runoff. (Oddly, Johnson hasn’t said anything about it himself, but Rep. Jack Kingston, another Johnson backer-turned-Deal backer, made the announcement.) Johnson’s support should help Deal in the Savannah area, where Johnson seems to have a strong base.

• MD-Gov: I wonder if Sarah Palin is playing three-dimensional chess here, in some sort of strange gambit to help Bob Ehrlich in the general election… or just playing tic-tac-toe, and losing badly at it. At any rate, she endorsed Ehrlich’s barely-registering primary rival, businessman Brian Murphy, in the GOP gubernatorial primary. (Which, if you think about it, doesn’t jibe at all with her endorsement of centrist and likely victor Terry Branstad in Iowa instead of wingnut Bob Vander Plaats… but then, Maryland’s not an early presidential state.) Ehrlich is now publicly doing the happy dance over her endorsement of his rival, saying that it just confirms his moderate credentials for the general, where he has a shot at knocking off incumbent Dem Martin O’Malley.

• AZ-01: Rogue dentist Paul Gosar has a lead in the Republican primary in AZ-01 for the right to take on freshman Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, if his own internal is to be believed. The poll from Moore Info puts him at 30, with ’08 candidate Sydney Hay at 10, Some Dude Bradley Beauchamp at 7, and, surprisingly, former state Sen. majority leader Rusty Bowers back at 6. Gosar seems to have consolidated many big-name movement conservatives behind him, ranging from Sarah Palin to Joe Arpaio. My main question, though, is: Sydney Hay is running again?!? Why weren’t we informed? (You may remember her legacy of fail from her 2008 run.)

• AZ-03: This is at least the second time a childless GOP candidate has gotten busted for playing up his “family man” credentials by romping with children in advertising (the first time was Kevin Yoder in KS-03). At least Yoder was able to claim the kids were his nieces and nephews… Ben Quayle apparently had to borrow some of his aides’ kids for his photo shoot.

• IL-17: After seemingly no one found their internal poll from last week credible (which gave the previously-unheralded, if not unknown, Bobby Schilling a lead over Democratic Rep. Phil Hare), there’s another Republican poll out that seems to at least be on the same temporal plane as reality, in this swing district where the GOP hasn’t competed hard in a while. POS (on behalf of a state party committee… Magellan did the Schilling internal) gives Hare a 33-31 lead over the political novice and pizza restauranteur. The poll also gives 7% support to the Green Party candidate, which somehow doesn’t seem likely to hold.

• WV-01: As heartburn-inducing Mike Oliverio will probably be in terms of his voting record, here’s some confirmation that we at least got an electoral upgrade here from the guy he defeated in the Dem primary, Rep. Alan Mollohan, who had ethical clouds following him and seemed to be phoning in his campaign. Oliverio is out with a new internal from Hamilton Campaigns that gives him a 52-36 lead over GOP opponent David McKinley. With Joe Manchin at the top of the ticket in a November special election, now, too, here’s one Tossup seat where our odds seem to be getting noticeably better. (As a bonus, they find Manchin leading John Raese 62-30 in the district, which is West Virginia’s reddest.)

• DCCC: CQ looks at the DCCC’s attempts to enforce dues-payment this cycle. While their “Frontline” members (the ones in the trickiest races) are exempt from paying dues, they’re winding up giving de facto passes to a number of other vulnerable incumbents, not having had any luck at stopping them from hoarding their own cash in preparation for tough races. 88 House Dems haven’t paid any dues at all this cycle, while many others are in arrears. There’s also, buried in the article, a statement that the DCCC doesn’t plan to further extend its Frontline program, even as the number of potentially vulnerable Dems seems to keep increasing.

• California: For people who just can’t get enough campaign finance reports, the Sacramento Bee has a helpful table of filings for all the candidates for the downballot statewide races. Dems have a cash on hand lead in most races, except for two (Secretary of State and Insurance Commissioner). It’s particularly pronounced in the Lt. Governor race, where Gavin Newsom leads GOP incumbent Abel Maldonado $495K to $91K. In the very tight AG’s race (also the downballot race that’s seen by far the most expenditures), Dem Kamala Harris leads GOPer Steve Cooley $186K to $121K (and Cooley also has $170K in debt).

• Redistricting: Ohio, unfortunately, won’t be having a referendum on a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November, that would limit parties’ ability to gerrymander by requiring bipartisan support for new maps. The problem? The parties in the state legislature couldn’t agree on the exact framework for the plan. At least there’s good news on the better-districts front in New York, where the state Senate just passed legislation that will make sure that incarcerated persons are counted in their home communities, when legislative lines are redrawn next year.

• Rasmussen:

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 31%, Bill McCollum (R) 27%, Bud Chiles (I) 20%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 31%, Rick Scott (R) 35%, Bud Chiles (I) 16%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 40%, Rob Portman (R) 44%

• WA-Sen: I’m not sure how this will work, practically speaking, but the two Tea Partiers in the race, rancher Clint Didier and fastener mogul Paul Akers, are “joining forces.” They’ll be doing joint ads and joint online forums for the remaining few weeks. They can’t, of course, be jointly voted-for, so I don’t know what the endgame is, but it probably doesn’t matter, as both have been polling in the single digits in polls of the jungle primary. Apparently, it does give them a better venue for airing their grievances with the GOP establishment’s selection of Dino Rossi as standard-bearer; maybe this way, Akers can distract the ref while Didier puts Rossi in a sleeper hold.

Also on the weird timing front, Washington’s Republican SoS, Sam Reed, is just out with a new book on the 2004 gubernatorial election and the protracted recount and court challenges he oversaw. Relations between Reed and the rest of the state Republicans were severely tested during the recount, seeing as how the scrupulous Reed wanted to, y’know, follow the rules. While the book doesn’t seem to paint Rossi in a terribly unfavorable light, it can’t help but remind everyone of his “perennial candidate” status.

• AZ-Gov: You might recall that NRA board member Owen Buz Mills recently ended his GOP primary campaign against the once-endangered, now-all-powerful Jan Brewer several weeks ago. Well, he’s not quite done, his spokesperson is now saying: he’s going to enter a Rob Simmons-style state of electoral limbo. Mills won’t be spending any more money on the race, but he will leave his name on the ballot. (Other dropouts Dean Martin and John Munger have filed papers of formal withdrawal from the race.)

• OR-Gov, OR-05: Now that Oregon has opted to join New York in the weird world of fusion voting, now it even has its own Independent Party trying to quirkily play it down the middle. Based on its online straw poll of members (with a vote total of a whopping 2,290), the IP gave its backing to Democrat John Kitzhaber in the gubernatorial race, but to Republican state Rep. Scott Bruun in OR-05 (instead of incumbent Dem Kurt Schrader).

• TX-Gov: A number of prominent Dallas business leaders have signed on to a letter announcing their support for Bill White in the gubernatorial race. About half of the signatories, a mix of moderate Republicans and independents, are, in fact, former Kay Bailey Hutchison supporters.

• WY-Gov: I think this trumps her earlier Wilford Brimley endorsement. State auditor Rita Meyer (the only woman in the four-way GOP primary field) got added to Sarah Palin’s stable of Mama Grizzlies late last week.

• AL-02, AL-05: The “generally conservative” Alabama Farmer’s Federation handed out helpful endorsements to two Dems today: not just to Rep. Bobby Bright (who seems to fit their profile well) but also to Steve Raby, running in the 5th. Raby seems well connected with the agriculture world through his former work for ex-Sen. Howell Heflin.

• MI-02, MI-03: A poll for the Grand Rapids Press, taken by Practical Political Consulting, looks at the GOP primaries in the two western Michigan open seats. In the 2nd (Peter Hoekstra’s seat), former NFL player and Family Research Council executive Jay Riemersma has a small lead at 22, followed by former state Rep. Bill Huizenga and teabagging businessman Bill Cooper, both at 15, and state Sen. Wayne Kuipers at 13. In the 3rd (Vern Ehlers’ seat), state Rep. Justin Amash (anointed as chosen one by the DeVos family) leads at 28, followed by African-American state Sen. Bill Hardiman at 23 and ex-Kent Co. Commissioner Steve Heacock (the moderate in the field, and Ehlers’ endorsee) at 17.

• FL-12: We keep mentally writing this race off due to Lori Edwards’ paltry fundraising, and then polling evidence to the contrary shows up. For the second time, the Edwards camp has released an internal poll giving them a lead in this R+6 open seat. Edwards leads GOP ex-state Rep. Dennis Ross 35-32 in a poll taken by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. The catch here is one of the most legitimate Tea Party candidates anywhere is here: Randy Wilkinson, a Polk Co. Commissioner who briefly sought the GOP nomination before deciding to go the third-party route. Wilkinson polls at 20%, although we’ll have to see if the near-broke Wilkinson can keep those numbers up through November.

• TN-03: Newt Gingrich handed out a last-minute seal of approval in the GOP primary in the 3rd. He’s backing the more-or-less establishment candidate, former state GOP chair Robin Smith. Smith’s main opponent is Chuck Fleischmann, a partly-self-funding attorney who seems tighter with the Mike Huckabee crowd than the teabaggers.

• WA-03: The Beltway media seems to take it as an article of faith that GOP state Rep. Jaime Herrera is going to be Denny Heck’s opponent in November, but David Castillo shouldn’t be counted out. Not being on the ground, they wouldn’t pick up on the general sense of underwhelmingness that seems to surround Herrera, but it seems like they would, at some point, have noticed that nearly all the endorsements of consequence in the district have gone to Castillo. He got endorsements from the newspapers in Vancouver, Longview, and Centralia, as well as the out-of-district Seattle Times. AG Rob McKenna, probably the state’s best-liked Republican, had endorsed Castillo before Rep. Brian Baird’s retirement and Herrera’s entry, but he’s been pointedly sticking by his endorsement, hosting a Castillo fundraiser last week.

• House: Nate Silver’s out with a new toy that SSPers will certainly be interested in: having found that Democratic House candidates tend to overperform vis-à-vis presidential numbers in districts with lower median household income, he’s created a new index that’s a mashup of prez numbers and income, called the Partisan Propensity Index. (He looked at only results in open seat races, which eliminates the main problem with trying to fit House numbers on top of prez numbers, which is the overwhelming staying power of incumbents.) At the end of the day, it’s still not too different from PVI, inasmuch as Chet Edwards has the worst district of any Dem and Joe Cao has the worst district of any GOPer, but it does reflect the reality that suburban Sun Belt districts that are truly swingy at the presidential level are a harder nut for Dems to crack at the House level than rural Appalachian districts that are red at the presidential level.

• Rasmussen:

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 40%, Brian Sandoval (R) 50%

• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 36%, Mary Fallin (R) 57%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 39%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%

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

• SC-Gov: Vincent Sheheen (D) 35%, Nikki Haley (R) 49%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 49%, Dino Rossi (R) 47%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 48%, Clint Didier (R) 45%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 48%, Paul Akers (R) 42%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 45%, Mark Neumann (R) 44%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 43%, Scott Walker (R) 50%

Netroots Nation: In case you missed it, click the link to watch the video of our panel on the 2010 horserace from last Friday at Netroots Nation. It was a terrific, fast-paced panel and we were asked a broad range of questions on a ton of different races. Fun stuff! Also of interest, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner conducted a straw poll of convention-goers. They included one horserace-ish question, asking participants which race was their top priority this fall. 31% picked NV-Sen, followed by PA-Sen (25%), KY-Sen (21%), MN-06 (15%), and VA-05 (7%).

CA-Sen: The NRSC has reserved $1.75 million in ad time for Carly Fiorina – but remember, just cuz you reserve time doesn’t mean you necessarily wind up buying it, so this could just be a feint.

FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek is up with his first ad, attacking zillionaire schmuckface Jeff Greene for his past run for Congress in California – as a Republican – and for the windfall he reaped by betting on a housing market collapse two years ago. Adam Smith of the St. Pete Times says the buy is for $420K, which he thinks is “pretty small” for the pretty big state of Florida.

IL-Sen: Mark Kirk is pulling a Pat Toomey. You’ll recall that the ultra-conservative Pennsylvania senate candidate somewhat surprisingly endorsed Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for the Supreme Court. Now it’s Kirk’s turn to try to burnish his “moderate” credentials, so he’s backing Elena Kagan.

Meanwhile, here’s some new craziness: A federal district court judge just ordered a special election to fill the remaining months of Roland Burris’s term, most likely to coincide with the regular election in November. Both Kirk and Dem Alexi Giannoulias have said they want to run in the special, and they probably won’t have to face a primary, since the judge seems inclined to allow nominees to be picked by party committees. Politico points out a potentially huge angle to all of this: the FEC says that since the special would constitute a new election, the candidates would be able to raise fresh money for that race – meaning that Kirk and Giannoulias could hit up maxed-out donors once more.

PA-Sen: But wait! Pat Toomey isn’t pulling a Pat Toomey! He’s coming out against Elena Kagan.

WV-Sen: When early word came that Rep. Shelley Moore Capito wouldn’t run for Robert Byrd’s seat, we said that we’d move the race to Likely D. Capito made it official last Wednesday, so consider this move retroactive to that date.

MI-Gov: Bummer: Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has endorsed DLC Dem Andy Dillon, whom Dillon called a “kindred spirit.” Given Bing’s outsider status and short tenure, I suspect he’s not quite a “machine” mayor, though, who can deliver wards on the turn of a heel.

MN-Gov: Republican gubernatorial nominee Tom Emmer continues to burnish his moron credentials. The other day, he declared that Minnesota should pass its own GI bill to help veterans. Good idea, right? So good, in fact, that the state actually passed such a law three years ago. Even better: Emmer, a state representative, voted against the bill!

RI-Gov: Linc Chafee won the endorsement of the 10,000-strong Rhode Island Federation of Teachers and Health Professionals, his first big union nod. The Projo says that the teachers had been favored to go to AG Patrick Lynch, but Lynch rather unexpectedly dropped out of the race not long ago, and evidently Dem Treasurer Frank Caprio didn’t suit them.

SC-Gov: Nikki Haley, a member of the Strength Through Crippling Austerity wing of the Republican Party, is trying to soften (i.e., flip-flop) some of her less business-friendly stances. The AP explains her shifts on two issues: the infamous anti-tax pledge sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform, and the bailout.

IL-17: Can an internal poll sometimes seem just too good? That’s how I feel about this survey by Magellan Strategies for GOPer Bobby Schilling, which has him up 45-32 over Dem Rep. Phil Hare. YMMV.

NY-13: John McCain is endorsing former FBI agent Mike Grimm in the GOP primary. Grimm has faced hostility from the Republican establishment here, which has backed Michael Allegretti (whom Maggie Haberman delightfully refers to with the epithet “Bayside fuel heir”). Apparently, McCain (who has a race of his own to worry about) will both fundraise and campaign for Grimm, though no word yet on when. As for why he’s getting involved, Haberman says it’s because of his relationship with Rudy Giuliani and Guy Molinari, both of whom are supporting Grimm.

NY-15: Charlie Rangel’s autobiography is titled “And I Haven’t Had a Bad Day Since,” referring to his service in the Korean War. Well, it sure seems like he’s had more than a few bad days lately, with the latest batch coming in the last week. The House Ethics Committee declared on Thursday that Rangel had indeed committed transgressions and created a new panel to investigate further. In response, Indiana senate candidate Brad Ellsworth announced he would give to charity all the money he’s received from Rangel (some $12K). Rep. Betty Sutton (OH-13) went one further, calling on Rangel to resign. For the record, Rangel disagrees with me, saying: “I’m not in a foxhole, I’m not surrounded by a million Chinese communists coming after me. Life is good. I’m 80 years old. I’m on my way to a parade.”

OK-05: SoonerPoll.com has a survey out of the 5th CD Republican field, finding former state Rep. Kevin Calvey increasing his lead from 20 to 28 since the last test in March. Some Dude James Lankford is in second with 20, followed by 15 for state Rep. Mike Thompson, 6 for state Rep. Shane Jett, and a bunch of other Some Dudes bringing up the rear.

PA-15: This is what we call a good get: Bill Clinton will be coming to Salisbury Township for a fundraiser for John Callahan on August 10th. As is so often the case with the Big Dog, this is payback for Callahan’s support of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2008.

TN-09: Willie Herenton, asshole until the end:

Willie W. Herenton, the former mayor, is accusing Steve Cohen, the white two-term United States representative, of “trying to act black.” He tells voters in this majority-black city that they “need to come off that Cohen plantation and get on the Herenton freedom train.”

WI-03: State Sen. Dan Kapanke has an internal out from Public Opinion Strategies (memo here) which shows Dem Rep. Ron Kind up just 44-38.

• AZ-Sen: Sounds like this weekend’s GOP primary, full of barbs and genuinely angry potshots between J.D. Hayworth and John McCain had only one beneficiary: random teabagger Jim Deakin, who didn’t seem to suffer any collateral damge.

• DE-Sen: The Susan B. Anthony List has endorsed minor-league primary challenger Christine O’Donnell instead of the pro-choice Mike Castle in the GOP Senate primary in Delaware. Delaware isn’t exactly known for its large social conservative vote share, so it remains to be seen whether this changes anything.

• MT-Sen: There have been odd rumors that Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who’ll be looking for something to do starting in 2012, was considering a primary challenge to Max Baucus in 2014, motivated at least in part over their different approaches to health care reform. Schweitzer ruled out running for the Senate, though (also ruling out a possible 2012 seat-swap with Jon Tester, which also had been rumored). The possibility of what he’d do if the septuagenarian Baucus retired in 2014, though, didn’t seem to get broached.

• NH-Sen: One more addition to the Mama Grizzly corral, and it’s a big name who’s, well, a woman, but has some competition from her right: Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire. Interesting that Sarah Palin refudiated the more teabaggish challengers (Ovide Lamontagne and Jim Bender).

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis is not dropping out and is still in it to lose it, he vows, pressure and polling notwithstanding. He will, however, be repaying that $300K to the foundation that employed him to write and not plagiarize his research papers for them. However, it seems some of his underlings are clearly seeing the handwriting on the wall. Three key staffers (his policy director, political director, and regional director) all announced they were leaving the campaign.

• MI-Gov: A Detroit News/WDIV poll (conducted by the Glengariff Group) finds, like everybody else, a very close race in the Republican primary. They have Mike Cox and Peter Hoekstra both at 26, with Rick Snyder at 20, Mike Bouchard at 12, and Tom George at 2. They see a possible route for Snyder to win over undecideds, based on his low unfavorables (he’s at 36/8). Mike Bouchard also has a couple new endorsements to his name, although they’re from the spouses of two once-important politicians: the wives of ex-Gov. John Engler and ex-Sen. Spencer Abraham. The spouse endorsement, of course, is the time-honored method of boosting your behind-the-scenes friend while still not getting your hands dirty wasting political capital on a sure loss (see the Deval Patrick spousal endorsement of Mike Capuano in the MA-Sen primary).

• NE-Gov: After much speculation that the Dems were simply going to leave their ballot line blank and let Dave Heineman run unopposed to another gubernatorial term, they’ve found a willing victim candidate to fill the place left by Mark Lakers (who dropped out post-primary but pre-convention). It’s Mike Meister, a trial attorney who lost the 2002 Attorney General’s race.

• OH-Gov: John Kasich’s new ad is weak. I know, I know, I’m a partisan, but if this were a Democrat running this ad, I’d be pounding my head on the desk. His first TV spot starts out with him on the defensive, pointing out that he didn’t run Lehman Brothers, just profited handsomely off it.

• OR-Gov: Chris Dudley ruffled some feathers over the weekend by ducking the decades-long traditional debate that opens the campaign season in this civic-minded state, held by the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. Dudley said that he’d already had plans for a family vacation then, and Democrats predictably said that this was part of a bigger pattern of ducking issues. (Note: don’t piss off the people who buy ink by the bucket. Newspaper e-boards across the state, even the conservative ones, have been scornful.) Then he got really busted: his family vacation just happened to be combined with a visit with the RGA, and its many donors, at an event in Aspen, Colorado. Oregonians aren’t likely to begrudge him for a little downtime, but lying about what he’s doing… not so much.

• WI-Gov: This seems a little too convenient. GOP Milwaukee Co. Executive Scott Walker’s staff just gave a no-bid contract for emergency structural engineering inspections to Graef-USA… a contractor that just happens to be a major Walker campaign contributor.

• MI-13: There are two new polls that look at the Democratic primary in the 13th, and both give a small lead to Hansen Clarke, over Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick. Clarke leads 38-30 in the Detroit News/WDIV poll, and Clarke leads 44-31 in an EPIC-MRA poll released last week. That’s on top of a third poll from last week that we already mentioned that also had a Clarke lead, so I’m sensing a pattern here. There’s a handful of other candidates, but they’re only polling in low single digits… it seems like having only one credible challenger (Clarke, a termed-out state Senator) to Kilpatrick, instead of two like in 2008, is the key to winning the race.

• Legislatures: There are two different stories out today looking at the lay of the land in two legislative chambers that seem among the likeliest to flip to Republican control this year: the Iowa State House, and the Pennsylvania State House, with mentions of some of the most competitive seats in each case.

• NRCC: With the House GOP pretty much assured of gaining a significant number of seats this year, it’s been a while since we’ve done one of these. But could it be time for another… Pete Sessions Deathwatch®? Texas GOPer Tom Pauken, a Rick Perry ally who was state party chair in the 1990s, has been talking Sessions down, saying he’s “not up to the job” and he should be replaced by “a smart conservative who knows what needs to be done.” That news comes on a day when NRCC staff are busy doing damage control, mopping up behind Sessions after his comments that “we need to go back to the exact same agenda” of the Bush years.

• Rasmussen:

• AK-Gov: Ethan Berkowitz (D) 34%, Sean Parnell (R-inc) 43 53%

• AK-Gov: Hollis French (D) 29%, Sean Parnell (R-inc) 57%

• AK-Gov: Ethan Berkowitz (D) 36%, Ralph Samuels (R) 48%

• AK-Gov: Hollis French (D) 30%, Ralph Samuels (R) 49%

• AK-Gov: Ethan Berkowitz (D) 38%, Bill Walker (R) 46%

• AK-Gov: Hollis French (D) 32%, Bill Walker (R) 50%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 38%, Pat Toomey (R) 45%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Scott Walker (R) 48%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 45%, Mark Neumann (R) 43%

Also a must read today: a new piece from Nate Silver makes the point that “Hey, YouGov’s internet-only polling isn’t that methodologically bad,” but that’s by way of comparing it to Rasmussen’s sampling techniques, which (no shock to SSP readers) aren’t likely to produce a very accurate cross-section of the population.

IL-Sen: Undoubtedly Alexi Giannoulias wishes this kind of thing happened every week: Barack Obama is coming to town for a fundraiser on August 5th.

PA-Sen: The Philly Inquirer has a good look at Pat Toomey’s attempted “moderate” makeover. He’s doing a fundraiser with Susan Collins, who was lambasted last year by the Club for Growth – Toomey’s old group – as “Comrade of the Month” for her stimulus vote. He’s also getting the support of a former Specter chief-of-staff (who “stayed loyal” to his old boss when he became a Dem), and perhaps most famously, came out in favor of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the SCOTUS. The real question is, will this stick? Or will Joe Sestak be able to show Toomey for the ultra-conservative he really is?

WV-Sen: This is unexpected: The West Virginia legislature, called into a special session specifically for the purpose of amending the state’s elections laws, recessed yesterday without taking any action. Apparently, the two houses are still ironing out differences. (Remind me why we need bicameral state legislatures?) The Secretary of State’s office says that it thinks it has time to hold a special election this fall if a bill passes today, but that timetable may be in doubt if lawmakers tarry any longer. Gov. Joe Manchin could also rely on a state AG opinion and schedule a special even if the lege fails to act – but he might also do nothing, meaning Carte Goodwin could serve past November.

AL-Gov: Artur Davis is determined to be remembered as the Asshole of Alabama. Despite endorsing Ron Sparks in his concession speech, Artur Douchebag spewed a bunch of right-wang talking points about his former opponent – and also went out of his way to praise Republican candidate Robert Bentley. Ooh, ArturD2, I definitely see some phat lobbying jobs in your future – and maybe a seat on a deficit commission some day. Stay douchey!

MN-Gov: GOP nominee Tom Emmer really stepped in some serious shit when he suggested that the minimum wage should be revoked for waiters in Minnesota – and that he had heard of servers making over $100,000 a year. So to make reparations, he held… I guess, not a town hall but a dining hall hall with restaurant workers, who were mostly annoyed by his refusal to get specific. (Said one: “I didn’t know of him before this. I know him now. And I don’t like him.”) But it all came to an abrupt end when activist Nick Espinosa dumped a couple thousand pennies on Emmer’s table, barking “Here’s your tip!”

NY-01: Stay nasty, boys. Randy Altschuler is sending out mailers attacking rival Chris Cox for his support of Dede Scozzafava and Charlie Crist.

NY State Sen: You may remember Pedro Espada as the “Democrat” who spearheaded last year’s attempted coup by Republicans in the state Senate. In addition to being a scumbag under federal investigation, he’s also been targeted by the Working Families Party, who say that his defeat in the September primary is their “No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 priority.” To that end, they’ve been aiding Jose Gustavo River, a former aide to Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. On top of that, Bill Samuels, a bigtime Dem donor, is pledging to spend $250K to boot Espada. Let’s hope it happens!

Quinnipiac (7/6-11, registered voters, 5/4-10 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 43 (40)

Pat Toomey (R): 43 (42)

Undecided: 12 (16)

(MoE: 2.7%)

Considering that every poll released by Quinnipiac since May of last year has shown Sestak trailing Toomey, I think we can consider this to be a dose of good news. (Yes, according to Pollster.com, Toomey held leads of varying degrees in six consecutive Q-polls.) Nearly half of voters haven’t heard enough about either candidate to form a solid opinion about them, though, so this race has plenty of room for movement. One danger sign for Sestak is that Barack Obama is losing to a generic Republican opponent by 41-40 in a 2012 match-up. It could be worse, but that’s a major fade for a state that supported Obama by double digits in ’08.

Meanwhile, Toomey has considerable edge in fundraising, bringing in $3.1 million in the second quarter and holding $4.65 million in the bank. Sestak, who’s replenishing his reserves after spending big on his primary win over Arlen Specter, raised $2 million in the last three months and has the same amount on-hand. Toomey is already flexing his financial advantage with new ads, but, as usual, NWOTSOTB (no word on the size of the buy).

And, finally, the gubernatorial numbers:

Dan Onorato (D): 37 (37)

Tom Corbett (R): 44 (43)

Undecided: 18 (19)

(MoE: 2.7%)

This is actually one of the better polling results we’ve seen for Allegheny Co. Executive Dan Onorato, but the numbers also illustrate just how challenging this race will be for a Democrat to win. By a 55-32 margin, voters want the next Governor to discontinue Ed Rendell’s policies, meaning that Onorato will have to walk a delicate line if he attempts to cast himself as a reformer.

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski, whose primary challenge from Some Dude got much more interesting when Sarah Palin endorsed said Dude (Joe Miller), won’t be able to count on appointed Gov. Sean Parnell’s explicit backing in the primary. When pressed on the issue at a gubernatorial debate last night, Parnell “visibly squirmed” before saying that he would support whoever wins the primary.

• LA-Sen: I hope your last few days are going better for you than David Vitter’s last few days: yesterday, he had to face a phalanx of reporters interested in the issue of Brent Furer’s continued presence on Vitter’s staff despite his criminal record. Vitter said that was old news, that Furer had been disciplined two years ago, and moreover that Furer hadn’t been assigned to handle women’s issues. Now it’s come out that several legislative guide books, in fact, do list Furer as Vitter’s point man on women’s issues. (TPM’s link has video of Vitter in front of reporters. Think back to the visuals of his post-prostitution-problem press conference, and note again that Vitter is using his wife literally as a human shield.)

• NV-Sen: Ah, Sharron Angle… the gift that just keeps on giving, day after day. Everyone is abuzz that she called the BP oil-spill escrow account a “slush fund,” apparently having learned nothing from Joe Barton getting raked over the coals for saying the same thing (to say nothing of the fact that she threw a dogwhistle reference to Saul Alinsky in there for her ultra-right-wing fans, completely apropos of nothing). After a brief firestorm, Angle is already walking back the “slush fund” comment. And “slush fund” wasn’t even the most outrageous Angle quote that came out today, as it was came out that when she successfully counseled a young girl impregnated after being raped by her father against getting an abortion, she referred to that as turning “a lemon situation into lemonade.” Well, if the GOP was thinking it was OK to let Sharron Angle out of whatever undisclosed bunker they’ve been keeping her in (and Rand Paul and Mark Kirk), it looks like it’s back to the bunker for a few more weeks.

• NY-Sen-B: David Malpass gave some clarification to his comments yesterday that he’d like to be on Carl Paladino’s Taxpayer’s line in November: he won’t seek the line if he isn’t also the GOP nominee, in order to not be a spoiler for the Republican candidate. Bad news for fans of cat fud.

• OH-Sen: Despite Lee Fisher’s fairly consistent if small lead in the polls in this race, there are almost nine million big reasons to be pessimistic about this race, and that’s Rob Portman’s war chest. Portman raised $2.6 million in the second quarter, leaving him with $8.8 million cash on hand.

• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey is out with five (5!) new TV ads, hammering on government spending. His camp says the ads will run “statewide” and for an “indefinite” period of time, but… and you can probably guess what I’m going to say next… no word on the size of the buy.

• GA-Gov: If John Oxendine can pull out a Republican primary victory despite his seeming slide in the polls, his money will have a lot to do with it: he raised $850K in the last two months and is currently sitting on $1.83 million CoH (tops among GOPers, but way behind Dem Roy Barnes’ $4 million). Meanwhile, Nathan Deal, sinking into 3rd place, has been brainstorming about what or who Republican base voters really seem to hate these days, and apparently he’s settled on immigrants, as he’s now loudly touting his plans to duplicate Arizona’s anti-illegal immigrant law in Georgia.

• KY-Gov: PPP takes an advance look at the Kentucky gubernatorial race in 2011, finding that incumbent Dem Steve Beshear (elected easily against hapless Ernie Fletcher in 2007) has a tough re-election fight ahead of him. Beshear (with 38/35 approval) leads Trey Grayson 41-38, but trails Agriculture Comm. Richie Farmer 40-39.

• SC-Gov: The South Carolina Chamber of Commerce is pointedly sticking with its endorsement of Democratic nominee Vincent Sheheen, despite some carping from its internal ranks that they should have endorsed Nikki Haley. The Chamber is framing the issue as that the Governor needs to actually cooperate with the (GOP-controlled) legislature to get things done, something that Mark Sanford didn’t do and that they don’t see Haley changing. The Haley campaign tried playing the TARP card against the Chamber, saying that they’re “a big fan of bailouts and corporate welfare.”

• TX-Gov: Despite increasing evidence of links between the Greens’ petition drive and the Texas GOP’s financial kingpins, the Texas Dems seem to sense they aren’t going to get any further on their efforts to kick the Greens off the ballot (having run into an obstacle in the form of the GOP-owned Texas Supreme Court). They dropped their challenge to the Greens staying on the ballot, which clears the way Green candidate Deb Shafto to appear on the gubernatorial ballot to give the shafto to Bill White. (They’re keeping the case alive at the district court level in an effort to get civil penalties imposed, though.)

• OH-03: I don’t know how many other states do this instead of allowing selection by party bosses, but Ohio is poised to have an unusual “special primary” in the 3rd, on Tuesday, July 13. This was brought about when Mark MacNealy, the Democratic nominee in the 3rd (to go against Republican incumbent Rep. Mike Turner), dropped out of the race post-primary. This race is on absolutely nobody’s radar (although it’s a swing district, so it could be interesting with a top-tier candidate), so I can’t say we’ll be burning the midnight oil liveblogging Tuesday’s contest.

• OH-12: This is a swing district (D+1) with a top-tier Democratic challenger, so the DCCC has been right to tout this as one of our few legitimate offense opportunities. This just may not be the right year, though, if a new internal poll for Rep. Pat Tiberi (from the ubiquitous POS) is to be believed: he leads Dem Franklin Co. Commisioner Paula Brooks by a gaudy 53-28 margin.

• WI-07: With Sean Duffy having reported strong fundraising numbers yesterday, it’s good to see that state Sen. Julie Lassa, who’s trying to hold this seat after David Obey’s late retirement announcement, is raking in the money too. She raised $310K in just six weeks.

• WV-01: After Mike Oliverio walked back his earlier statements from the primary where he was agnostic about voting for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, it seems like Oliverio and the Democratic leadership have kissed and made up, sensing a good opportunity for a Democratic hold here. Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, and Chris Van Hollen have all cut big checks for Oliverio (although, perhaps pointedly, Pelosi herself has not). Oliverio also announced having raised $300K just during the month of June. Given Alan Mollohan’s seeming allergy to fundraising, we may have given ourselves an electoral upgrade here (though definitely not an ideological one).

PPP (pdf) (6/19-21, Pennsylvania voters, 3/29-4/1 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 41 (36)

Pat Toomey (R): 41 (42)

Undecided: 18 (22)

(MoE: ±4%)

PPP gives us the second tied big-name race of the day, this time in Pennsylvania. Enough time seems to have passed since the Democratic primary that any immediate bounce effects have probably worn off, and the net result is a pure tossup between Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak and Republican ex-Rep. Pat Toomey.

Most of Sestak’s gains come from consolidating Democrats behind him; he was drawing only 59% of Dems three months ago, but now he’s up to 70%, while Toomey has the support of 73% of GOPers. Toomey leads 41-21 among independents, but indies make up a much smaller part of the Pennsylvania electorate than most other states. Sestak and Toomey have very similar favorables (29/28 for Sestak, 30/28 for Toomey), so unless something happens to redefine one of them, this is going to be all about turnout. And with a rather Republican-leaning sample here (it went for McCain 48-47 in 2008), that means that if Dems can coax out a few more currently-unlikely voters, they should be in position to pull out the victory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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