Tag: Bill White

The polls are coming so fast and furious these days, we have no choice but to throw weird random assortments at you at all hours of the day.

IN-Sen: EPIC-MRA for WISH-TV (9/29-10/1, likely voters, no trendlines):

Brad Ellsworth (D): 33

Dan Coats (R): 51

Rebecca Sink-Burris (L): 5

(MoE: ±4.4%)

WI-Sen (PDF): Marist for McClatchy Newspapers (9/26-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 45

Ron Johnson (R): 52

Undecided: 3

(MoE: ±4.5%)

RI-Gov, RI-01: Brown University (9/27-29, registered voters, 6/27-30 in parens):

Frank Caprio (D): 30 (28)

John Robitaille (R): 14 (8)

Lincoln Chafee (I): 23 (27)

Undecided: 30 (32)

(MoE: ±4.1%)

David Cicilline (D): 39

John Loughlin (R): 21

Undecided: 31

(MoE: ±6%)

TX-Gov: Public Strategies for KENS 5 and Texas Belo TV (9/26-10/2, likely voters, no trendlines) (crosstabs – PDF):

Bill White (D): 36

Rick Perry (R-inc): 50

Undecided: 9

(MoE: ±3.7%)

• CT-Sen: This might get swallowed up by Linda McMahon’s minimum wage comments, which are still dominating the coverage of this particular race, but here’s a new instance of McMahon getting tripped up by those annoying little facts. At a tea party rally in April, she fended off a question about lobbyists, saying “I have not spent lobbying dollars in Washington.” Disclosures show that WWE, between 2001 and 2008, spent $680K on lobbying expenses, including $340K in 2007-2008 during the period when Congress was investigating use of steroids in sports.

• DE-Sen: When asked about his plans for the Delaware race, John Cornyn (after having gotten goaded into giving Christine O’Donnell $42K post-primary) has returned to sounding disinterested: “We will be supporting Christine O’Donnell as appropriate if that race is competitive. Right now it looks like it is not as competitive as other places around the country.” (Counting down to another blast of anti-NRSC teabagger fury in 3… 2…) Meanwhile, travel back in time (for the future of mankind) to 2002, and check out this great photo of O’Donnell and friends (which ought to further alarm some of her more conservative supporters worried about her witchcraft past… did it involve bat-head biting too?). Is O’Donnell just Paranoid, or is she really riding the Crazy Train?

• AR-Gov: Here’s a poll from the one (count ’em, 1) gubernatorial race in the country where the incumbent Democrat is more or less safe. Hendrix College, on behalf of Talk Business, finds Mike Beebe leading Republican Jim Keet 49-35. That’s a bit of an improvement from their previous poll in July, where Beebe led 50-41.

• CA-Gov: Realizing that she’s on the wrong end of written evidence, Meg Whitman’s trying out a new tactic: blaming her husband (the soap-opera-named Dr. Griff Harsh). Whitman denied knowing about the letter, but now says she “suspects” that the handwriting on the letter regarding her housekeeper’s Social Security number is his. Meanwhile, here’s a link to that Spanish-language TV ad on the housekeeper issue that we mentioned yesterday, as part of the SEIU’s huge cash infusion to this race.

• FL-Gov: With a number of public polls this week showing Rick Scott having moved back into the lead, Alex Sink is leaking an internal poll. She’s leading, although by a much smaller margin than the Mason-Dixon poll from just last week that had her up 7. Instead, she’s up by only 1, 45-44, in the poll taken over Sept. 23-29 (no word on who the pollster is).

• IN-Gov: Retiring Sen. Evan Bayh, of the eight-digit war chest, just gave $500K to the Indiana Democratic Party (after having given $1 million earlier in the year). Presumably that’s to help with the three tight House races there, but many are interpreting it as a sign of goodwill oriented toward bolstering his shot at taking back over as Governor in 2012.

• MA-Gov: I’ll just quote DavidNYC on this: “I hope they sell sacks in XXXL size for Tim Cahill to put his sad into.” How craptacular is your campaign when not just your campaign manager but then your actual running mate bails on you and endorses your opponent? That’s what happened to indie candidate Tim Cahill, whose Lt. Gov. running mate, Republican state Rep. Paul Loscocco, announced that he’s leaving the ticket and backing Charlie Baker instead, perhaps realizing that Cahill’s presence is the main thing keeping Baker from a shot at winning. (Also recall that Loscocco had originally wanted to be Baker’s running mate but got snubbed for that, and accepted Cahill’s offer as something of a fallback.) Cahill, pretty much friendless at this point, just announced in a press conference that he’s staying in the race, though.

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo got an unusual endorsement today, from the always-unpredictable world of Staten Island politics. The Conservative borough president, James Molinaro, threw his backing to Cuomo. (Molinaro is a key ally of Michael Bloomberg. Don’t confuse him with ex-Rep. and county Conservative party chair Guy Molinari, who’s the real power behind the throne on Staten Island.) Also, the war between Carl Paladino (last seen going ballistic on the venerable Fred Dicker) and the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post seems to be intensifying, if the latest opus from editor-in-chief Col Allen is any indication (note the intentional use of plural form!). If you’re a Republican in New York and you’ve lost the Post, well, you’ve lost.

Mr. Caputo should check his facts before making charges against Post personnel. In addition, Mr. Paladino should not be surprised by the media’s interest in his families…

• OH-13: Now this is seems like it has some game-changing potential here: Tom Ganley, the moneybags car dealer who’s turned the Dem-leaning 13th into a real race, just got sued for sexual assault by a former enthusiastic supporter who says she met him at a Tea Party rally and tried to volunteer for his campaign. Ganley, she says, wanted her to volunteer for some rather different duties:

While she waited in Ganley’s office, the suit says, he made sexually suggestive comments and invited her to join him and his friends at a condominium he owns in Strongsville. Ganley gave her a $100 bill and told her to buy some lingerie and high-heeled shoes, according to the lawsuit.

Ganley told her he wanted her to dominate her, parade her on a leash and have sex with her in front of his “play friends,” the suit says. It accuses him of grabbing her from behind, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her and, despite her resistance, reaching into her pants.

Naturally, the Ganley camp is calling the suit “extortion” and politically motivated.

• PA-07: Now that primary season is over, we’ve pretty much stopped reporting on union endorsements, as they shouldn’t come as any surprise at this point… except when they endorse the Republican. That’s what happened in the 7th, though, as the United Aerospace Workers local gave its backing to Pat Meehan. (They’re a major presence in the district, given the large Boeing helicopter plant near the Philly airport.)

• Enthusiasm gap: PPP hasn’t been putting out very encouraging numbers lately, but they do offer some cause for optimism that may or may not pan out: with Republican unity pretty much maxed out, the enthusiasm gap can’t do anything but shrink. They point out that there are many more Democratic undecideds than Republican ones right now. They show that’s especially profound in the Illinois races (and that late coming-home may be what’s propelling Pat Quinn all of a sudden), and, although it’s not on their chart, I’d guess also in Pennsylvania, where the Dem undecideds have always been strangely high and we may be seeing some gap-closing beginning too.

• Money: If you’ve noticed that there’s a crapload of independent expenditures coming from billionaire-funded 527s and 501(c)(3)s in the last month, pretty much wiping out whatever cash advantage the Democratic congressional committees had over the GOP committees, you’re not alone in that realization. Bloomberg calculates that independent organizations have outspent the parties combined in trying to buy shape the election: $33 million from folks like American Crossroads and the Chamber of Commerce, compared with $20 million from all of the party committees.

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski works fast to turn Joe Miller’s ill-advised drapes-measuring tweets against him, with a new radio ad

• IL-Sen: Here’s another ad with cute babies, this time from Mark Kirk, but this time not about abortion but how DEBT WILL CRUSH US ALL!!1!

• NH-Gov: Wow, the RGA must suddenly sense they have an opportunity here, and they have an ad up hitting John Lynch on spending

• TX-Gov: Rick Perry can’t coast to re-election this time and he’s up with another ad, this time hitting Bill White on one of his perceived strengths (emergency management during Hurricane Rita)

• FL-08: The NRCC hits back against Alan Grayson for his “Taliban Dan” ad against Dan Webster, calling Grayson “a national embarrassment”

• IL-10: The DCCC does a half-and-half ad, touting Dan Seals’ business background and hitting Bob Dold! on pro-life and tea party connections

• Rasmussen:

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 41%, Rick Scott (R) 46%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 40%, Pat Toomey (R) 49%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 44%, Scott Walker (R) 50%

• IA-Sen: Selzer & Co. for Des Moines Register (9/19-22, likely voters, 11/8-11/09 in parentheses):

Roxanne Conlin (D): 30 (30)

Charles Grassley (R-inc): 61 (57)

Undecided: 6 (10)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

Not much to see here other than the remarkable consistency over the almost one year’s period since the previous Selzer poll of this race. (I just learned a new word today, while searching for how to describe this race, linked to the Chet Culver vortex: “syntropy.” It’s synergy + entropy.)

• NH-Sen, NH-Gov: American Research Group (9/22-26, likely voters, Dec. 2009 in parentheses):

Paul Hodes (D): 32 (36)

Kelly Ayotte (R): 46 (43)

Undecided: 20 (21)

John Lynch (D-inc): 42

John Stephen (R): 40

Undecided: 14

(MoE: ±3.5%)

ARG, mateys! Here be a mighty treasure trove of undecided scallywags! (And here be the gubernatorial link.)

• OH-Sen, OH-Gov: Univ. of Cincinnati for various Ohio newspapers (9/16-20, likely voters, 5/11-20 in parentheses):

Lee Fisher (D): 40 (47)

Rob Portman (R): 55 (46)

Undecided: 5 (6)

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 45 (49)

John Kasich (R): 49 (44)

Undecided: 6 (6)

(MoE: ±3.4%)

University of Cincinnati hasn’t been in the field for a while, so they missed the very steady decline of the Dems in Ohio, making it look like more of a sudden collapse. At any rate, this is actually Ted Strickland’s best non-internal showing since early August.

• WA-Sen: Commonsense Ten is out with a $412K independent expenditure in the Washington Senate race, on Patty Murray’s behalf. (Wondering who they are? This Hotline article from July explains how they’re something of a Dem answer to groups like American Crossroads, as well as giving some legal background on just how it came to be that the super-wealthy can give endless money to 527s to spend endlessly on IEs.) Meanwhile, there are dueling ads in Washington. As one might expect, Patty Murray lets Dino Rossi hang himself with his own anti-Boeing words, while Rossi hits Murray on her support of tarps. (Since most Washingtonians own several tarps — they only thing that allows them to go camping during the ten rainy months of the year — I don’t see what the big deal is.)

• WV-Sen: The Dems are definitely getting active in here: the AFL-CIO is out with a huge direct mail blitz in West Virginia, and the DSCC is placing a major ad buy there starting tomorrow. In the meantime, John Raese, Tweeter and Facepage aficionado, is sticking to the GOP party line on global warming: it’s all volcanoes’ fault! (Wait… I thought it was sunspots. They’d better get their stories straight.)

• AK-Gov: Bill Walker, after weeks of dithering in the wake of losing the GOP gubernatorial primary, has formally decided against a write-in bid (despite having an easier-to-spell name than Murkowski). No word on an endorsement of either Sean Parnell or Ethan Berkowitz, although Berkowitz has been steadily reaching out to Walker.

• GA-Gov: With Nathan Deal not really having done much to deflect the attention being paid to his family’s imminent financial collapse, now he’s having to run damage control on another issue: his campaign is accused of having spent $135K to lease aircraft from a company where Deal himself is a part-owner. State ethics law bars candidates from using campaign funds for personal benefit, although the open legal question here is whether this turns into “personal benefit.”

• NM-Gov: Third Eye Strategies for Diane Denish (9/21-23, likely voters, no trendlines):

Diane Denish (D): 46

Susana Martinez (R): 46

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±4.4%)

This is kind of odd… we just got a Diane Denish internal poll from a totally different pollster (GQR) in the middle of last week. Does she have two different pollsters working for her? At any rate, the news is decidedly better in this one, showing a tie where last week’s poll had her down by 5.

• TX-Gov: Blum & Weprin for Texas newspapers (9/15-22, likely voters, 2/2-10 in parentheses):

Bill White (D): 39 (37)

Rick Perry (R-inc): 46 (43)

Kathie Glass (L): 4 (-)

Deb Shafto (G): 1 (-)

Undecided: 8 (13)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

The Texas race is extremely stable (check out the flatness in Pollster‘s regression lines, with a mid-single-digits spread). While I’d like to think that Bill White can get over 50% on his own, his best hope at this point might be for Libertarian candidate Kathie Glass to start taking a bigger share (presumably out of Rick Perry’s hide, via the same crowd who went for Debra Medina in the primary).

• FL-24: Hamilton Campaigns for Suzanne Kosmas (9/22-23, likely voters, 8/25-29 in parentheses):

Suzanne Kosmas (D-inc): 45 (43)

Sandy Adams (R): 43 (49)

Undecided: 12 (9)

(MoE: ±3.7%)

This is the first internal we’ve seen from Team Kosmas, and while it’s not the kind of numbers that fill you with great confidence (up 2 in one’s own internal), it is an indicator that we’re still looking at a Tossup here instead of Lean R (which is where some of the other prognosticators have been sticking this one). The movement in Kosmas’s direction suggests that voters have found out more about the crazier side of Adams in the wake of her surprise primary victory.

• MS-04: Tarrance Group for Steven Palazzo (9/21-22, likely voters, December 2009 Tarrance Grop poll for NRCC in parentheses):

Gene Taylor (D-inc): 45 (68)

Steven Palazzo (R): 41 (24)

(MoE: ± ?%)

There were reports last week that the NRCC was starting to smell smoke in this race (despite having an underfunded, low-name-rec candidate in Palazzo), and was going to try out a round of polling. Seems like their hunch may be right, as long-time Rep. Gene Taylor (who hasn’t given Dems much reason to take interest in him lately… well, ever, really) is up only by single-digits in a new poll from the Palazzo camp.

• PA-10: Momentum Analysis for Chris Carney (9/23-25, likely voters, no trendlines):

Chris Carney (D-inc): 46

Tom Marino (R): 38

Undecided: 17

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Chris Carney, having been slightly on the wrong end of a public poll from the Times-Leader (and on the very wrong end of that sketchy AFF poll last month), rolls out an internal giving him an 8-point lead over Tom Marino. Marino (who’s pretty underfunded, although the NRCC is starting to get involved) is little-known (only 26/24 faves), so this is going to be one of many races where the Dem’s survival is based on localizing in order to fend off Generic R.

• PA-16: I’m not sure what to make of this: the uphill campaign of Lois Herr (going against Joe Pitts in the 16th, which is solidly Republican but moved a lot in the Dems’ direction in 2008) is out with a second internal poll from PPP that has her within single digits of the GOP incumbent. Pitts leads 41-34, which seems kind of bizarre considering that we’re seeing polls in Pennsylvania with incumbent Dems losing by larger margins than that in much friendlier districts.

• SD-AL: Bennett Petts and Normington for Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (9/22-23, likely voters, no trendlines):

Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc): 51

Kristi Noem (R): 38

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Here’s one race that seems to be becoming a little more comfortable for the Democrats. (Recall that Herseth Sandlin led in the last Rasmussen poll of this race, after months of trailing.) I wonder how much of that has to do with the reveal of Noem’s atrocious driving record, given voters’ memories of leadfooted ex-Rep. Bill Janklow?

• DLCC: If you’re looking to really micro-target your financial contributions to where your dollars get stretched the furthest and the leverage is the greatest (given the knife-edges on which many state legislatures, and the entire 2012 redistricting process, rest) the DLCC has rolled out its “Essential Races” program. This points to some of the tightest races in the tightest chambers; the link details their first wave of 20.

• CA-Init: There are some Field Poll leftovers to look at, concerning three of the biggest initiatives on the ballot this year. The news is good all around, although the margins aren’t decisive: Proposition 19 (marijuana legalization) is passing 49-42 (it was failing 44-48 in the July Field Poll). Proposition 23 (undoing greenhouse gases limiting legislation) is failing 34-45. And maybe most importantly, Proposition 25 (allowing budget passage with a simple majority) is passing 46-30.

• Florida: Mason-Dixon’s latest Florida poll (we gave you Sen and Gov numbers over the weekend) has a lot of miscellany in the fine print that’s worth checking out. They find the GOP leading narrowly in three major downballot races: Pam Bondi leads Dan Gelber in the AG race 38-34, Jeff Atwater leads Loranne Ausley in the CFO race 29-27, and Adam Putnam leads Scott Maddox in the Ag Comm race 36-32. They also find that Amendment 4 has a shot at passing; it’s up 53-26, although bear in mind that you need to clear 60% for a Florida initiative. Amendment 4 would require localities to put changes to comprehensive zoning plans up to a public vote; Josh Goodman has a good discussion of it today along with several other initiatives in other states that may pass despite having both sides of the entire political establishment lined up against them.

• SSP TV:

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio rolls out his first ad en espanol, a biographical spot

• PA-Sen: How many freakin’ ads has Pat Toomey come out with? Anyway, here’s another one

• CT-02: Joe Courtney stresses his independence, especially regarding TARP

• CT-05: Chris Murphy’s new ad focuses on stopping outsourcing

• PA-03, PA-11: The DCCC is out with new ads in the 3rd and 11th, continuing the trends of hitting Mike Kelly as out-of-touch millionaire and hitting Lou Barletta for sucking as Hazleton mayor

• Rasmussen:

• AL-Sen: William Barnes (D) 30%, Richard Shelby (R-inc) 58%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 50%, Linda McMahon (R) 45%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 49%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 40%, Mike Castle (I) 5%

• GA-Sen: Michael Thurmond (D) 36%, Johnny Isakson (R-inc) 52%

• IA-Gov: Chet Culver (D-inc) 37%, Terry Branstad (R) 55%

• ND-Sen: Tracy Potter (D) 25%, John Hoeven (R) 68%

• SC-Sen: Alvin Greene (D) 21%, Jim DeMint (R-inc) 64%

• DE-Sen: One more Real World alum in the political news: that’s first-season vet Eric Neis debating Christine O’Donnell in this new 90s video that’s surfaced. Ooops, I’m burying the lede: the point of the video is that O’Donnell answers in the affirmative when asked if she wants to stop the whole country from having sex.

• KY-Sen: Benenson Strategy Group for DSCC (9/14-19, likely voters, early Sept. in parentheses):

Jack Conway (D): 42 (45)

Rand Paul (R): 45 (47)

Undecided: 13 (8)

(MoE: ±3.7%)

The newest Benenson poll from the DSCC shows things pretty stable in the Kentucky race, with Jack Conway hanging back within striking distance of Rand Paul. They also find Conway leading 48-45 among those who actually know both candidates (and find Paul with greater name recognition: 84%, to 72% for Conway).

• MO-Sen: The DSCC is also out with an internal poll in Missouri, one of the other races where they’d like you to know they’re still playing offense, courtesy of Garin Hart Yang (no mention of the dates, MoE, or any of that useful stuff, though… just a leak to the Fix). The poll has Robin Carnahan trailing Roy Blunt 45-41 (and only 41-40 without leaners). Roy Blunt, meanwhile, is engaging in typical frontrunner behavior, trying to limit debates (to avoid any grist for the negative ad mill); there will only be two debates, neither in a network TV setting.

• NC-Sen: National Research for Civitas (9/15-17, likely voters, 7/19-21 in parentheses):

Elaine Marshall (D): 29 (37)

Richard Burr (R-inc): 49 (44)

Mike Beitler (L): 3 (3)

Undecided: 17 (15)

(MoE: ±4%)

Thanks to a big lead with unaffiliateds (48-21), Richard Burr has a big lead in North Carolina. With a big financial disparity, unless there’s some outside assistance, that lead’s probably going to continue (although I’d be surprised if it’s actually a full 20 points). One other interesting note: Civitas hires out third-party pollsters, and this is their first poll since they switched to Republican internal pollster National Research.

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: The only evidence we have of this poll is a Jon Ralston tweet, but apparently there’s a poll rumbling around behind the scenes from a reputable Republican pollster that gives a 5-point lead to Harry Reid, 42-37 (among RVs). That’s quite plausible; the real shock here, though, is that it also finds Rory Reid trailing only by 6 in the governor’s race.

• WV-Sen: The big news here is probably that the NRSC is plowing $1.2 million into this race, hoping for the upset (as this race seems to be increasingly taking the place of Washington and California) or at least to pull DSCC fire away from elsewhere. That’s just to run one new ad, tying Joe Manchin to Barack Obama; part of the expense is that the ad is running in the DC market, so it can reach the Panhandle. (You can see the IE filing here.)

One more plus, though, for Joe Manchin, is that he’s getting the NRA’s endorsement (one more in a seemingly endless parade of ConservaDems getting backed this week). Also, some details about John Raese are surfacing that may lead to ads that write themselves: photos of his marble-driveway Florida mansion, where it turns out his family lives full-time (presumably because of Florida’s big juicy homestead exemption, but also because of the schools, as he wants a school system he “believes in”)… and Raese’s own description, in a radio interview yesterday, of how hard he worked for his riches:

RAESE: I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. I think that’s a great thing to do. I hope more people in this country have that opportunity as soon as we abolish inheritance tax in this country, which is a key part of my program.

• AZ-Gov: Here’s a look at the financial situation in Arizona, where both gubernatorial candidates are relying on clean elections public financing in their bids. Dem Terry Goddard has about $1 million left to spend, while Jan Brewer has $860K left. Goddard also spent more in the last reporting period, spending $477K to Brewer’s $291K.

• MA-Gov: If you’re shedding your main campaign strategist with 40 days to go, that’s probably a sign that you’re not going to win. That’s what happened with the Tim Cahill camp, who said goodbye to John Weaver. Having seen Cahill’s share plunge into the single digits, Weaver said (in a parting shot) at this point, Cahill’s candidacy is just hurting Charlie Baker’s chances.

• NY-Gov: Marist (9/14-19, likely voters, no trendlines):

Andrew Cuomo (D): 53 (67)

Carl Paladino (R): 34 (22)

Rick Lazio (C) : 9 (NA)

Undecided: 6 (11)

(MoE: ±4%)

I don’t know if the Marist poll exactly qualifies as a tie-breaker in the New York gubernatorial race, but it’s a likely voter poll (instead of an RV poll, like Siena), and it doesn’t have that outlier-ish whiff that Quinnipiac had. Also adding to its potential credibility: it’s about halfway between the two, if erring somewhat on the side of Andrew Cuomo’s safety. (It looks like they’ll release Senate numbers later, separately.)

• CA-47: This is the first time I’ve ever used the scary all-caps to put words in the mouth of a Democratic candidate, but Loretta Sanchez just sent up the alarm that THE VIETNAMESE ARE COMING FOR HER SEAT!!!1!! Not just Van Tran, but apparently all of them!!! I suppose that’s a dog-whistle of sorts to her Latino base in this seat that has a Latino majority (though not a lot of actual voters among them) and a politically active Asian minority, where her Republican challenger is Vietnamese. Kind of a faceplant moment for Sanchez, who has had good outreach to the Vietnamese community in the past (up until now, I’d imagine) and has relied on their votes to stay in office.

• MI-01: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Gary McDowell (9/21-22, likely voters, no trendlines):

Gary McDowell (D): 38

Dan Benishek (R): 41

Glenn Wilson (I): 12

Undecided: 9

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Here are some not-bad numbers from an internal for Gary McDowell, showing this is one of the few Republican-leaning open seats where we’re still in fighting shape right now. McDowell’s offering some pushback against a Dan Benishek internal that gave Benishek a 39-25 lead in a race that also includes wealthy independent Glenn Wilson.

• MI-07: It’s a little late in the game for ex-Rep. Tim Walberg to be jumping on the birther train (that’s so 2009…) but he just said that he doesn’t know if Obama was born in the U.S. Meanwhile, his incumbent Dem opponent, Mark Schauer, is out with an internal poll in response to the Rossman Group poll that gave a 4-point lead to Walberg. Schauer’s poll, taken 9/21-22 by Myers Research, finds a mirror-image 4-point lead for Schauer, 49-45 (or if you’d prefer inclusion of all third-party candidates, he’s up 45-43).  

• NRCC: The NRCC is wading into six more districts that they haven’t been in before, with IE ad buys. Most (except for WA-03) of these districts feel like “Lean Dem” districts right now, but where the GOP thinks it can make some inroads: Ike Skelton’s MO-04, Chris Carney’s PA-10, Steve Kagen’s WI-08, Martin Heinrich’s NM-01, and the open seats in MA-10 and WA-03.

• AFF: The financially-disadvantaged NRCC can’t win this all on its own, so AFF is keeping up its IEs, too. They’re going on the air in four new districts, two of which overlap the above list. They’re hitting SD-AL ($360K), TX-17 ($117K), NM-01 ($290K), and WA-03 ($875K).

• SSP TV:

• CO-Sen: The softer side of Ken Buck? He’s out with a positive ad with testimonials from senior citizens

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist simultaneously hits both his opponents on corruption issues in one ad, hitting Kendrick Meek’s real estate dealing and Marco Rubio’s enthusiastic use of RPOF credit cards

• NC-Sen: It seemed to work well the first time for Richard Burr, so the rocking chair guys are back for another round

• NV-Sen: The newest ad from Harry Reid hits Sharron Angle for not supporting requiring health insurers to cover mammograms and colonoscopies

• NY-Sen-A: Chuck Schumer’s running his first ad of the cycle, a bio spot, on local cable

• PA-Sen: Pat Toomey’s newest ad is a hard negative one linking Joe Sestak to Barack Obama; interestingly, it’s not running in the Philadelphia market

• WA-Sen: Dem group Commonsense Ten is out with an anti-Dino Rossi ad throwing the kitchen sink at him, including the foreclosure seminars

• CA-Gov: The latest Meg Whitman opus attacks Jerry Brown over Oakland schools during his tenure as mayor

• CA-47: Loretta Sanchez launches a negative ad against Van Tran, featuring him asleep on the job (during an Assembly budget all-nighter)

• LA-03: Bet you’d forgotten there’s still one race where the field isn’t set? (There’s still a GOP runoff here.) Anyway, Hunt Downer is out with an ad full of adorable babies… to make the point that Jeff Landry is insufficiently pro-life

• PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper engages in some fat-cat bashing, tying Mike Kelly to Wall Street

• Rasmussen:

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 44%, Rick Scott (R) 50%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 40%, Charlie Crist (I) 31%

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 41%, Tom Emmer (R) 42%, Tom Horner (I) 9%

• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 34%, Mary Fallin (R) 60%

• SC-Gov: Vincent Sheheen (D) 33%, Nikki Haley (R) 50%

• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 42%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 48%

• AR-Sen: Mason-Dixon takes another look at the Arkansas Senate race, on behalf of Arkansas News Bureau. Blanche Lincoln hasn’t gotten any deader than she was before: she trails John Boozman 51-34, with 4 for other minor candidates (no real change from the last time they polled, back in May pre-primary, where Boozman led 52-35). Lincoln’s faves have improved a smidge: now 30/47, instead of 28/53.

• DE-Sen: Whooo, where even to begin? The national media is just starting to dig into Christine O’Donnell’s gigantic and eminently mineable opposition file, with NPR and ABC detailing her history of getting fired from right-wing think tanks and her suing for discrimination in response, of IRS audits that she blamed on “thug politics” and liens that she blamed on “computer errors,” of failure to pay for her college, and of using her campaign money to pay the rent on her house as it’s also her campaign headquarters. We also know about her stance on AIDS prevention, thanks to helpful tipsters in the comments. At least O’Donnell’s faring well in the fundraising department, raising $1 million since her victory (with Chris Coons raising only $125K, showing the harmful effects of a short-of-the-endzone victory dance). Not leaving things to chance, reports are coming in that Joe Biden will campaign for Coons “next week” and that the DSCC is starting to put money into Delaware, starting with an $85K buy in the Salisbury market.

The establishment isn’t budging much on her: the state’s virulently anti-O’Donnell GOP chair, Tom Ross, is staying in place (though calling for “unity”), and Karl Rove, although he sorta backed down in the face of a Rush Limbaugh broadside, is still challenging O’Donnell to be “honest” to voters about her difficulties… and again running through the list of all those difficulties in his media appearances. Meanwhile, O’Donnell strips…. her website, perhaps at the urging of the NRSC; after her nomination, all issues stuff vanished and it just became a donation ask. Still, Harry Reid seems to be doing all he can to fuck this up, issuing a strange quote that should play right into the whole “Obama/Reid/Pelosi agenda!!1!” messaging, expressing enthusiasm for Chris Coons but calling him his “pet.”

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov (pdf): Part of the CNN/Time onslaught yesterday was polls of Nevada (which we’re relegating to the digest, as this state, as we’ve complained before, is veering rapidly into over-polled territory). This raised some eyebrows for showing a Sharron Angle lead over Harry Reid (42-41, with 5 for Scott Ashjian) among LVs, but that’s only a point or three off from the narrow band of results that Mason-Dixon and Rasmussen have been consistently generating. (Reid leads 42-34-7 among RVs.) Many people (starting with Jon Ralston) also seemed surprised by some crosstabs weirdness, showing the race a dead heat in Democratic-favorable Clark County but giving Reid a big lead in swingy Washoe County. Brian Sandoval leads Rory Reid 58-31 in the Gov race.

• CA-Gov: It’s official: Meg Whitman is now the biggest self-funder in political history, having shown that piker Michael Bloomberg how it’s done. She gave her campaign another $15 million, which brings her personal spending on the race to $118 million overall.

• CO-Gov: Dan Maes just picked up Scott McInnis’s former campaign manager, George Culpepper, so it seems like the local GOP establishment isn’t totally abandoning him. The Colorado Independent has an in-depth piece, though, with a more nuanced look, based on interviews with at least a dozen county GOP chairs. Some of them fully back Maes, some grudgingly do so, some back Tom Tancredo, and some are still in a state of shock.

• GA-Gov: After doing some pushback yesterday, Nathan “Let’s Make a” Deal had to admit today that, yes, he is in some personally dire financial straits, saying his debts are even bigger than the $2.3 million loan that’s outstanding… but also saying that he isn’t releasing any more financial records to the press. It also turns out that he never disclosed that loan to the state Ethics Commission on his financial disclosure form, which he’s now scrambling to update.

• MI-Gov: EPIC-MRA’s out with yet another poll of the Michigan gubernatorial race; I think we can start relegating their frequent polls of this pretty-much-out-of-reach race to the digest, too. They give Rick Snyder a 53-29 lead over Virg Bernero (a slight improvement for Snyder over 51-29 three weeks ago).

• UT-Gov: OK, what kind of a world is it when we’re faring better in the Utah governor’s race than we are in Michigan? Not like this is a competitive race either, but it could be a good dress rehearsal for a 2012 rematch (remember that this 2010 race is a special election). Dem Peter Corroon trails Gary Herbert by “only” 21 points, 52-31, in a poll taken by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret News and KSL. The numbers haven’t really changed since their previous poll in April (where Herbert led by 20).

• CA-11: As with 2008, Jerry McNerney rolled out endorsements from some local elected Republicans, as part of a list of 16 county supervisors and mayors who are backing him. Maybe most notable is the backing from the mayor of Manteca (or, in Spanish, Lard), Willie Weatherford, who had previously backed GOP primary loser Brad Goehring.

• CO-03: Here’s a boost for John Salazar, in a suddenly-tough race in this rural western district against Republican Scott Tipton: he got the backing of the National Rifle Association, with an “A” rating.

• IA-02: Another warning sign for David Loebsack: the Mariannette Miller-Meeks campaign is out with another internal poll, showing her creeping closer than her previous one. The Tarrance Group poll has her trailing Loebsack by only 1 point: 41-40 (with 6 for a Libertarian). She could do some damage her with more money.

• LA-02: Lawyer Ron Austin dropped out of the LA-02 race today, where he was an independent candidate. This is really the first I’d ever heard of him, so I can’t imagine he’d have been much of a factor here; I can’t glean whether he was running on the left or the right, but he is African-American, so that in itself may shift at least a handful of votes in Cedric Richmond’s direction in what may yet turn out to be a close race. Two other no-name indies remain.

• MD-01: One other internal poll got leaked to the Fix today, too, and this one’s a pleasant surprise for the Dems. Frank Kratovil is still claiming a lead over Andy Harris, who just won the GOP nod for a rematch. Kratovil’s poll by Garin-Hart-Yang gives him a 45-39 lead. (When I say “still,” Kratovil released an earlier internal with a 5-point lead. Harris has released two internals of his own giving him a lead.)

• MO-04: Here’s the good news: Ike Skelton got a shared endorsement from Missouri Right to Life, along with GOP challenger Vicky Hartzler. The bad news is: Skelton has generally had that endorsement to himself in the past.

• NY-14: Give Reshma Saujani credit for one thing: she’s persistent. She’s already announced that she’ll try again in 2012 to unseat Carolyn Maloney in the NY-14 Dem primary.

• NY-23: Local teabaggers (or at least one of them) sound pretty upset with Conservative nominee (and GOP primary loser) Doug Hoffman, meaning that he, rather than the GOP nominee, may find himself in the third-wheel position this time around. Mark Barie, chairman of a local Tea Party organization criticized Hoffman for a listless campaign run by outsiders with little familiarity with the district. He threw his support behind Matt Doheny, who appears to have narrowly won the GOP primary despite a late close by Hoffman in late counting.

• CfG: The Club for Growth launched a five-state buy in Senate races, to a total tune of $1.5 million (no word on specific allocation). The states under assault are Colorado, Florida, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

• NRCC: Two different rounds of TV ad buys came from the NRCC today. The first one was in WA-03 ($900K) and NM-01 ($300K), and a second one covers PA-10 ($595K), NH-01 ($1 mil), NH-02 ($1 mil), FL-08 ($817K), FL-24 ($817K), and VA-09 ($?).

• SSP TV:

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer goes negative against Carly Fiorina in a new spot, hitting her on (what else?) her failed tenure at HP

• MO-Sen: A new spot against Roy Blunt from Dem group Commonsense Ten (never heard of ’em, either) hits his consummate insider credentials

• PA-Sen: Yet another ad from Pat Toomey, this one featuring an oppressed doctor who doesn’t like HCR (who just happens to be a big Republican activist too, not the ad says that)

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi’s first negative ad features him personally narrating an attack on Patty Murray (instead of using the off-camera voice of doom); he calls her “part of the problem”

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid’s newest TV spot, by way of fighting back against Angle’s attacks on immigration issues, just goes ahead and says it: it calls Sharron Angle “crazy”

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo doesn’t want to leave anything to chance despite his big lead (he has the money to burn, at any rate), and he’s out with a new bio ad (not that he needs much introduction)

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato tries introducing himself to Pennsylvania again, this time with a shorter 30-second ad that helpfully lets people know how to pronounce his name

• TX-Gov: Even Rick Perry’s going negative: three different ads go after Bill White, two trying to tie him to Barack Obama and one attacking his handling of Hurricane Rita

• VT-Gov: The RGA wades into Vermont with a negative ad against Peter Shumlin, hitting him on taxes

• CT-04: Jim Himes has not one but two new ads, stressing his independence and debt hawkishness

• KS-03: Stephene Moore’s first ad plays up her day job as a nurse

• ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy has two different anti-Rick Berg ads, one of which focuses on his crazy plans to drill for oil in Theodore Roosevelt National Park

• NH-02: Ann McLane Kuster (who’s now rebranded herself as “Annie Kuster”) goes negative on Charlie Bass in her first ad, framing him as failed retread

• NY-20: Scott Murphy’s newest spot focuses on his own personal record of job creation as businessman before entering Congress

• TX-17: Chet Edwards is out with a positive ad, touting his work on veteran’s issues like VA health care

• WA-02: John Koster tries to cram both a negative ad and a positive ad into a discordant 30 seconds

• WI-07: Sean Duffy plays up his lumberjack credentials, saying he’ll “take an ax” to Washington (I’ll admit, that’s kinda clever)

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 45%, Ken Buck (R) 49%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 53%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 42%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 44%, Kelly Ayotte (R) 51%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 39%, Brian Sandoval (R) 52%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 39%, Tom Corbett (R) 49%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 51%, Dino Rossi (R) 46%

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski is still mum on the prospects of a write-in run, but this looks like a potentially important tea leaf: she isn’t returning to the Beltway as the Senate goes back into session, but is remaining in Alaska attending to… something. Maybe it’s the grieving process, but it’s also shades of how Bob Bennett behaved while he weighed his post-primary recourse. And while this hadn’t looked likely in a week, Libertarian candidate David Haase confirmed he won’t step down to make way for Murkowski on the Libertarian line… so it’s write-in or bust for her.

• DE-Sen: With everyone abuzz over last night’s PPP poll giving Christine O’Donnell an improbable lead in the GOP primary, there’s word today of a Mike Castle internal giving him a 7-point lead (it’s buried deep in this Politico article, with no further details). PPP has some further thoughts on their poll, pointing out that in some ways Castle might be in worse shape than Lisa Murkowski going into the primary: his faves among GOP voters were 43/47, compared with Murk’s 48/46, and 55% thought he was too liberal, compared to 47% in Alaska. At any rate, the right wing is still engaged in full court press on O’Donnell’s behalf, though, with Sarah Palin cutting a radio ad for her. And if you’re like me, you were spending a lot of time last night trying to mentally ballpark how big an impact on an O’Donnell win would have on overall odds of retaining the Senate… well, don’t worry, because Nate Silver has already figured it out for you.

• ME-Sen: So after Murkowski and Castle, which GOPer is next on the chopping block? Looks like it’s Olympia Snowe, looking ahead to 2012. PPP finds that only 29% of Republicans are committed to backing Snowe in that year’s primary, with 63% saying they’ll back a more conservative alternative. Snowe loses a hypothetical primary matchup with 2006 gubernatorial nominee Chandler Woodcock, 38-33.

• NH-Sen: GOP pollster Magellan is out with a last-minute pre-primary look at the GOP Senate field, and they find the closest result yet for late-surging Ovide Lamontagne. It still doesn’t look likely he can pull out the upset unless somehow an extra week or two of stoppage time got added to the election’s clock (based on the rate at which he’s closing), but he’s within 4. The poll puts it at Kelly Ayotte 35, Lamontagne 31, Bill Binnie 14, Jim Bender 10.

• CO-Gov: Could the Colorado GOP find itself a “minor party” in 2012, mostly just an embarrassment but also something that affects where they’re positioned on the ballot? That’s what would happen if Dan Maes somehow finds himself gaining less than 10% of the vote in November’s gubernatorial race.

• MN-Gov: In a convoluted way, this is likely to help Dem nominee Mark Dayton. The former moderate Republican governor, Arne Carlson, announced that he’s backing the IP nominee, Tom Horner, and will be stumping on his behalf today. That may give some a nice outlet to moderate Republican rank-and-file loath to the too-far-right-for-Minnesota Tom Emmer but who can’t bring themselves to vote DFL.

• OR-Gov: Chris Dudley’s attempts to game the system vis-à-vis the clashing tax structures of Washington and Oregon get dicier the more the media look into it, maybe to the extent of actual tax avoision. (It’s a word. Look it up.) Long story short: he moved his primary residence from Oregon to Washington because Washington doesn’t have income tax (he still had to pay tax on his Trail Blazers salary, but not on capital gains and dividends). However, it’s come to light that not only did he not sell his Portland home, but he just kept on using it at least part-time for years after switching his domicile.

• TX-Gov (pdf): The Texas Tribune is out with another poll of the Texas gubernatorial race via the University of Texas, and they find that while Rick Perry has a decent lead, he’s far from putting the race away yet. Perry leads Dem Bill White 39-33, with 5 for Libertarian Kathie Glass, and 1 for “Green Party” plant Deb Shafto. Dems are losing all the statewide downballot races as well, although Hank Gilbert’s in striking distance in the Agriculture Commissioner race (down 33-26 to Todd Staples).

• LA-02: Despite the warm relations between Barack Obama and GOP Rep. Joe Cao, Obama isn’t going easy on Cao. Obama just gave his endorsement to Dem primary winner Cedric Richmond in a statement last night.

• MD-01: Wow, still no love lost between Wayne Gilchrest and the man who teabagged him to death in the 2008 GOP primary before teabagging was fashionable, Andy Harris. Gilchrest jumped into the fray with an endorsement for Harris’s self-funding primary opponent, Rob Fisher.

• NY-15: Clinton alert, times 4! Hot on the heels of support from Michael Bloomberg for Charlie Rangel ahead of tomorrow’s primary, Bill Clinton (maybe the 15th’s most famous commercial tenant) just cut a robocall on Rangel’s behalf too. The Big Dog is also making campaign appearances in three different gubernatorial races: stumping with Dan Onorato in Pennsylvania today, Mark Dayton in Minnesota tomorrow, and Rory Reid in Nevada on Wednesday.

• DCCC: At SSP, we’re all about The Size Of The Buy, and National Journal has sussed out which of the DCCC’s round of 60 reservations are the biggest ones. There are at least a dozen districts where they’ve reserved $1 million or more: MO-04, NV-03, NH-01, AZ-01, CA-11, AL-02, AZ-05, IN-09, ND-AL, PA-03, and (no surprise here, giving Larry Kissell’s fundraising fail) NC-08. Interestingly, they’re also putting $1.8 million in to FL-25, where they’re on the offensive, a sign of a lot of confidence in Joe Garcia’s chances. (The story also details some investments in big markets where there are multiple races and it’s unclear which races will get the money.)

• AFL-CIO: The AFL-CIO is spending big on a gigantic direct mail binge, hitting 2 million households of members. (They’ll also be making 4 million follow-up phone calls.) The six Senate races involved are NV-Sen, MO-Sen, WI-Sen, IL-Sen, FL-Sen, and PA-Sen; the four gubernatorial races are OR-Gov, OH-Gov, IL-Gov, and MI-Gov. There are also 24 House districts (see the link for more).

• SSP TV:

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid’s newest ad targets Sharron Angle’s “extreme and dangerous” legislative record, focusing on voting against allowing out-of-state restraining orders to be enforced in Nevada

• FL-12: Dennis Ross goes after Dem Lori Edwards, tying her to Obama

• FL-22: Ron Klein moves past the who-cares lien stuff and gets on to the juicy stuff regarding Allen West’s statements about Social Security and Medicare

• MS-01: Another Travis Childers spot goes negative on Alan Nunnelee, hitting him on the regressive “Fair Tax”

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy (D) 46%, Tom Foley (R) 39%

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 37%, Bill Brady (R) 50%, Rich Whitney (G) 4%

• SD-Gov: Scott Heidepriem (D) 28%, Dennis Daugaard (R) 57%

     

    Gloom and doom, the storm is coming anything with a D by its name is going down and going down hard. Diary after diary with ever troubling news. Yes the world is coming to an end. Don’t you get tired of this?  

   

    All this gloom and doom is just down right depressing. Seriously the tone here sometimes is plain and simply mournful. I am not saying it is not going to be a bad year, I am bracing myself for a House loss. However let me share with you a narrative from my youth that I love to tell.

    When I was younger my great aunt was very active in the local dem party. She was a community organizer and volunteer before it was cool. She would go door to door, drag her husband out to put up signs. A lot of local candidates called her the de facto campaign manager. She even got mentioned in the local newspaper as the Mother of the Harrison County Democratic Party. She was perhaps best known for making a speech at the December meeting of the local Democratic Party after the November election. In the meeting she would stand up and always say “Wow, it is a GREAT year to be a Democrat”.

    Whether it had been a horrible year or not it did not matter, she would harp onto the positive telling of all the successes and not even mention the losses. We could have lost the Sheriffs race (the Presidential race in Harrison County politics) and many others but picked up a meager county council seat. Well we would hear her tell us of how that city councilman elect is going to do so much good and she would make us feel like we won every election with her optimistic attitude.

     I am not asking everyone to be unrealistic and say everything is good but let’s take a moment to look at what is going good in this cycle. Good in 2010, I know weird to hear those in the same sentence referring to dems. I want you to pretend to be my Great Aunt except you are making that speech to a room full of dem political junkies who follow every election. What will be the races you tell to the crowd to provide comfort? Here is my list.

My First list (the near sure things)

 (these are not in any sort of order)

1. Alex Sink- I honestly believe that Sink will win this November. Scott greatly helps her. I do not think the race should be taken for granted, I could see a Scott win, and that is truly horrifying but I think Sink will get a win.  I hope so at least. I do not know why anyone would vote Scott. That man belongs in prison not the Governor’s mansion.

2. Mark Dayton- I believe we saw a poll showing this a tied race but that poll had the electorate at a huge Republican, was it 47 percent? All other polling shows a Dayton landslide. I expect him to win 7-8% at least.

3. John Carney- If polling is an indicator then we should pick this seat up easily. I know his opponent has gotten a lot of hype but she is not that threatening and while Castle will undoubtedly win I doubt he gives the same coattails that we expected at the beginning of the cycle. I think he will win by say 6-7% not enough to bring down Carney.

4. Dan Malloy- He is heavily favored in Connecticut and he is nice to have for a future Senate run as well.

5. Cedric Richmond- Until I see non biased internal polling I doubt Cao can win. I think he will be close-ish, much more so than he should but I am sorry his vote against HCR ruined any chances he had in my view. At best I think he loses by only 7 or 8 points, which is an impressive performance actually. This is one of the few districts were Obama can help Richmond. All Richmond needs to do is peg Cao as the anti Obama who voted against the stimulus and HCR. Hit him hard for HCR.

6. Colleen Hannabusa- Her and Richmond are fixing mistakes but they are a pickup all the same.

7. Hawaii Dem- Whoever wins the primary is overwhelmingly favored in the general to be the next Governor of Hawaii.

8. Dan Seals- I do not think we have seen a poll showing him losing. That includes polling from the ever shady We Ask America.

9. Joe Garcia- I debated putting him into the category below but I feel fairly good about this race as he is a GREAT candidate and the Republican is a horribly flawed one.

List Two (candidates who could win but are tossups)

   (No order either)

1. Jack Conway- Thanks to baggers Conway has a shot. Conway is the perfect candidate he really is. The year will keep this close and probably deliver us a Paul win but this is not guaranteed I still think this race could change course and fast. The ads literally write themselves. I have seen Conway’s tough cop ad a lot over the last week and have been impressed by it. Conway is young energetic and down right perfect. I encourage everyone to watch his fancy farm speech, his second one not the profanity one. That speech was darn good. Put that in ad form and this race narrows a lot. If anyone in the Conway camp is reading this please considering doing this. Also a lot of ads with Paul making his whack job comments.

2. Jerry Brown- Sadly it looks like money can buy votes. However I have not given up hope on Brown yet and I honestly think he can turn it around. He needs to start advertising pronto. This is an important race and if we win here then the night will not feel so bad.

3. Bill White- OMFG if we win Texas this year it would be miracle. Seriously we could lose 60 seats in the House and Bill White would make me go to bed a happy man.

4. Raj Goyle- Honestly with the third party dropping out I do not feel as good but stranger things have happened. Not getting my hopes up but I am sure that it will be closer then it should be. If only if it was 2008.

5. Scott McAdams- Unlikely but possible. Two dems from Alaska, I think I may faint.

6. Roy Barnes- Now here is someone who I honestly think stands a great chance of getting elected. I am sure he will make a good Governor and could he be a potential Senate candidate in 2016????

My list is all seats held by Republicans. Yours does not have to be like that at all. Please come up with anything you want. Vulnerable incumbents whatever. You do not have to structure it like mine either. I know my second list is a little meh but I thought it would appropriate to separate the two. Could all dem users consider making a list? Come on Tek. I think it is a real positive exercise and I know I enjoyed it anyway. 2008 was a bad year for Republicans but even they had bright spots and even some pickups. 2010 here we come.

Public Policy Polling (9/2-6, likely voters, 6/19-21 in parens):

Bill White (D): 42 (43)

Rick Perry (R-inc): 48 (43)

Undecided: 12 (14)

(MoE: ±4.2%)

PPP’s switch from a registered to a likely voter model gives Rick Perry a six-point lead. Interestingly, that switch only translated into a 52-41 McCain sample from a 51-41 sample in June. However, the sample is significantly more Republican (47R-30D from 43R-37D in June) and whiter (70% from 66%).

Despite Perry’s edge, Tom Jensen calls White, along with Colorado’s John Hickenlooper, “one of the two strongest new Democratic candidates in the country this year”. That’s evidenced by White’s promising 44-29 favorable rating, especially when stacked up against Perry’s 36-49 approval rating. More:

The race is confounding the major trends we’re seeing in most contests across the country. White is winning independents 53-34. Republicans have the lead with them most everywhere else. White’s winning 82% of Democrats while Perry’s getting 77% of Republicans. Republican voters are more unified than Democrats most everywhere else. But there are a lot more GOP voters than Dems in Texas so Perry’s still ahead anyway.

PPP also tested the Lt. Governor’s race, and finds incumbent David Dewhurst up by 54-34 on his spirited Democratic challenger, Linda Chavez-Thompson. That Bill White is poling competitively while the lower-ticketed races look like Solid R affairs is both a testament to White’s strength – and Perry’s weakness.

Meanwhile, PPP’s Dustin Ingalls takes a look at an issue that may have some resonance in Texas this year (much as it did in 1994): term limits.

• 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%

• AK-Sen: Once again, the Swing State Project is proud to issue one of its once-in-a-blue-moon endorsements, and to do it for Scott McAdams, the Democratic nominee in Alaska. We’re two-thirds of the way to our $2,400 goal, and we’ve just hit 50 contributors, so please join in!

• CO-Sen, CO-Gov: This is a real head-scratcher: Ken Buck’s camp is out with an internal poll by POS… showing him losing (despite what a number of public polls have said)?!? The poll gives a 43-40 edge to Michael Bennet, with 5 going to the Libertarian candidate. Either this is an odd attempt to mess with Dems’ heads, or, more likely, a message to his supporters to stop taking the race for granted and to keep the contributions flowing. UPDATE: OK, this isn’t a Buck internal; it’s a joint POS/Fairbank Maslin collaboration, and it’s not said on whose behalf this poll was performed. One other bit of news from the poll: it also includes gubernatorial numbers, and John Hickenlooper is closing in on the 50% mark. He’s at 48, to 25 for Dan Maes and 15 for Tom Tancredo.

• DE-Sen: Tax liens and penalties are sort of the common cold of political scandals, but this isn’t timed well for Mike Castle, who’s trying to stave off a last-minute zone-flooding from Tea Party Express on behalf of Christine O’Donnell. Castle had to make interest and penalty payments three times on his Capitol Hill pad in 2005 and 2006, although of course that pales in comparison to O’Donnell’s long track record of ducking her bills. Meanwhile, we have a sense of what the Tea Party Express‘s fully operational battle station looks like: they’ve spent only $60K on O’Donnell’s behalf so far, but plan to have spent $250K by the primary (including more airing of their TV spot and radio ad, as well as direct mail and out-of-state phone banking).

• KY-Sen: The moneybomb shoe’s on the other foot: Jack Conway’s doing an online one-day fundraising scramble today. As of 1 pm ET, the day’s total was up to $130K. Meanwhile, against that moneybomb backdrop, is an instance of a paid Rand Paul staffer having gotten caught sockpuppeting over at Daily Kos, concern-trolling against Conway from the left.

• NH-Sen: A lot of money ($10K from various officers and employees) has flowed into Kelly Ayotte’s campaign from a decidedly sketchy company in Texas: Tax Masters, one of those companies that relies heavily on late-night advertising to generate business for helping resolve debts owed to the IRS. The company and its CEO were charged with multiple violations of Texas’s consumer protection laws, in the wake of hundreds of consumer complaints.

• OH-Sen, OH-Gov: The Columbus Dispatch offers up some truly bad numbers for the Democratic candidates in Ohio, finding Rob Portman leading Lee Fisher 50-37 in the Senate race and John Kasich leading Ted Strickland 49-37 in the governor’s race (and the GOP winning all lower statewide races too), among registered voters. One important caveat, though: the Dispatch’s poll are notoriously an all-mail-in survey (why not just poll subscribers to Literary Digest?!?), and have consistently ranked dead last in most of 538’s pollster ratings (until the most recent installment, when they managed to leap ahead of a few other members of the rogues’ gallery, including Research 2000, ARG, and Zogby Interactive).

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray leaked an internal poll today to Politico, showing that the needle has barely budged in this race between two ubiquitously-known, well-defined candidates. The Fairbank Maslin poll gives Murray a 50-45 lead, and 53/42 approval. An April internal by the same pollster, back when Dino Rossi was only considering entering the race, gave Murray an 8-point lead.

• MA-Gov: A poll from local wire service State House News Service gives a decent lead to Deval Patrick, thanks to an assist from Tim Cahill. Their first poll of the gubernatorial race has Patrick leading Republican Charlie Baker, independent Cahill, and Green Party candidate Jill Stein 34-28-18-4, among registered voters.

• MD-Gov: For every Joe Miller, there’s, well, a Brian Murphy. The Washington Post takes a quick look at the upstart GOP gubernatorial candidate, whose Sarah Palin endorsement hasn’t turned into much of anything (other than a way for Bob Ehrlich to burnish his moderate credentials). In the pre-primary reporting period (all of which covers the post-Palin period), he’s raised only $35K, including $14K from himself, leaving him with $31K CoH. Ehrlich raised $725K over the 18-day period, taking him to $2.5 million CoH, while Dem Martin O’Malley raised $267K and has $6.5 million CoH.

• MI-Gov: While organized labor is the biggest force propelling Dem Virg Bernero in Michigan, there’s one union that isn’t falling in line. The state’s largest construction union, the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights, is backing Rick Snyder instead. More alarmingly for Bernero, the much-larger Teamsters haven’t endorsed yet and could conceivably go for Snyder too.

• MS-Gov: The 2011 election is only fourteen months away, and things are taking shape in Mississippi. Phil Bryant, the first-term Republican Lt. Governor, is taking steps to prepare for a bid. Businessman Dave Dennis also seems likely to run, while the state’s great-named SoS, Delbert Hosemann, also sounds like he’s interested.

• TX-Gov: We have two wildly divergent polls in Texas, both from GOP pollsters. Hill Research, on behalf of the Texas Watch Foundation (in a poll that seems primarily about homeowners’ insurance reform, but where the gube race seems to have gotten thrown-in as an attention-getter), finds Rick Perry leading Bill White by only a 42-41 margin. On the other hand, GOPAC (perhaps having gotten an advance heads-up about the Texas Watch numbers) rolled out numbers showing Perry in better shape. Their poll, via Wilson Research Strategies, gives Perry a 50-38 lead over White.

• KS-04: With polling now pretty consistently showing Mike Pompeo leading Raj Goyle by single digits in the open seat race in the 4th, the last thing the Republicans can afford here is a high-profile third-party challenge on the right. That’s what they might get, though, if businessman (and former Tic-Tac-Dough host) Wink Hartman follows through on threats to pick up the just-abandoned Libertarian ballot line. The state party has started scrambling to lean on Hartman to get him to stand down.

• NY-various: There’s a bonanza of pre-primary fundraising reports in New York (where the primary is next week). The biggest raiser among the various Republican House challengers was Chris Cox in the 1st, who raised $103K to Randy Altschuler’s $59K (although Altschuler still has a big CoH advantage). In the 23rd, the numbers were much smaller: Matt Doheny raised $41K and Doug Hoffman raised $37K, although Doheny has about three times Hoffman’s CoH.

• WV-01: On the back of the DCCC’s wave of internal polls today, here’s one more poll that probably has to go in the “good news” file: an internal poll, from POS, has Republican David McKinley trailing Dem Mike Oliverio in the open seat race in the 1st. Oliverio leads McKinley 41-36. The only other poll of this race was an Oliverio internal last month that gave him a seemingly too-good-to-be-true 52-36 lead over McKinley, but at the very least, it seems like everyone’s in agreement that Oliverio’s in pole position for now.

• Ads:

• CO-Sen: The DSCC is out with an ad in Colorado, letting Ken Buck go after himself with his own words on Social Security and the 17th Amendment

• DE-Sen: Mike Castle’s new ad is out; predictably, it goes after Christine O’Donnell for her crazy finances

• FL-Sen: First TV ad from Charlie Crist, stressing his (what else?) independence; also Kendrick Meek’s first TV ad, which is him on a swamp boat and stressing his (what else?) Dem credentials

• MO-Sen: Roy Blunt ad about how much he loves small business

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher’s first TV ad out of the gate is negative, going after Rob Portman for being George Bush’s job-exporting trade representative

• CA-Gov: Strangely sepia-toned ad is Jerry Brown’s first, seemingly to remind older Californians about how much things sucked less when he was Governor the first time (SOTB: $1.2 million for one week… that’s California for you)

• FL-Gov: Rick Scott’s first post-primary TV ad is an attack ad against… Barack Obama? (and Alex Sink, too, I guess)

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes goes negative against Nathan Deal on the issues of his recently-released tax returns, calling him “too corrupt even for Congress”

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley’s first TV spot, outsider-themed with a jab at Mark Sanford

• FL-22: The new Ron Klein spot is another anti-Allen West spot, but still hammering on the tax liens instead of, well, West’s non-stop stream-of-consciousness crazy

• ID-01: Walt Minnick’s first TV spot: please disregard the “D” next to his name, because he’s independent

• IN-02: The NRCC’s first television IE of the cycle, hitting Joe Donnelly for, well, being a Democrat

• IN-08: Trent van Haaften’s first TV ad is a basic introductory spot

• PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper’s second ad tries to cram “jobs” in there as many times as possible

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi’s first TV ad also works the outsider angle

• PA-11: Paul Kanjorski’s second ad works the Social Security privatization angle, smart in such an aged district

• PA-15: Interestingly, Charlie Dent’s first ad is a negative shot against John Callahan (on local property taxes), indicating he may be feeling some heat here

• WI-07: Julie Lassa’s second ad goes after Sean Duffy for saying that he can’t do anything to create jobs

• AFSCME: Here’s the big buy of the day: the AFSCME is shelling out $1.5 million in four states (Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) for an ad attacking Republicans for voting against the state aid package in August)

• Rasmussen:

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 37%, Mike Castle (R) 48%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 47%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 36%

• ID-Gov: Keith Allred (D) 36%, Butch Otter (R-inc) 52%

• ID-Sen: Tom Sullivan (D) 24%, Mike Crapo (R-inc) 63%

• MA-Gov: Deval Patrick (D-inc) 39%, Charlie Baker (R) 34%, Tim Cahill (I) 18%

• NE-Gov: Mike Meister (D) 28%, Dave Heineman (R-inc) 61%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 33%, Brian Sandoval (R) 58%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 45%, Sharron Angle (R) 45%