Tag: Rob Portman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

Ipsos for Reuters (8/6-10, likely voters, no trend lines):

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 39

John Kasich (R): 48

Undecided: 13

Lee Fisher (D): 36

Rob Portman (R): 43

Undecided: 20

(MoE: ±4.3%)

This poll released on Tuesday has been the poor puppy at the SSP pound that no one wants to take home; the first look at the Ohio races by Ipsos finds the Dems in pretty dire shape. In fact, Ipsos’s numbers are worse than anything that Rasmussen has put up since March (for OH-Gov) or January (for OH-Sen). The problem here for Dems seems to be the enthusiasm gap, with Ipsos reporting that 75% of registered Republicans plan to vote while 52% of registered Dems plan to vote. (You might recall that Ipsos polled Nevada last week, and released two sets of numbers showing huge disparities between RVs and LVs. While they don’t release separate RV head-to-heads here, I can imagine similar numbers disparities here, based on that gap.)

The poll also looked at who to blame for the economic downturn, which has hit Ohio particularly hard, and lo and behold, “Wall Street” and banks draw the most of the blame, with 93% of respondents blaming them. Along those lines, Reuters has a companion article looking deeper at Kasich’s time with Lehman Brothers (including his relationship with Lehman head Dick Fuld), and also how Kasich is still touting his Wall Street experience as a plus, saying “This experience has been fantastic and will make me a much better governor,” (even as Dems bludgeon him with it).

• 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%

Cross posted at http://frogandturtle.blogspot….

Yet again, Ohio will be a battleground state for a hard fought race. In 2004, this state was ground zero for campaigning as Bush and Kerry focused all their efforts here. Kerry did well in traditionally Democratic cities and even did well in urban swing counties. He unfortunately could not match Bush’s margins in rural and suburban counties so he lost. In 2008 though, Obama turned out the cities even more. He improved in certain rural areas, most specifically the northern and western parts of the state. The area Obama was most successful in improving over Kerry was the suburbs of the big cities. Still, the national trend to Obama over Kerry was higher than the trend in Ohio. In the 2010 Senate race, Lee Fisher (D) will need to perform well to be successful in winning Ohio like Obama. Fisher is the Lieutenant Governor and he is from Cleveland. Before he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2006 , Fisher was a State Senator from Cleveland. Polls show him in a tight race for George Voinovich’s (R) open U.S Senate seat against Rob Portman (R). Besides being a former congressman from the Cincinnati area, Portman worked under the Bush Administration. Although 2010 should be a good year for Republicans, Fisher has a chance of actually picking up a Republican Senate seat by beating Portman. Fisher will soon have to face Portman’s deep pockets but Fisher can still win this race. Here are some good ways for him to do that:

Make the race about Portman and his background. Rob Portman was a U.S trade representative under the Bush Administration.  On his website, Fisher does mention how he will not be a continuation of Bush policies. Unfortunately, this strategy is starting to become stale with the Democrats’ popularity falling. The strategy works though because Portman is not an outsider Republican, he was a Republican in the Bush Administration. Fisher must remind voters about how bad Bush was while portraying himself as someone with new ideas. Already, Fisher mentions on his website frequently how he  does not represent the policies that lead us into this economic decline but Portman does. Something else Fisher does well is that he has a page devoted to jobs with a detailed plan for creating them. He needs to keep focusing on jobs. It did not work for Kerry in 2004 in Ohio but it will work now.

Focus more on the rural voters. Fisher’s website does have a page for rural voters but it should be more detailed and show specific ways Fisher helped farmers and others in rural communities. Farmers and others in rural areas were the reason Bush won Ohio in 2004 so if Fisher can swing some of them to the Democrats, he should be successful. Fisher should run an ad showing how Portman wanted to cut farm subsidies by 60% while Fisher has strongly supported the 2008 farm bill and development for rural communities. Fisher highlights how he strongly fought crime and helped children in urban areas. He also has mentioned his immigrant background to help with white voters in the Cleveland area. These issues should help with votes in Cleveland, Akron and will probably play well in Columbus (except for the immigration issue becaus Columbus is not a big immigrant city.) Farmers working on their crops will not be thinking about crime in urban areas right now though.

Win the rural counties near the Ohio River (also known as Southeast Ohio.) This is similar to the paragraph about rural farmers but people with roots in coal will have different concerns than farmers. Fisher has roots in Northeast Ohio while Portman is popular in the Cincinnati and Southwest Ohio areas. The union presence may help Fisher in Southeast Ohio but if Fisher wants to win, he must run up numbers here. In 2006, successful Gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland (D) and Senatorial candidate Sherrod Brown piled up large margins in these counties. In 2004, Kerry tried to win by winning big margins in Northeast Ohio. Even though he won areas outside of Northeast Ohio like Columbus and Dayton, it still was not enough to win. Overall, Kerry proved that unless you do well in rural areas (or run up margins in urban areas outside of Northeast Ohio,) you cannot win in Ohio. Also, Fisher needs to highlight strongly how he helped workers rights with his support of the Paycheck Fairness Act for example.

Win the progressive base that supported Jennifer Brunner (D) before Fisher beat her in the Senatorial primary. This should not be too hard for Fisher even though Brunner said she will not endorse him. This should not impact Fisher strongly because there is not a large progressive base in Ohio. Many of the Democrats here are more liberal on issues like the economy but are not the environment liberals you find in California or the social liberals you find in New York City. Columbus and Athens are two of the few areas where progressives are strong. Fisher is trying to appeal to the base by highlighting his work on civil rights. Also, the results from the primary show Fisher not doing poorly in progressive areas so maybe he never had any trouble with them at all.

Match Portman on the money front. Rob Portman is beating Fisher on the money front. Fisher could consider pandering to the progressive base but that could hurt his standing among moderates. Anyway, Brunner was considered the progressive but she received little money from donors, even the progressive base. At the primary, Brunner interestingly won some rural counties with few progressives though. If Fisher successfully painted Portman as a product of the Bush Administration, he could energize some progressives which would cause him to raise money. Still, Fisher should not nationalize the race. I believe the best way for Fisher to get money is through the unions because they are powerful in Ohio and he has a record of supporting workers rights.

Overall, Fisher is running a good campaign with putting jobs as front and center and making comparisons between Portman and Bush. He is also solidifying his lead in urban Ohio by talking about how he helped reduce crime. What he needs to do is focus more on rural issues and rural voters. Highlighting his family’s background as immigrants from Russia and working in the steel industry helps him along the Ohio River and strengthens him in  Northeast Ohio. Many farmers and other rural residents cannot relate to Fisher’s family story though. Fisher does not give specific examples of bills he helped work on or sponsored to help rural areas. Saying you support rural residents is good but Fisher must give specific examples of how he helped them. If urban voters turn out strongly for Fisher because he highlighted important issues for them such as crime and workers rights but if Fisher also keeps down margins in rural areas, Fisher can be Ohio’s next Senator.  

• AR-Sen (pdf): One more poll added to Blanche Lincoln’s woes today. It’s from Republican pollster Magellan, and unlike a number of their polls lately that have been sua sponte, this one is on behalf of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network. It gives John Boozman a 60-29 lead over Lincoln. Lincoln decided to put a stop to the string of polls showing her DOA, by (taking a page from Raul Labrador here) releasing her own internal from Benenson showing her, well, only a little bit dead. It has her trailing Boozman “only” 45-36, with 6 going to indie Trevor Drown.

• KS-Sen, KS-Gov: SurveyUSA looks at the statewide primaries in Kansas yet again, and, as usual, finds Rep. Jerry Moran with a big lead over fellow Rep. Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary, 50-36 (which is actually an improvement for Tiahrt; the last SUSA poll was 53-33). College professor Lisa Johnston continues to lead the Dem Senate primary at 23, with 14 for Charles Schollenberger and 12 for state Sen. David Haley. The GOP gubernatorial primary continues to be a non-event, with Sam Brownback leading Joan Heffington 73-19.

• NE-Sen (pdf): Magellan, on behalf of JCN, is also out with a poll of the 2012 Senate race, presumably intended to scare Ben Nelson into voting against Elena Kagan. At this rate, it may not matter how he votes on Kagan or anything else: if he runs again, Nelson is losing to GOP Gov. Dave Heineman 58-28.

• NH-Sen: The Paul Hodes campaign continues to hit Kelly Ayotte over her being asleep at the switch on mortgage fraud with another ad on the topic. It’s a $100K ad buy, and it’s going up in Boston, meaning that it’ll hit a lot of eyeballs (but also that that $100K gets burned through pretty quickly).

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak has been fighting with local TV stations over them airing an ad from a conservative group attacking him on Israel policy. Now he’s getting some backing from liberal Israel policy group J Street, who are running a new TV spot saying he “consistently votes for aid to Israel.” NWOTSOTB, but it is running “in major media markets.”

• SC-Sen: Green, not Greene? The Columbia area AFL-CIO must not have been impressed with Alvin Greene’s first major policy speech last weekend, because now they’ve rolled out their endorsement of Green Party candidate Tom Clements instead.

• WI-Sen (pdf): But wait, there’s more! With your purchase of these fine AR-Sen and NE-Sen polls, you also get a bonus WI-Sen poll, perfect for triggering one of Russ Feingold’s patented flashes of maverickiness. Magellan, on behalf, of JCN, also finds Feingold leading Ron Johnson 45-43.

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy got the endorsement of the six state affiliates of the SEIU in Connecticut, a key union endorsement. Ned Lamont isn’t hurting for union backing, though; he has the support of the Connecticut Education Association, the UAW, and the UFCW.

• MI-Gov: The Detroit News poll from yesterday also had a Democratic primary component to it. They find, with only weeks to go, Undecided still in the lead at 40. Andy Dillon leads Virg Bernero 34-25. 44% of respondents haven’t heard of Bernero, while 26% don’t know Dillon. On the GOP side, this may give some more moderate cred to Rick Snyder: he got the endorsement of ex-Rep. Joe Schwarz, who had briefly considered an independent run for Governor himself.

• MT-Gov: GOPers already have a candidate for Governor in 2012 in Montana, where Brian Schweitzer is termed out. Republican former state Senate minority leader Corey Stapleton just announced his bid. The article mentions some other possibilities too, including long-ago ex-Rep. Rick Hill on the GOP side. AG Steve Bullock may be the Dems’ best bet.

• FL-02: Politico has a profile of Rep. Allen Boyd, who’s getting squeezed both left and right as he first faces state Sen. Al Lawson in the Dem primary and then faces funeral home owner Steve Southerland. Boyd’s response? To play “offense,” including going negative in TV ads against Lawson. Boyd’s already spent $1.9 million this cycle, and still has many times more CoH than his two opponents together.

• NY-15: Buried deep in a Hill article about how Chuck Schumer is still standing up for Charles Rangel when no one else will, kicking him a $10K check for his re-election, is a noteworthy poll of the Dem primary. The poll was conducted by PPP, and was paid for by Democrats.com; it finds Rangel with a not-very-imposing lead of 39-21 over Adam Clayton Powell IV in the primary.

• NY-23: After being the flavor of the month for, well, a month or so prior to last fall’s NY-23 special election, Doug Hoffman seems to have fallen off most people’s radars. He wants you to know he’s still around, though, and just released an internal poll from McLaughlin & Associates that gives him a sizable lead over Matt Doheny (who has most of the local GOP establishment backing) in the GOP primary. He leads Doheny 52-20. Bear in mind, of course, that Hoffman already has the Conservative line and Doheny has the IP line, meaning they’re going to meet in the general election (and spoil each other’s days) either way.

• TN-09: Finally, here’s a poll of the Dem primary in the 9th. It looks like former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton is having the same trouble playing the race card that Nikki Tinker did in 2008; he’s trailing Steve Cohen by a 65-15 margin. The poll’s not an internal, taken by Yacoubian Research for WMC-TV, but there’s one reason to raise an eyebrow at it: it screens voters by asking them if they’re in the 9th District (and how many people in the real world know the number of their congressional district?).

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 53%, Linda McMahon (R) 40%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 52%, Peter Schiff (R) 34%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 52%, Rob Simmons (R) 38%

• ID-Sen: Tom Sullivan (D) 27%, Mike Crapo (R-inc) 64%

• ME-Gov: Libby Mitchell (D) 31%, Paul LePage (R) 39%, Eliot Cutler (I) 15%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 39%, Rob Portman (R) 45%

These are my first rankings of any set of seats for the 2010 Congressional elections. The Senate outlook for the Democrats was at first good (this was early 2009.) Then it became poor as fall hit but now the Democrats have a stronger shot in the Senate. Still, the Republicans will pick up seats but the Democrats will still have a majority in the Senate. I am expecting the Republican to pick up 5 seats and they should lose one or two so I am looking at a 3-4 seat gain for the Republican. This is more optimistic than other rankings I have seen but Republican candidates made some mistakes and/or Democrats found the right candidates. Unfortunately, with the economy starting to slump again, the climate will be less favorable to the Democrats. Still, in many races, it is the candidate and not the climate that people are thinking about when they cast their ballots. This at first looks good for the Democrats but it actually helps the Republicans in a few states such as Illinois where Obama and Democrats are popular but Republicans are waging tough races. Enough chatter about Senate races, to the rankings!

1. North Dakota OPEN (D)

Byron Dorgan (D) retired so popular Governor John Hoeven (R) is running. The race was over before it even started.

Ranking: Safe Republican

2. Arkansas Blanche Lincoln (D)

Blanche Lincoln held off the unions (which were never powerful in Arkansas,) the progressives and Bill Halter (D)  when she won the Democratic primary with the help of Bill Clinton. Although Blanche Lincoln came from behind to win, that should not happen this time. Rep John Boozmen (R) from the northwest portion of the state (where Wal Mart was started) is running. All recent polls show Boozmen with a lead about 20 points. Although this race has not been polled for a couple of weeks, all indications clearly show that Boozmen is ahead. Barring a major gaffe or a big burst of luck, Boozmen will be Arkansas’s next Senator.

Ranking: Likely Republican

3. Delaware OPEN Ted Kaufman (D)

The Democrats have had bad luck with this seat. First, Michael Castle (R), Delaware’s popular representative threw his hat in the ring and Beau Biden (D), Joe Biden’s son who was supposed to run jumped ship. Now Democrats nominated New Castle County (Wilmington) executive, Chris Coons (D) to run for Senate. It should be noted that New Castle County is a bellwether so Coons already has an advantage. Michael Castle though is a moderate and is well known throughout the state but if people get fed up with all the incumbents…Still, expect a Michael Castle win.

Ranking: Lean Republican

4. Indiana OPEN Evan Bayh (D)

Bye bye Bayh, after being a popular Governor and Senator, Bayh left open a seat the Democrats should have held (and it aint no lie.) Dan Coats (R) is a former Republican Senator and lobbyist who won the primary with only 40% of the vote. He faces Brad Ellsworth (D), the moderate and popular Congressman from southern Indiana, filled with rural swing voters. Although Ellsworth is moderate and should do well with rural voters, Dan Coats has a strong lead. Ellsworth just got out an effective ad attacking lobbyists (not explicitly mentioning the one running against him.) This is helpful but he also needs to appeal to urban voters who were key to Obama’s winning coalition in 2008.  Ellsworth is a great candidate and he definitely will make it close. Unfortunately, I think due to the Republican lean of the state and the year’s climate, Coats will win by about 5 points.

Ranking: Lean Republican

5. Florida OPEN Mel Martinez (R)

Once Crist jumped into this race, it appeared that he would win easily. Then along came Marco Rubio who started out at 4% but forced Crist to run as an independent. Many pundits including myself believed Crist would take away Republican votes but since they view him as a traitor, he did not steal many. Now he is taking away votes from Meek. I expect Crist to caucus with the Democrats because Crist has suddenly become more Democratic and has strongly advocated against more oil drilling. He participated in a hands across the sands protest against oil drilling too. Most polls show Crist with a slight lead over Rubio and I think that it will be close but Crist will win.

Ranking: Lean Independent

6. Colorado Michael Bennett (D)

Michael Bennett was the former School Superintendent for Colorado and he was appointed by Bill Ritter (D) because Ken Salazar (D) was pulled out to become Secretary of the Interior. Now Republicans Ken Buck and Jane Norton are challenging Bennett. Also, Bennett faces a challenge from Andrew Romanoff (D) who is the former speaker for Colorado’s House. Although the Republicans are not very moderate, Bennett keeps trailing them by a few points and Romanoff trails them too. Ken Buck though, the leader in the primary favors strong cuts to the Department of Education and Norton favors eliminating it. This could come back to haunt them. Most polls show Bennett winning the primary but I do not have a good feeling about this race.

Ranking: Toss Up/Tilt Republican

7. Missouri OPEN Christopher Bond (R)

I was debating whether I should put Ohio here but in the end, I decided that this spot belonged to Missouri. Christopher Bond, one of the dwindling group of reasonable Republicans is now retiring. A not so reasonable Republican, Roy Blunt (R) from southwest Missouri is running to replace Bond. Blunt is the former House Majority Whip under the Bush Administration. The Democrats found a good candidate in Robin Carnahan (D), a member of a strong political family and the Secretary of State. A recent Rasmussen poll shows Blunt with a 5 point lead but Rasmussen is known to be biased toward the right. The latest non Rasmussen poll was in March and it showed Blunt with a 4 point lead. Missouri has a strong rural conservative base but Carnahan has her advantages. She won by 26 points in 2010, losing only 10 counties so she proved she can win rural areas. Also, her family owns a farm so she can highlight her rural roots. This is why I believe that once Carnahan starts campaigning, the race will become very close.

Ranking: Toss Up

8. Ohio OPEN George Voinovich (R)

Voinovich is another reasonable Republican who is retiring. After a bruising primary against Jennifer Brunner (D), Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher (D) won. He is facing Rob Portman (R) who is a former congressman and official during the Bush Administration. Every poll since March that is not Rasmussen shows Fisher with a lead although most of the leads are by a few points. Fisher’s main jobs will be to tie Portman to Bush, remind people how bad Bush was (because everyone is blaming Bush’s problems on Obama) and Fisher should highlight how he will create jobs. Also, Fisher needs to step up the fundraising. Also, Portman is from southern Ohio while Fisher is from Northeast Ohio. On election night, you should expect a map similar to 2004 except Fisher may get a few Ohio river counties. I still believe that if one race leads to a recount, it will be this one.

Ranking: Toss Up

9. Illinois OPEN Roland Burris (D)

Really good candidates, especially those whose names are spelled L-I-S-A M-A-D-I-G-A-N decided not to run so we have Alexi Giannoulis (D) who is the State Treasurer. He is young but his family’s bank problems are not. Mark Kirk (R), the moderate Republican from Chicago suburbs and candidate for Senate appeared to have an advantage because of this. He still did not think that gave him a strong enough lead so he decided he could woo voters by bragging about military credentials…he forgot he did not have. Now the race is closer and I think due to the Democratic lean of the state, Giannoulis will win by a couple of points.

Ranking: Toss Up/Tilt Democratic

10 (tie) Nevada Harry Reid (D)

The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid will be facing Sharron Angle (R) a State Senator from Washoe County. Harry Reid is very unpopular in Nevada but neither is Sharron Angle. Her beliefs range from wanting to eliminate social security, the Department of Education, support of Scientology and that Abraham Lincoln lost all his elections but President (he lost only one election is his whole lifetime.) Also, Angle faces another problem because as of last month, Harry Reid has $12 million COH (cash on hand) and Angle has only $138,000. Recent polls show this race close because many people have not heard about Angle just yet. She is trying to hide her opinions though by saying Harry Reid cannot quote them and she seems shocked that people are monitoring everything she says. Angle…welcome to the world of campaigning. Harry Reid is still unpopular but I expect him to win by a few points. The only good tactic Angle has used is behaving callously toward oil spill and rape victims and not having a moment where she does not care about Yucca Mountain. In Nevada, you can vote for “None of these candidates” and I would not be surprised if they won.

Ranking: Toss Up/Tilt Democratic

10 (tie). Kentucky OPEN Jim Bunning (R)

Once Bunning realized he had a poor shot at hitting a home run and winning again, he decided to bail out of the race. Rand Paul (R), the son on Ron Paul (R) is now running against Jack Conway (D). At first, it appeared that teabagger Paul would win this race until he revealed how much he hated big government. He thought that government could not prevent businesses from discriminating. Then he flip flopped and believes the U.S needs to use government spending to build a border fence. Conway is a good candidate but Kentucky is too conservative for him and this is not a good year for Democrats.

Ranking: Toss Up/Tilt Republican.

Do you agree or disagree with the rankings? What are yours?

This post was cross posted at http://frogandturtle.blogspot…. which you should visit for more election analysis.  

• CO-Sen: Both Jane Norton and Ken Buck found something else to do when Michael Steele showed up in town yesterday, eager to take his off the hook, technically avant-garde message to Colorado’s urban-suburban hip-hop settings. Seems like Steele has a bad case of the cooties in the wake of his Afghanistan comments.  Buck instead went to hang with the decidedly non-hip-hop Tom Tancredo at a rally yesterday instead, where Tancredo called Barack Obama the “greatest threat to the United States today.” Buck subsequently had to distance himself from Tancredo’s comments via conference call… I’m wondering if Buck would have rather appeared with Michael Steele after all.

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle rolled out her campaign’s first ad; perhaps wisely, she isn’t in it at all, other than a voiceover doing the required disclaimer at the end. Instead, it’s just a narration-free black-and-white montage of the economic woe that, of course, Harry Reid caused. Which completely contradicts her own message that she’s touted in public appearances, which is that it’s not a Senator’s job to create jobs, and that it was in fact a bad thing for Harry Reid to intervene to save 22,000 jobs at a local construction project. To top all that off, Angle said Wednesday that Reid’s attempts to fight back on the jobs issue were an attempt to “hit the girl.” (UPDATE: Jon Ralston uncovers that Angle’s ad buy was for a whopping total of $5K. Add this one to the growing pile of bullshit ad buys aimed at getting free media.)

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher’s fundraising numbers are out. The good news is: he finally had a seven-digit quarter, pulling in at least $1 million last quarter and giving him “more than” $1 million CoH. The bad news is: that’s less than half what Rob Portman raised last quarter, and it’s a more than 8:1 CoH advantage for Portman.

• AL-Gov: Two different polls are out in the Republican runoff in Alabama, and they paint very different pictures. One is from GOP pollster Baselice, working on behalf of a group called Public Strategy Associates. They give Robert Bentley a 53-33 lead over Bradley Byrne. The other is an internal from the Byrne camp; they’re claiming a four-point lead, although without any details about topline numbers or even the pollster. They’re also claiming that Byrne has gained 7 points in the last week while Bentley has lost 7, presumably because of Byrne’s attacks on Bentley’s friendliness with the Alabama Education Association, the teachers’ union that has particularly had it in for Byrne. Byrne also rolled out endorsements from two of Alabama’s sitting House members, Spencer Bachus and Jo Bonner.

• CA-Gov: Seems like Jerry Brown took a look at the internals at the latest Field Poll and realized he’d better do something about his standing among Latino voters. He held a press conference yesterday with 14 Latino leaders, criticizing the sincerity of Meg Whitman’s softening of her immigration stance since the GOP primary. Xavier Becerra pointed out that “Jerry Brown broke bread with Cesar Chavez. His opponent breaks bread with Pete Wilson.” (Wilson, of course, was the driving force behind Prop 187 last decade.)

• CO-Gov: Dan Maes, the insurgent candidate in the GOP primary, is pretty much out of gas. He raised all of $33K last quarter, with $23K CoH. That cash on hand is somewhat less than the $27K fine he’s going to have to pay for various campaign finance violations he’s committed.

• GA-Gov: SurveyUSA has more polls of the fast-approaching gubernatorial primaries. They find John Oxendine at 32 and Karen Handel at 23, meaning they’re likely to advance to a GOP runoff. Nathan Deal and Eric Johnson are lagging at 12, with Ray McBerry at 5. On the Democratic side, Roy Barnes is at 56, which would let him avoid a runoff against Thurbert Baker (who’s at 18). Dubose Porter and David Poythress languish at 6 and 5, respectively. (SUSA also has Dem Senate and downballot numbers, if you click the link.) PPP (pdf) is also out with a poll, although this is one of their rare internals that makes it to the public view; it’s on behalf of J.C. Cole, a Thurbert Baker backer. They find Barnes just under the runoff mark: 49 Barnes, 19 Baker, 4 Porter, and 3 Poythress.

• MA-Gov: The money race in Massachusetts is a pretty close three-way race, although Tim Cahill, corresponding with his slide in the polls, has also lost his financial edge. GOPer Charlie Baker has the most cash on hand with $2.97 million, with Cahill at $2.95 million. Dem incumbent Deval Patrick has the least, $2.37 million, but seems to be expecting some help from the state Dem party, which has a big CoH edge over the state GOP.

• NE-Gov: The Nebraska governor’s race is turning into a bit of Democratic debacle, as the departure of Mark Lakers has left Dems looking high and low for someone willing to take his place at this late date. Ben Nelson says someone’s likely to emerge before the July 23-25 state convention, although he didn’t volunteer any particular names.

• TN-Gov: Knoxville mayor (and oil baron) Bill Haslam seems on track to be Tennessee’s next governor, according to a poll for local TV affiliate WSMV. (The poll was conducted by Crawford, Johnson, and Northcott, a firm I’ve never heard of.) The free-spending Haslam leads the GOP primary in the open seat race at 32, with Rep. Zach Wamp at 21 and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey at 11. Haslam also performs the best against Mike McWherter, the only Dem left in the hunt. Haslam wins 60-34, while Wamp wins 59-35 and Ramsey wins 51-41.

• FL-22: Allen West continues to post gaudy fundraising numbers; he says he raised $1.4 million in the last quarter, likely to be the biggest total for any Republican House challenger. West, of course, is a client of BaseConnect, and a lot of that money gets churned through for direct-mail expenses, but he is steadily expanded his cash on hand, claiming to be up to $2.2 million. Rep. Ron Klein had $2.6 million CoH at the end of the previous quarter in March.

• GA-08: Here’s a fundraising success for a late entrant for the GOP: state Rep. Austin Scott, who bailed out of the gubernatorial primary to run an uphill fight against Democratic incumbent Rep. Jim Marshall, outraised Marshall last quarter. Scott raised $251K last quarter (including $56K of his own money), leaving him with $213K CoH. Marshall raised $165K, but has $981K in his war chest.

• MI-03: In case there was any doubt who the DeVos family (the power behind the Republican throne in western Michigan) was backing, they made it explicit today. Dick DeVos announced his support for state Rep. Justin Amash in the GOP primary to succeed retiring Vern Ehlers.

• MN-01: One more surprise GOP fundraising score to report: state Rep. Randy Demmer had a good quarter, pulling in $303K, leaving him with $251K. Democratic Rep. Tim Walz hasn’t released numbers, but had $856K CoH banked last quarter.

• NY-23: Scozzafava endorses Bill Owens! No, it’s not quite what you think. It’s Tom Scozzafava (apparently absolutely no relation to special election opponent-turned-endorser Dede Scozzafava), the Supervisor of the town of Moriah. Owens also got some probably more significant good news on Tuesday: Don Kasprzak, the Republican mayor of Plattsburgh, offered some public praise of Owens and, while stopping short of endorsing him, said that he couldn’t vote for either Doug Hoffman or Matt Doheny.

• OH-12: With Rep. Pat Tiberi having dropped an internal poll yesterday showing him dominating Democratic challenger Paula Brooks, today it was Brooks’ turn. She offered up an internal poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, which also showed her losing, but by a much smaller margin. The poll sees the race at 48-36 in favor of Tiberi, with 10% going to Libertarian candidate Travis Irvine.

• CA-Init (pdf): The Field Poll also provided numbers for four initiatives that are likely to be on the ballot in November. Like several other pollsters, they see a close race for Prop 19, which proposes to legalize marijuana: it’s failing 44-48. Perhaps the most significant race, though, is Prop 25, which would solve the Sacramento gridlock by allowing passage of a budget by a mere majority vote; support for Prop 25 is very broad, at 65-20, with even Republicans favoring passage. Voters don’t support Prop 23, a utilities-funded push to overturn the state’s greenhouse gases emissions law; it’s failing 36-48. Finally, there’s 42-32 support for Prop 18, a bond to pay for water supply improvements.

• Fundraising: A couple more fundraising tidbits from the Fix: Democratic GA-Gov candidate Roy Barnes raised $1.3 million last quarter, while GOPer Nathan Deal raised $570K. And in NH-Sen, Bill Binnie reported raising $550K, but bear in mind he can write himself checks as need be.

• Rasmussen:

•  IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 40%, Bill Brady (R) 43%

•  SD-AL: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc) 44%, Kristi Noem (R) 49%

• 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).

IL-Sen, IL-Gov: Nothing like collateral damage on the campaign trail. Mark Kirk has been trying to make a weird issue out of the fact that Alexi Giannoulias didn’t pay any income taxes last year. It’s weird because Giannoulias lost millions of dollars last year, and it would be a little hard to tax a negative number. But it’s also been a foolhardy crusade, because Kirk’s ticket-mate, gubernatorial nominee Bill Brady, is in the exact same position as Giannoulias – and so Kirk was compelled to criticize his fellow Republican as well, for a total non-issue. D’oh!

Meanwhile, Giannoulias fired back with a hit of his own, attacking Mark Kirk for pulling a Kasich and refusing to release his tax returns. But wait, there’s more! Kirk’s also been busy pulling yet another Kirk, too:

Also during Kirk’s news conference, the congressman would not discuss the latest question about his military career, this time from a statement he made in a Sun-Times questionnaire that he was “shot at” while serving with a Dutch armor unit in Kandahar.

IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth is out with his first ad of the campaign. As always, NWOTSOTB (that’s “No Word On The Size Of The Buy” in English – get used to seeing that around here).

OH-Sen: Cap-and-trade has proven to be perilous territory for more than one Republican candidate this cycle, with flip-flops as persistent as vuvuzela blasts at a World Cup match. That’s because trading emissions credits had long been one of those rare non-insane Republican ideas that a lot of Republicans had cottoned to. But because Dems have embraced the idea, too, it’s now political poison in GOP circles. So, no surprise to see Rob Portman blasting cap-and-trade a “job killer” – and then getting instantly hammered by Dems for having supported it during his career in Congress. Whoops!

GA-Gov: Dem Roy Barnes is out with a new ad whaling on the idiocy regularly perpetrated by Republicans in the state legislature – like attempting to ban stem cell research, passing bills “about microchips in the brain,” and talking about seceding from the union – which he says makes it hard to recruit jobs to the state. NWOTSOTB.

HI-Gov: Outgoing Gov. Linda Lingle (R) vetoed a civil unions bill yesterday, her final day to do so. Whether this becomes a potent issue on the campaign trail remains to be seen, but at least two of the big three candidates in the race have come out with statements on Lingle’s action: Neil Abercrombie (he’s for civil unions) and Duke Aiona (he’s against them).

FL-25: GOP state Rep. David Rivera, a hardline extremist when it comes to supporting the Cuban embargo, has taken some heat for his alleged friendship with businessman Ariel Pereda. Pereda has been an active proponent of trade with Cuba, and Rivera has denied that the two have a relationship. But Mariana Cancio, another Republican candidate, posted a video of Pereda standing behind Rivera at Rivera’s campaign kick-off.

IN-09: Republican Todd Young has an internal out from Public Opinion Strategies (feel like I’ve been seeing that name a lot) which shows him trailing Baron Hill by 41-34. Note that the poll had just 300 respondents. (When you click the link, scroll all the way to the bottom for the poll press release.)

LA-03: In a bit of a throwaway sentence in a bigger article about the start of the candidate qualifying period in Louisiana, the Times-Picayune notes that Dems are still trying to recruit interim Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle to run for Rep. Charlie Melancon’s open House seat.

LA-05: Teabagging businessman (but I’m guessing Some Dude) Todd Slavant is planning to challenge notorious Democrat-cum-Republican turncoat Rodney Alexander in the GOP primary. I tend to doubt that Alexander will meet with Parker Griffith’s fate, though.

MO-08: Dem Tommy Sowers is out with his first ad, a semi-biographical spot which features his “combat bible.” NWOTSOTB.

MT-AL: This is a weird echo of something in the not-too-distant past of Montana’s political world. Denny Rehberg is suing the Billings fire department for allegedly failing to contain a fire that occurred on his property almost exactly two years ago. The fire chief is saying that saving, you know, lives is their number one priority (none were lost) – and pointing out that the folks who worked to put out the blaze had given up their holiday weekend. Oh, and that odd rhyme? Folks with keen memories will recall that former Montana Sen. Conrad Burns went out of his way to insult bone-weary firefighters to their faces who had schlepped all the way from Virginia to put out blazes back in 2006.

Iowa: Ugh: Iowa SoS Michael Mauro reports that the 100,000 voter registration edge Democrats held in the Hawkeye State just six months ago has been cut in half. However, Mauro points out that the Dems had a 40K deficit in 2002 and yet both Sen. Tom Harkin and then-Gov. Tom Vilsack won re-election.

Maryland: Candidate filing closed in Maryland yesterday. Click the link for a full list of candidates. Incidentally, only five states still have open filing periods: LA, WI, NY, HI, and DE, which brings up the rear with a July 30th deadline.

Fundraising: Reid Wilson has a few fundraising nums we haven’t seen before, including figures from AL-07, LA-03, and MA-10. Shelia Smoot’s weak haul in AL-07 is disappointing but not surprising.

PPP (pdf) (6/26-27, Ohio voters, 3/20-21 in parens):

Lee Fisher (D): 40 (36)

Rob Portman (R): 38 (41)

Undecided: 22 (23)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Quinnipiac (6/22-27, Ohio voters, 4/21-26 in parens):

Lee Fisher (D): 42 (40)

Rob Portman (R): 40 (37)

Undecided: 17 (21)

(MoE: ±3%)

Well, the two nationwide pollsters left that I trust anymore are both out with new polls in the Buckeye State. In the Senate race, both PPP and Quinnipiac find a two-point lead for Democratic Lt. Governor Lee Fisher over Republican ex-Rep. Rob Portman, which is consistent for Quinnipiac but a significant reversal for PPP, who had Portman leading three months ago.

Barack Obama approval isn’t very high in either poll (45/49 in Quinnipiac, 42/54 in PPP), but PPP’s Tom Jensen thinks that anger towards Washington, in a counterintuitive way, may help Fisher: Portman is a creature of the Beltway, while Fisher is a long-time fixture in Columbus. GOPers might argue that Portman’s problem is low name recognition, which he can fix with his large financial advantage, but his “not sures” aren’t that much bigger than Fisher’s: according to PPP, Fisher’s faves are 28/27 while Portman’s are 22/25.

PPP (pdf) (6/26-27, Ohio voters, 3/20-21 in parens):

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 41 (37)

John Kasich (R): 43 (42)

Undecided: 16 (21)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

Quinnipiac (6/22-27, Ohio voters, 4/21-26 in parens):

Ted Strickland (D-inc): 43 (44)

John Kasich (R): 38 (38)

Undecided: 15 (17)

(MoE: ±3%)

We don’t get agreement from PPP and Quinnipiac on the governor’s race. PPP gives a tiny lead to Republican ex-Rep. John Kasich while Quinnipiac gives a slightly bigger lead to Democratic incumbent Ted Strickland. Interestingly, that’s consistent too; PPP has repeatedly taken a dimmer view of Strickland’s chances than Quinnipiac.

The difference seems to be that PPP finds Strickland (37/48 approval) much more unpopular than Kasich (28/30 faves), while Quinnipiac finds both of them in positive territory (44/42 approval for Strickland, 28/19 faves for Kasich). My only hunch is that the differential may have to do with PPP’s current use of a very loose LV screen, while Quinnipiac has been polling RVs (although note that Qpac now is saying it’s polling “Ohio voters,” so I’m left wondering if they too are moving toward a hybrid LV model like PPP).