Tag: WA-Sen

• CO-Sen: Both Democratic candidates are hitting the TV airwaves, with Michael Bennet trying once again to introduce himself to his constituents with a feel-good bio spot, and Andrew Romanoff’s first ad playing up the anti-corruption, anti-Washington angle he’s been working. Over on the Republican side, where Ken Buck seems to be putting some distance between himself and Jane Norton, Buck got some useful backing from the Dick Army: he snagged a FreedomWorks endorsement. Norton’s 2005 support for TABOR-limiting Referendum C seems to have been a dealbreaker for the teabaggers.

• KY-Sen: PPP, fresh off its Rand Paul/Jack Conway poll yesterday, also has some approval numbers out for Mitch McConnell. It’s more evidence that the most dangerous job in America is party leader in the Senate. McConnell’s numbers are dwindling, and his backing of Trey Grayson over Paul in the GOP primary seems to have accelerated that: he’s down to 34/48, after having had favorables in the 40s in their previous polls, with almost all of his decline coming from Republicans. 49% of all respondents would like to see him lose his leadership role, with only 38% saying continue.

• NH-Sen: Big money for Kelly Ayotte this quarter: she raised $720K last quarter, her biggest quarter so far. No word on her CoH.

• NV-Sen: With their empty coffers suddenly replenished, the Karl Rove-led 527 American Crossroads decided to keep their anti-Harry Reid attack ad on the air in Nevada for the fourth straight week. They’ve spent nearly half a million airing the same ad.

• NY-Sen-B: Although the terrible disarray in the state GOP can’t be helping matters, New York’s unique ballot access laws just seem to encourage self-destructive behavior by the local Republicans. With Republican/Conservative/Independence Party splits threatening to result in multiple viable right-of-center candidates in races ranging from NY-01 to NY-23, now cat fud is about to start flying in the Senate race. David Malpass, seeming a long shot in the Republican field, has said that he’s going to seek the ballot line on the as-yet-to-be-named teabagger’s ballot line that gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino is trying to create, most likely to be called the Taxpayer’s line. Malpass, as you’ll recall, is lagging in GOP primary polls against Joe DioGuardi, who already has the Conservative line but is trying to petition onto the GOP ballot, and Bruce Blakeman, who’s assured a spot on the GOP ballot. This may even spill over into the who-cares other Senate race, where Gary Berntsen wants in on the Taxpayer’s line (and where rival Jay Townsend already has the Conservative line).

• WA-Sen: The Washington Farm Bureau, which endorsed Dino Rossi in his two failed gubernatorial bids, has decided not to endorse anybody in the Senate race. Goldy wonders whether this is a matter of lots of Clint Didier supporters at the Farm Bureau… Didier, after all, is a farmer… or if the Farm Bureau secretly likes Patty Murray’s skill at appropriations.

• WV-Sen: Gov. Joe Manchin held a press conference today to announce his plans on the vacant Senate seat, and it seems like the institutional pressure on him to fill the seat soon (preferably with himself) seems to be working. Manchin stopped short of calling on the state legislature to have a special session to move up the election to Nov. 2010, but he did tell his AG to start laying the legal groundwork for such a move. Manchin again said that he wouldn’t appoint himself to the seat on a temporary basis, but confirmed that he would be “highly” interested in running for the seat whenever the special election occurs. (He didn’t give any inkling on who he might appoint.) At any rate, it seems like Manchin feels confident that, despite the national downdraft for Dems this year, his own personal popularity, combined with the shortened election schedule working to his advantage, would facilitate his election in November; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be going along so readily with the moved-up election.

• CO-Gov: Democratic nominee John Hickenlooper had better hope the contributions keep coming in: he’s sitting on only $66K CoH right now (although he raised $500K in June alone), but he just reserved $1.2 million in ad time. The plan is to lock the ad space in now, when it’s still cheap to reserve far in advance. On the Republican side of the aisle, insurgent candidate Dan Maes is in some trouble: he’s being hit with the largest fine ever handed down to a Colorado candidate for campaign finance donations. It was for a series of small-ball failures rather than one huge blunder, ranging from improper reimbursements to himself for mileage, to failure to list occupations for many donors.

• OK-Gov: As I remarked yesterday, it’s a remarkable transformation for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who in a few months went from DOA in her own primary, to competing with Sarah Palin in terms of traversing the country handing out GOP primary endorsements like so much poisoned candy. (What’s something Arizona-specific that we can call her clutch of endorsees? Mama Rattlesnakes?) Brewer waded into another gubernatorial race, giving her backing to Rep. Mary Fallin in Oklahoma.

• PA-Gov: Democratic nominee Dan Onorato seems to be kicking his fundraising operations into higher gear after having won the primary; he pulled in $1 million in contributions in the last month. He’s sitting on $2.5 million CoH.

• TX-Gov: The plot (to get the Green Party on the ballot in Texas) keeps thickening. New e-mails have surfaced among Green leaders revealing the name of Anthony Holm, a GOP consultant linked to big-time GOP donor Bob Perry (the man behind the Swift Boat Vets), saying that he wanted to pay for 40% of the costs of petitions to get the Greens on the ballot. Holm denies any involvement.

• MN-06: It looks like the 6th, held by lightning rod Michele Bachmann, is going to be the nation’s most expensive House race this year. Democratic challenger Tarryl Clark posted big numbers this morning, raising $910K this quarter, claiming $2 million raised so far this cycle. (No mention of her CoH.) Then later this morning, Bachmann topped that, raising $1.7 million last quarter, giving her $4.1 million CoH, which would be plenty even for a Senate race.

• TN-06: State Sen. Diane Black has a GOP primary lead in an internal poll taken for her by OnMessage. She’s at 41, leading former Rutherford County GOP chair Lou Ann Zelenik at 22 and state Sen. Jim Tracy at 20. Black (or whoever else wins) should have an easy time picking up this R+13 Dem-held open seat, vacated by retiring Rep. Bart Gordon.

• TN-08: Here’s one more GOP primary internal poll out of Tennessee, from the Stephen Fincher camp. His poll, conducted by the Tarrance Group, gives Fincher the lead at 32, followed by Ron Kirkland at 23 and George Flinn at 21. Attacks on Fincher by the other two seem to have taken their toll, as Fincher’s previous internal poll from early April gave him a 40-17-7 lead. As with the poll in the 6th, there’s no word on general election matchups.

• WI-07: Republican Sean Duffy, bolstered by David Obey’s retirement (and a Sarah Palin endorsement), had a big quarter, raising $470K. He’s at $670K CoH.

• Legislatures: If you read one thing today, this should be it: Stateline.org’s Louis Jacobson handicaps all the state legislative chambers that promise to be competitive this year. As you might expect, the news isn’t very good for Democrats, considering not just the nature of the year but how many chambers they currently hold. He projects one currently Democratic-controlled chamber as Lean R (the Indiana House), and has 11 nominally Dem-held chambers as Tossups (both Alabama chambers, Iowa House, Montana House, both New Hampshire chambers, New York Senate, Ohio House, Pennsylvania House, and both Wisconsin chambers). The only nominally GOP-held chamber that’s a Tossup is the Alaska Senate, which is in fact controlled by a coalition of sane Republicans and Democrats.

• NRCC: The NRCC seems to like slapping lots of different names on different groups so that they look busy, and now they’ve even come up with a program for primary victors who are running in safe Republican seats: “Vanguard!” There’s no word on what exactly they plan to do for these shoo-ins, or if it’s just an impressive-sounding title so that the likes of Jeff Duncan and Todd Rokita don’t feel left out.

• Fundraising: The Fix has a couple other fundraising tidbits that we haven’t seen before: Craig Miller in FL-24 raised $270K for 2Q with $332K CoH. And Charlie Bass in NH-02 raised $170K and has $360K CoH.

SurveyUSA for KING-TV (6/25-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Patty Murray (D-inc): 37

Dino Rossi (R): 33

Clint Didier (R): 5

Others: 6

Undecided: 19

(MoE: ±4.4%)

SurveyUSA is doing a couple things right with their newest poll of Washington: first, they’re looking at Washington’s “top two” primary, which is the first hurdle that Patty Murray and Dino Rossi have to clear. (Their only previous poll of this race was of the November general election; the only public poll of the race to have shown a Rossi lead, it was declared, pretty much by universal consensus, to be an outlier.)

In not much of a surprise, considering that Murray is the only legitimate Democrat while Rossi has to fight off a teabagger challenge from Clint Didier, Murray has a single-digit lead. Note that Rossi + Didier is about equal to Murray (although maybe not every Didier voter will shift to Rossi in November, as the state’s movement conservatives seem a lot more lukewarm about Rossi than they did two years ago, when he was the vehicle for their “we wuz robbed” indignation)… presaging a close general election race, though. (They also painstakingly list all 15 candidates, including perpetual perennial candidates like Mike the Mover and the mighty GoodSpaceGuy… who, despite his fondness for things technological, doesn’t seem to have his own website.)

The other thing that SurveyUSA is doing is adding cellphones to the mix here, despite the added expense of having to use a call center with live callers to reach cellphone users (owing to laws prohibiting auto-dialing cellphones). This is an issue I’ve groused about a lot, and it’s one where the distortion, I’ve always believed, is particularly pronounced in Washington (where the 18-34 year old set is particularly liberal, and also where they tend to be the tech-savvy early-adopters who would be the first to cast off the shackles of their landlines), so I want to offer SurveyUSA props for doing so.

Interestingly, though, the addition of cellphone users doesn’t seem to make much of a difference in the overall numbers. SurveyUSA offers a variety of different models with varying cellphone composition, and Murray always has a 4 or 5 point lead. With no cellphones in the mix, Murray’s up 39-34, and with cellphones comprising 30% of the mix, she leads 37-32. And most puzzlingly, 18-34 year olds are still the only age group in the crosstabs who favor Rossi (albeit narrowly, 33-28, while even those cynical members of Generation X opt for Murray, 40-26). So maybe, in the same way that they can’t be bothered to fill out their Census forms, Seattle’s urban hipsters still can’t be bothered to respond to phone calls from pollsters either.

• CO-Sen: Politico’s Dave Catanese has an interesting profile on Ken Buck, who’s looking likelier and likelier to wind up as the GOP’s nominee in the Colorado Senate race. With a litany of fringy comments on eliminating Social Security, student loans, and the Dept. of Education, and on supporting “birther” legislation, the question is whether he’s poised to complete the troika of candidates (along with Rand Paul and Sharron Angle) whose very over-the-topness allows the GOP to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Buck tells Politico that he “doesn’t recall” making some of those statements, and is seeking to walk back some of the most controversial. Not coincidentally, the US Chamber of Commerce just announced today that it’s backing Jane Norton in the primary, specifically citing electability and even taking an ad hominem swipe at Buck backer Jim DeMint.

• IA-Sen: Roxanne Conlin got the support of EMILY’s List last Friday. Conlin has her own money, but to make any headway against Chuck Grassley, she’ll need every penny she can round up.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias has been subpoenaed to testify in Rod Blagojevich’s corruption trial (although it’s unclear whether he’ll actually ever have to take the stand). While there isn’t any suggestion that Giannoulias has done anything wrong, any mass-mediated association at all with the toxic Blagojevich isn’t good for Giannoulias; if nothing else, it might remove the local media’s target off Mark Kirk’s back, where it’s been squarely located for the last few weeks. The Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet is still keeping the pressure on Kirk, though, at least for now; her latest column excoriates Kirk for his non-disclosure and secretiveness, which has been a constant throughout his campaign even before his house of cards started falling down.

• MO-Sen: Even if I were a Republican I can’t imagine wanting to be seen in the same place as Karl Rove, but Roy Blunt — about as transparently power-hungry a member of the GOP Beltway establishment as can be — has always seemed strangely unconcerned about the optics of what all he does. Rove is hosting two fundraisers today for Blunt in the Show Me State, in St. Charles and Springfield.

• SC-Sen: Although it was looking like the Alvin Greene story was starting to go away, with the state Democrats’ decision not to challenge his primary victory and the state election board’s decision not to investigate, the story may get a few more chapters. The state ethics and disclosure commission and the state’s 5th circuit solicitor, instead, will get involved; they’re going to look into whether any laws were broken in his financial disclosures, and they may subpoena bank records to find out. At issue, of course, is where Greene came up with the $10K to pay his filing fee; if nothing else, if he had $10K sitting around, he shouldn’t have qualified for a public defender because of indigence. Perhaps not coincidentally, it’s been announced that Greene is no longer being represented by the 5th circuit’s public defender in his upcoming trial on obscenity charges.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi won’t be doing any more get-rich-quick real estate seminars in the midst of his Senate campaign. And here’s the weird part… it wasn’t because of his own decision, because of the terrible PR that’s likely to result. Instead, it was the decision of the seminar’s organizers, who called off the last seminar in the series this week. They were worried about how Rossi’s presence made them look bad, in terms of politicizing their ostensibly agenda-free program.

• FL-Gov: Does some sort of critical mass result when two of the most unlikeable Republicans — not in terms of policy, just in terms of purely personal characteristics — get together in one place? Newt Gingrich just endorsed Bill McCollum. Meanwhile, Bud Chiles has been enduring a lot of pressure from Democratic friends and well-wishers to get the heck out of his indie bid and not risk being a spoiler, but he’s standing pat for now.

• GA-Gov: Here’s some bad news for Dems in Georgia: weirdo teabagging millionaire Ray Boyd says he won’t follow through on his plans to run a $2 million independent campaign for governor. He was having trouble gathering the requisite signatures, and decided not to throw good money after bad. (Recall that he spent a few days in the GOP primary field before storming out, unwilling to sign the party’s “loyalty oath.”) With Boyd poised to draw a few percent off the electorate’s right flank, his presence would have been a big boost to Roy Barnes in his gubernatorial comeback attempt.

• MA-Gov: The Boston Globe, via Univ. of New Hampshire, has a new poll of the Governor’s race; while Deval Patrick has a significant lead, the poll seems to be good news for Republican Charlie Baker, and moreover the RGA, as it seems to vindicate their strategy of hitting out first at independent candidate Tim Cahill to try to make it a two-man race. The GOP’s ad blitz designed at wiping out Cahill seems to have taken him down a few pegs, as UNH sees the race at 38 Patrick, 31 Baker, 9 for Cahill, and 2 for Green candidate Jill Stein. (The previous UNH poll, from January against the backdrop of the MA-Sen election, was 30 Patrick, 23 Cahill, 19 Baker.) One other intriguing tidbit that’s gotten a lot of play today: for now, Scott Brown is the most popular political figure in the state, with a 52/18 approval, suggesting that unseating His Accidency in 2012 won’t be the slam dunk that many are predicting.

• MD-Gov: It was the last day for Bob Ehrlich’s talk radio show on Saturday. Ehrlich will be officially filing to run for Governor before the July 6 deadline. Of course, he’s been saying he’s a candidate for months now, but has held off on the official filing to keep on the air as long as possible to avoid prohibitions against that sort of illegal in-kind contribution to his campaign.

• MI-Gov: Rep. Peter Hoekstra has been seemingly losing a lot of endorsement battles in the last few weeks, but he pocketed a few helpful nods. One is from right-wing kingmaker Jim DeMint, who stumped with Hoekstra on Friday. The other is from the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce, which gave a split endorsement to local boy Hoekstra and Mike Bouchard. (The statewide Chamber has already endorsed Mike Cox in the GOP primary.) GRACC also endorsed Steve Heacock in the GOP primary in Vern Ehlers’ MI-03, and Bill Huizenga in the GOP primary in Hoekstra’s MI-02.

• AL-02: Rick Barber seems to be reveling in his viral video celebrity, rolling out an even more feverish ad involving his hallucinations about the Founding Fathers and various other liberty-related heroes. Today’s ad includes a conversation with Zombie Lincoln, who compares health care reform to slavery.

• ID-01: Here’s more evidence that the ID-01 Republican primary really was a win-win situation for Democrats. State Rep. Raul Labrador is backing down from his withering critiques of his possible-future-boss John Boehner, upon the realization that he’ll need the NRCC’s financial help to get to Congress in the first place (seeing as how he currently has $35K to work with). Labrador had previously criticized Boehner by name for helping drive the Republican party into the ditch and letting the Dems take over in 2006.

• MS-01: Could Rep. Travis Childers rack up enough right-wing endorsements to save his bacon against Alan Nunnelee this cycle? Fresh off his NRA endorsement last week, now he’s gotten the endorsement of the National Right to Life.

• Polltopia: Daily Kos’s Steve Singiser is putting his freakishly comprehensive personal database of poll data to good use. He finds that there is, indeed, a wide disparity in internal polls released by the two parties compared with the previous few cycles, when Dems released more internals as they seemed to have more good news to report. (This cycle has a 3-to-1 GOP advantage; even in the fairly neutral year of 2004, it was about even between Dems and the GOP.) The caveat, however: most internals were released in a flurry in the last few months before the general elections, and this kind of early flooding-of-the-zone with internals is pretty unprecedented, so it’s still hard to interpret what it means.

• CA-Sen: Business Week is out with an interesting list of all the Silicon Valley CEOs who are backing Barbara Boxer… or maybe more to the point, the ones who aren’t backing Carly Fiorina, being in the best possible position to evaluate her legacy of fail at HP. Pro-Boxer names include Yahoo’s Jerry Yang, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and even Cisco’s John Chambers.

• FL-Sen: Well, if nothing else, maybe this’ll help Marco Rubio’s teabaggin’ average-guy cred: like so many other Americans, he’s facing foreclosure on his home. Well, make that “one of” his homes, so maybe that’s not so average. Court documents show he’s facing a foreclosure suit on a house he co-owns in Tallahassee along with FL-25 candidate David Rivera. Rubio contends that he and Rivera just paid off the $9K delinquency yesterday (after Politico started asking questions).

• NV-Sen: So here’s why the GOP is keeping Sharron Angle under wraps while giving her the Eliza Doolittle treatment behind the scenes: an impromptu interview with a KLAS TV reporter turned into Angle getting tied into knots over Social Security “transitioning out” and then cutting the interview short when getting asked about UN withdrawal. It was followed up by a denunciation from a nameless campaign spokesperson who called the reporter “an idiot” and “another term that can’t be repeated.” Meanwhile, the whole massage/sauna thing keeps being an issue, with Angle now saying that the wacky rehabilitation program that she backed has nothing to do with Scientology… it’s a natural homeopathic method that just happens to have been developed by L. Ron Hubbard.

• WA-Sen: Here’s some more momentum for Clint Didier’s tea-flavored campaign: Sarah Palin is doubling down on her backing. He’ll be getting at least two appearances with her, who previously endorsed him before Dino Rossi’s entry into the race. He also got some sort-of good news from the NRSC, saying that they promised (having gotten burned on the Crist/Rubio and Norton/Buck fronts) that they wouldn’t take any sides until there was actually a nominee. (He also took a few whacks at the EPA in the interview, fed up with their “unburdensome regulations.”)

• MD-Gov: I’m not sure what Brian Murphy, the random right-wing businessman who’s running in the GOP primary against Bob Ehrlich, had in mind when he released this internal poll, taken for him by a polling company called Polling Company; it shows him trailing Dem incumbent Martin O’Malley 44-25. The more interesting number is that Ehrlich trails O’Malley by only 1, 44-43. Perhaps the most salient number (the Ehrlich/Murphy matchup) doesn’t even get mentioned. Gee, I wonder why?

• OK-Gov: The newest Sooner poll has Republican Rep. Mary Fallin looking large and in charge in the open-seat gubernatorial race. Fallin leads state Sen. Randy Brogdon 59-10 in the GOP primary, and leads both Democrats by double-digits: 50-35 against AG Drew Edmondson and 49-36 against LG Jari Askins. The Dem primary is super-close, with Edmondson leading Askins only 37-36. Want to see a Dem win this race? Make sure Brodgon somehow wins the GOP primary. Edmondson leads Brogdon 41-40, while Askins leads 44-36.

• AL-07: Terri Sewell is out with an internal poll (from Anzalone Liszt) giving her a lead coming out of the primary and heading into the runoff against Shelia Smoot. Sewell, who’s the only candidate who’s done much advertising, now claims a 53-33 lead over Smoot (after winning the primary with an 8-pt. margin). The difference maker is that Smoot Sewell is winning the majority (48-38) of backers of third-place finisher Earl Hilliard Jr. (Hilliard has said he won’t be endorsing either one in the runoff.)

• FL-08: I’m not even sure where to begin with this weird story, but apparently Bruce O’Donoghue, one of the various Republicans in the primary in the 8th, is accusing the Florida Tea Party of being in cahoots with Rep. Alan Grayson, to run Peg Dunmire on their line and split the conservative vote. He’s pointing out connections between Grayson and local talk radio host and local Tea Party co-founder Doug Guetzloe, but both Grayson and Guetzloe say those connections aren’t meaningful. Recall that the loudly liberal Grayson actually did appear at a teabaggers’ rally last summer, but that seemed to mostly be about their common cause over the issue of auditing the Fed.

• NC-02: Here’s a sign that maybe we don’t need to take the Renee Ellmers campaign that seriously, at least not yet: her consultant, Carter Wrenn, is stepping on the NRCC’s message management after having gotten gifted a video of Bobby Etheridge’s freak-out with trackers. Despite the NRCC’s protestations that they have no idea who these innocent “college students” are, Wrenn says that his own conversations with the NRCC indicate that they know who they are.

• TX-23: Another slightly stale GOP internal poll (this one by OnMessage, taken in mid-May) shows, big surprise, a competitive race in the 23rd. Incumbent Dem Ciro Rodriguez leads self-funding GOPer Quico Canseco 48-45. Given that internal polls tend to get released only when they show a candidate’s best-case scenario, this may actually make me feel a little more confident about Rodriguez, whom we always knew was in for a rough ride this cycle. (H/t GOPVOTER.)

• VA-05: Huh, here’s a rapid about-face from GOP nominee Robert Hurt. Last Saturday, he said he’d “absolutely” be willing to participate in three-way debates with not just Tom Perriello but also tea-flavored independent Jeffrey Clark. Perhaps Clark was wondering why Perriello seemed very pleased with that (or maybe somebody smarter about this stuff from the NRCC gave him a call and pointed out that Clark’s votes are coming only out Hurt’s column), but now he’s reversed course and says he “cannot allow the important debate in this election to be sidetracked by a candidate who is not serious about his campaign.”

• WV-03: Here’s one other sketchy poll: an internal poll from the camp of Spike Maynard, the GOPer in the race, taken by somebody called Mark Blankenship Enterprises. (Steve Singiser wonders if there’s any familial connection to Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship, the travel buddy of Maynard, but this article seems to think not.) At any rate, long-time Rep. Nick Rahall leads Maynard 42-36.

• Facebook: Thanks for helping us smash through the completely arbitrary yet very important barrier of 500 fans! Keep the “likes” coming!

Elway Poll (6/9-13, registered voters, 4/29-5/2 in parens):

Patty Murray (D-inc): 47 (51)

Dino Rossi (R): 40 (34)

Undecided: 13 (15)

Patty Murray (D-inc): 47 (50)

Paul Akers (R): 33 (26)

Undecided: 20 (24)

Patty Murray (D-inc): 46 (50)

Clint Didier (R): 32 (24)

Undecided: 22 (26)

(MoE: ±5%)

Elway’s last poll of the Washington Senate race, taken before Dino Rossi made his entry official, had seemed a little optimistic; a 17-point lead is pretty showy in a state where a Republican is guaranteed at least 40% in a statewide race just for showing up (but where 50% is nearly impossible). A 7-point lead is very plausible.

I’d be curious to see Elway (or anyone else… maybe PPP will finally poll Washington?) take a look at the Republican primary, which in the wake of the robust showing for support for Clint Didier at the state convention last weekend and the ‘meh’ that greeted Dino Rossi, looks like it could turn very interesting. (OK, the “top two” primary, which would require polling Murray, Rossi, Didier, and Paul Akers all in one big pile.) In fact, with a Sarah Palin endorsement boosting him, Beltway Republicans are actually starting to have to take notice of Didier: he’s going to be meeting in DC this week with staff from the RNC and the NRSC (which just finished laboriously recruiting Rossi into the race).

UPDATE: Apparently Elway has polled the “top two” primary as well, but those numbers didn’t start making the rounds until later today. The results (bearing in mind that all candidates are thrown together in one pool) are: Murray 43, Rossi 31, Didier 5, and Akers 2. For those who don’t like to do their own math, that combined GOP vote is 38. Didier is also out with a breathless tweet today announcing that he just met Ron Paul today while in DC! It was teh awesome! It makes him “want to fight harder for Liberty!” (Well, except for Liberty from all those farm subsidies…)

• LA-Sen: Two different polls have very different pictures of the Louisiana Senate race, which is moving into the foreground with Charlie Melancon getting a lot more media exposure criticizing BP while David Vitter acts as one of their biggest defenders. PPP (in a poll leaked to Roll Call, although I’m not sure if it’s a Melancon internal or on someone else’s behalf) finds Melancon within single digits, trailing Vitter 46-37. On the other hand, Republican pollster Magellan gives Vitter a 51-31 lead. (Magellan has been doing a lot of recent public polling of Republican primaries; this is for the general, though, and I’m not sure if they’re working for Vitter, for some other GOP interest, or just acting sua sponte.) Both polls find extremely high continued support for offshore drilling, not a surprise since that’s Louisiana’s bread and butter.

• NH-Sen: Yesterday was Kelly Ayotte’s day to testify before the state legislature about what she did and didn’t know about the collapsed mortgage banker FRM; for the most part, she staked out claims of not knowing anything about them (saying that the buck stopped with her, but the buck never made it to her AG’s desk). Legislators seemed underwhelmed by her responses, and even GOP state Rep. Rip Holden criticized her, saying she needed to accept some blame for the state’s failings.

• PA-Sen: Politico, always hungry for inside-baseball campaign drama, is highlighting a story titled “Sestak silence worries Pa. officials,” detailing concerns the local establishment has with Joe Sestak not sufficiently linking up with them as he pivots toward the general election. It’s actually an interesting article, but Pa2010‘s Dan Hirschhorn captures the overarching tone of it with his own meta-piece, “The Sestak-as-crazy-campaigner meme returns.”

• SC-Sen: Today’s 538 look at the South Carolina puzzle focuses on how Census microdata suggests that the Greene/Green difference may not have been the racial dogwhistle that people think it is: nationwide, a higher percentage of Greenes are white than are Greens. (H/t to our commenter KCinDC, who pointed out this same data point over the weekend.) In fact, the first name “Alvin” may be a clearer dogwhistle instead. (And, of course, there’s the danger in extrapolating national data to the state level, where things may be much different in South Carolina.)

• WA-Sen: As I’ve opined before, attacking Dino Rossi for having made money off foreclosed properties, and teaching other people how to do it, has a whiff of “what else have you got?” But what’s really weird here is that he just keeps scheduling more appearances at more real estate seminars, as he’ll being doing today. (Today’s burning question: “Is now the time to buy a waterfront home?”) If I were the NRSC, I’d be worried about how committed he is to a race he seemed to get dragged kicking and screaming into in the first place, if he’s still doing real estate seminars instead of campaigning 24/7. Is the Senate race a way to keep his name in the spotlight so he can get more money for more real estate seminar appearances?

• AK-Gov: P’oh! Former state official Bob Poe was the first Dem to get in the gubernatorial race (back when it would have been against Sarah Palin). But not having made much progress on the fundraising front against the higher-profile Ethan Berkowitz and Hollis French in the Democratic primary, he pulled out of the race yesterday.

• CA-Gov, CA-Sen: There’s a poll of the California races out from CrossTarget research on behalf of right-wing new media outlet Pajamas Media, so you might keep the salt shaker handy (especially remembering their decidedly optimistic polling of the MA-Sen special). That said, though, the gubernatorial numbers look perfectly plausible, with Jerry Brown leading Meg Whitman 46-43. The Senate race may be a little further off the mark, pegged at a 47-47 tie between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina. Speaking of Whitman, she just wrote herself a check for another $20 million from her seeming bottomless reserves, bringing her total self-funding investment to $91 million. The main Whitman story that’s in the news today, though, presents a different picture of her from the rather serene Queen Meg that appears in all her advertising: it turns out she settled with an eBay employee for six-figures after shoving her during an argument.

• FL-Gov (pdf): When you’re reduced to leaking your own internal poll that has you tied with your opposition, well, let’s just say you’re in a world of hurt. But that’s what Bill McCollum is doing today to prove his continued relevance in the Florida GOP gubernatorial primary. His poll by McLaughlin & Associates has McCollum tied at 40-40 with Rick Scott.

• IA-Gov: As expected, the religious right isn’t planning to do much of anything to help Terry Branstad defeat Chet Culver in November. The Iowa Family PAC, who had backed Bob Vander Plaats, confirmed (as they’d threatened months ago) that they won’t endorse Branstad.

• CO-04: Credit GOP nominee Cory Gardner with having some sense of decency (or at least knowing when it’s not expedient to hitch his wagon to the crazy train). After Iowa Rep. Steve King’s comments about Barack Obama’s racist “default mechanism,” Gardner abruptly canceled a $100/person fundraiser he had scheduled for Saturday with King. (King, for his part, is doubling down on the crazy, with his impassioned defense of racial profiling yesterday.)

• KY-06: The Andy Barr campaign is out with an internal by the Tarrance Group showing him within sorta-striking distance of Democratic Rep. Ben Chandler. Chandler leads Barr 45-38. Chandler’s spokesperson said that Chandler “has a strong double-digit lead” in his own polling, but didn’t offer a polling memo.

• NC-08: The list of GOP Beltway figures piling on to support Harold Johnson instead of Tim D’Annunzio is a veritable House GOP who’s who. John Boehner and Eric Cantor are headlining a Thursday Capitol Hill fundraiser for Johnson, with Pete Sessions and Greg Walden also atop the list. Obviously plans for this must predate today’s PPP poll showing the huge disparity in viability between Johnson and D’Annunzio, so the NRCC has clearly had their eye on this one for a while.

• OK-02: Rep. Dan Boren is out with an internal poll as he faces a tough fight in a dark-red district… but he doesn’t seem concerned enough with his minor GOP opposition to even poll on that. Instead, he’s focused on a late-breaking primary challenge from the left from state Sen. Jim Wilson. His poll from Myers Research gives him a 68-24 lead over Wilson.

• OR-01: Tis the season for internal polls, I guess: there’s also one floating around out there from Rob Cornilles, the little-known but NRCC-touted businessman running against Rep. David Wu in the Portland suburbs. The Cornilles poll, by local Republican pollster Moore Information, gives Wu a 46-40 lead over Cornilles, suggesting that Wu is at least in for a tougher-than-usual challenge even if he has the district’s D+7 lean working in his favor.

• SC-06: The strange saga of the South Carolina Democratic primary is also playing out in the 6th, where Democratic House Whip Jim Clyburn easily beat Gregory Brown. Clyburn, who’s led the charge that Senate candidate Alvin Greene was a plant, is crying “foul” here as well, though, pointing out that Brown has been linked to a Republican consulting firm. The Brown campaign paid $23K to Stonewall Strategies (run by former Joe Wilson aide Preston Grisham) for “marketing;” Brown says he worked with them because they were the only ones willing to take him on as a client. Several African-American state legislators tell TPM that they’ve talked with Brown and figure that his campaign, while quixotic, was still “on the level.”

• TN-08: Allegedly humble gospel singer Stephen Fincher has gone negative against his opposition in the GOP primary, not the usual sign of a confident frontrunner. He’s launched a new ad against physician Ron Kirkland, attacking Kirkland for allowing thousands of dollars in contributions to Democratic candidates when he was head of the American Medical Group Association. He’s also charging that the Jackson Clinic, which Kirkland ran at the time, gave $8K to state Sen. Roy Herron, who’s now running for the Democratic nod in the 8th.

• VA-05: The hope of party unity for state Sen. Robert Hurt seems to be running into quite a few hitches, in the wake of his 48% victory in the GOP primary against fractured teabagging opposition. The Lynchburg Tea Party leadership says they won’t back Hurt (although they seem to be not backing anyone rather, than supporting right-wing indie Jeffrey Clark). TPM also claims that Jim McKelvey, who courted Tea Party support en route to finishing a distant second in the GOP primary, won’t be backing Hurt either.

• NRCC: Rep. Mike Rogers has a pretty easy job this year: he’s in charge of incumbent retention for the NRCC. He says there are, at this point, only nine incumbents who are in need of continued financial support: Dan Lungren, Mary Bono Mack, Charles Djou, Joseph Cao, Pat Tiberi, Jim Gerlach, Charlie Dent, and Dave Reichert. (You’d think he’s been looking at our House Ratings page or something.) There’s one other stray bit of good news for the NRCC: they’ve finally settled their several-years-old embezzlement case, paying a $10K civil penalty for improper reporting; they’ve also received a payout from their insurance company, covering $500K of their lost $724K in funds.

Meanwhile, wags have been having some great fun at the expense of the name of the NRCC’s offense program, named, of course, “Young Guns.” Despite the fact that the average Young Gun is 50 years old. Only 7 of the 105 members of the program are women, so maybe at least the Gun part is right.

• DCCC: Roll Call looks at the DCCC’s continued outreach to K Street. An “adopt a member” strategy is being cooked up where sympathetic lobbyists will work directly with the most embattled members to shepherd them through the electoral cycle.

• WATN?: If you’re wondering whatever became of ex-Rep. John Doolittle, who retired in shame in 2008 after getting caught up in the Jack Abramoff scandal, it turns out he won’t be facing any charges. The DOJ has finally closed the case on Doolittle, who had previously been named as a co-conspirator in the case against aide-turned-lobbyist Kevin Ring.

• CT-Sen, CT-Gov: Leftover from last Friday is the most recent Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut. Without much changing from their previous poll other than some within-the-margin-of-error gains for Linda McMahon, the poll is very digestible. Richard Blumenthal leads McMahon 55-35 (instead of 56-31 in late May), leads Rob Simmons (who has “suspended” his campaign) 54-33, and leads Peter Schiff 56-29. McMahon leads Simmons and Schiff in the GOP primary 45-29-13. They also included gubernatorial primaries (but not the general): for the Dems, Ned Lamont leads Dan Malloy 39-22, while for the GOP Tom Foley leads Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel 39-12-2.

• IL-Sen: With a growing sense that many Illinois residents would prefer to vote for neither Mark Kirk nor Alexi Giannoulias, a new right-winger with money to burn looks like he’s daring to go where Patrick Hughes didn’t. Mike Niecestro says he’s a “disgusted Republican who has had it with the people the party throws at us,” and differentiates himself from Kirk on cap-and-trade and immigration. Just another random teabagger who’s all talk and no $$$? No, Niecestro says he already has the 25,000 signatures he needs to qualify before the June 21 deadline, and also has $1 million of his own money ready to go, along with another $100K he’s raised elsewhere. Even if he winds up pulling in only a few percent off Kirk’s right flank, that could be what that Giannoulias needs to squeak by in what otherwise looks to be a close race.

• NV-Sen: Jon Scott Ashjian is turning into something of the white whale for the Nevada GOP. Even though his candidate lost the primary, Dan Burdish, former political director for Sue Lowden, is still filing complaints with the SoS’s office to get Ashjian off the ballot. It doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere, though; Ashjian himself has qualified for the ballot, easily meeting the low 250-vote signature hurdle even though the “Tea Party” didn’t meet the signature requirements for its own ballot line. Of course, competing right-wing third party the Independent American Party is still trying to get Ashjian off the ballot too, and now the teabaggers in general have turned on Ashjian (who never really had much support from them in the first place) since one of their own, Sharron Angle, managed to snare the GOP nod.

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has yet another poll out of both the Senate races in New York. There’s still very little of interest to report. Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 48-27, David Malpass 49-24, and Joe DioGuardi 47-29. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary over Blakeman and Malpass, 21-7-3. Chuck Schumer leads Jay Townsend 60-26 and Gary Berntsen 59-27. Townsend leads Berntsen in the other GOP primary, 20-15.

• SC-Sen: Vic Rawl, who lost the Democratic nomination to the baffling Alvin Greene last week, is now formally contesting the results of the election. The state party’s 92-member executive committee will meet on Thursday to hear evidence, but it’s unlikely they’ll do anything, as there’s no precedent in South Carolina for throwing out a primary election’s results.

• WA-Sen: The state GOP convention was over the weekend in Washington; unlike, say, Utah or Connecticut, there’s nothing at stake here, but the general sense in terms of signage, applause, and the like, was that the party’s activist base is pretty jazzed about Sarah Palin-endorsed Clint Didier, and much more tepid about Dino Rossi than they were in 2008, when he was a more apt vehicle for their resentments. A straw poll at a Patriot Coalition event associated with the convention (a subset of a subset of the most hardcore base, so take with much salt) gave Didier a 99-12 edge over Rossi.

• AL-Gov: Artur Davis isn’t giving up on being a douchebag just because he lost the gubernatorial nomination; he said he isn’t sure how Ron Sparks is going to be able to win the uphill fight in the general election, and that Sparks will need something “broader than bingo” to win. Also, this is a very strange time to be making any major staff changes, let alone plunging into what Reid Wilson is describing as “turmoil:” fresh off the triumph of (probably) making the GOP gubernatorial runoff against Bradley Byrne, Robert Bentley just sacked his campaign manager, communications director, and new media director. Bentley is bringing in members of the Mike Huckabee camp to take over (with Huckabee son-in-law Bryan Sanders the new CM), but it seems like his small-time help didn’t get demoted, but instead rudely shown the door by the new bosses.

• CO-Gov: Businessman Joe Gesundheit Schadenfreude Weltschmerz Gschwendtner has pulled the plug on his Republican gubernatorial bid, without endorsing anybody else. He wasn’t able to round up enough signatures to qualify, which is odd, considering that people only need to be able to spell their own names, not his.

• FL-Gov: With his once-clear path to the GOP nomination suddenly looking to be on life support, Bill McCollum got some help from a key GOP establishment figure: Mitt Romney. Romney will appear at two Sunshine State fundraisers today, handing out endorsements like candy to a number of other Republicans in better position too.

• IA-Gov: You may recall that, in the wake of Terry Branstad’s closer-than-expected victory over social conservative Bob vander Plaats, we lamented that the Dems didn’t try any Gray Davis-style meddling in the primary to get the more-conservative, less-electable guy over the top. Well, it turns out they did try a little of that; the Dems launched an independent expenditure committee called “Iowans for Responsible Government” that ran ads on Fox News and sent direct mail attacking Branstad for tax hikes and putting his face on a liberal Mt. Rushmore next to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. While it didn’t seal the deal, it may have contributed to the underwhelming showing by Branstad.

• MI-Gov: AG Mike Cox won the endorsement of Michigan Right to Life, a big endorsement that will help him as he fights for the social conservative vote in the GOP primary with Rep. Peter Hoekstra. Cox might be the Republican we most want to face out of the GOP field; Rasmussen joined the crowd today in finding that he polls the weakest against either Democrat.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Siena also polled the gubernatorial race; again, nothing noteworthy here, other than Andrew Cuomo having lost a few points since last time. Cuomo leads Rick Lazio 60-24, and leads Carl Paladino 65-23. Party-endorsed Lazio leads Paladino (assuming he can successfully petition onto the ballot) in the GOP primary, 45-18. Meanwhile, the race may get slightly more interesting as gadflyish New York city councilor Charles Barron seems to be moving forward on his quixotic plans to create a whole third party (New York Freedom Democratic Party) for a challenge to the left, mostly to protest Cuomo putting together an all-white ticket.

• OH-Gov: Incumbent Dem Ted Strickland won the NRA endorsement today, instead of GOP ex-Rep. John Kasich. That may seem a surprise, but Strickland has a lifetime “A” rating from the NRA while Kasich was always an unusually anti-gun Republican.

• GA-12: The Hill details how Rep. John Barrow’s fundraising from fellow Dems has fallen way off this year, perhaps an indication of blowback over his “no” vote on HCR. He’s only gotten money directly from five Democratic colleagues and five others’ PACs, compared with 53 in 2006 and 22 in 2008. (An alternative explanation, of course, is that he’s in no major trouble in the general election this year and that money may be more needed elsewhere.) Barrow still has the AFL-CIO’s endorsement, and about a 20:1 CoH advantage over primary challenger Regina Thomas. Speaking of one of his minor GOP opponents, Carl Smith, the fire chief of the small town of Thunderbolt, has a less-appealing resume now that he just got canned by his city council, which opted to stop paying for a fire department and return to an all-volunteer operation.

• IN-03: The Indiana state GOP met over the weekend to pick a nominee to fill the spot left behind by the resigned Rep. Mark Souder. It wasn’t much of a surprise: they picked state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, an up-and-comer who gave Dan Coats a challenge in the GOP Senate primary. Stutzman won on the second ballot, with state Rep. Randy Borror a distant second. It was a double pick: Stutzman will be replace Souder as the GOP candidate in the general election, and also will be the GOP’s candidate in the special election that will also be held on Election Day in November (which, assuming he wins, will allow him to serve in the post-election lame duck session).

• NC-02: Rep. Bob Etheridge, usually one of the more low-key members of the House, had an embarrassing flip-out in front of two GOP trackers/college students asking him if he “supported the Obama agenda,” grabbing one of them and his camera. Etheridge subsequently issued a statement apologizing.

• Polltopia: PPP is soliciting opinions on where the poll next, both multiple-choice and open-ended. Let ’em know what burning questions you’d like answered.

Taking the last non-Rasmussen polls (four as maximum) and calculating the average between the key numbers of the polls we have the next rank:

(Begining from the number of democratic senate seats and the number of democratic governors what need not run for reelection this year, the first number mean the number of democratic senate seats and governors what dems would have winning until every race of the list.)

(When I tell not the number of polls is because they are four or more)

(I bold emphasize the race with a negative poll what include an outsider key value what make down the average).

RANK OF SENATE AND GUBERNATORIAL RACES BY LAST NO-RASMUSSEN POLLS AVERAGE

41 senate seats in the democratic caucus need not run this year.

07 democratic governors need not run this year.

And taking L Chafee and C Crist as friendly candidates:

42S +??.??% VT-Sen 0 polls

43S +??.??% MD-Sen 0 polls

44S +??.??% HI-Sen 0 polls

08G +38.50% AR-Gov 2 polls

09G +37.75% NY-Gov

45S +36.67% NY-Sen 3 polls

10G +23.50% NH-Gov

46S +22.75% OR-Sen

47S +21.00% NY-Sen(s)

11G +20.00% RI-Gov 2 polls

48S +19.25% CT-Sen

49S +15.67% WI-Sen 3 polls

12G +10.67% HI-Gov 3 polls

13G +09.00% AZ-Gov

14G +07.67% CT-Gov 3 polls

15G +07.50% MA-Gov

16G +07.00% MD-Gov

17G +06.25% CA-Gov

50S +06.25% WA-Sen

51S +06.00% FL-Sen

18G +05.25% OH-Gov

19G +04.00% NM-Gov 2 polls

52S +04.00% CA-Sen

53S +03.00% OH-Sen

20G +02.00% MN-Gov

21G +02.50% OR-Gov 2 polls

22G +02.00% VT-Gov 1 poll

23G +01.75% CO-Gov

54S +01.50% CO-Sen

55S +01.25% PA-Sen

56S +01.00% MO-Sen

57S +00.75% NV-Sen

24G =??.??% ME-Gov 0 polls

25G – 00.50% IL-Gov

**** – 00.75% NJ-Gov

58S – 01.50% IL-Sen

26G – 01.50% GA-Gov

59S – 04.25% KY-Sen

60S – 04.75% NC-Sen

**** – 05.75% MA-Sen

27G – 06.00% TX-Gov

28G – 06.25% WI-Gov

29G – 06.50% FL-Gov

61S – 09.25% NH-Sen

30G – 10.00% SC-Gov 1 polls

31G – 11.00% NV-Gov

62S – 11.00% IN-Sen 2 polls

32G – 11.75% IA-Gov

33G – 12.67% AL-Gov 3 polls

34G – 13.00% PA-Gov

35G – 13.00% SD-Gov 1 poll

63S – 14.25% LA-Sen

**** – 14.25% VA-Gov

64S – 15.00% DE-Sen 2 polls

36G – 15.25% MI-Gov

65S – 15.25% AR-Sen

66S – 16.00% IA-Sen

37G – 16.25% OK-Gov

…

I take as the negative outsider polls, the polls what have a difference of -9.50 or more with the average (higher with the other polls for the race).

This is a rank of outsider values:

(The first number is the difference between the outsider value and the average for the race).

– 12.50% NH-Gov by PPP

– 11.00% PA-Gov by Muhlenberg College

– 10.75% MN-Gov by Survey USA

– 10.00% NM-Gov by Survey USA

– 10.00% IA-Sen by PPP

– 09.75% OR-Sen by Survey USA

– 09.75% WI-Gov by St Norbert College

– 09.50% IL-Gov by PPP

– 09.50% OR-Gov by Survey USA

The two colleges seems local pollsters attacking the democratic prospect in PA and WI. I worry about WI-Gov race because I think should be better than this and no-one is polling the race. Without the outsider poll, the average for WI-Gov race would be – 02.25%.

Survey USA seems begin a campaign for include outsider values for the races with lower number of polls (the poll for WA-Sen was too an outsider value but is not included because they are more recent polls for the race). ME-Gov with 0 polls and VT-Gov with 1 poll are good candidates for the next Survey USA poll in this strategy.

Just Survey USA polls create the alone positive outsider values at this level (+9.50 or more) because the average between the key value of two polls is in the middle of both values and if one is included as outsider, both values get as outsiders. A third poll would show what is the real outsider value.

And PPP has too some unpleasant polls. The dems from NH (the value for NH-Sen is not an outsider but is very bad too), IA and IL (Obama’s home state) are not favored by PPP what gives to they negative outsider key values in the polls. The new PPP poll of IL-Sen and IL-Gov races included after the updates, improves the previous numbers but still makes down the average of both races to negative numbers.

Of course all the races with positive average are races for fight and try win. And someone of the races with negative average can be too for fight but the democratic candidates need emerge. In the poll of the diary are included the 20 first races with negative average in the moment of write the diary (before the updates).

I will update the diary with the results of the new polls while the diary continues in the frontpage of SSP. I include too the reference of the NJ-Gov, MA-Sen and VA-Gov races with the average of the last four polls just before the elections of 2009 and 2010.

• AR-Sen: The Bill Halter campaign is looking for last minute phonebanking help to seal the deal. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov (pdf): The Senate GOP primary portion of the Field Poll came out over the weekend, and it’s right in line with the various other pollsters finding a last-minute Carly Fiorina surge into a double-digit lead. She leads Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore 37-22-19. (Campbell led 28-22-9 in the previous Field poll in March.) Also, it looks like Campbell’s last-minute ad pitch, centered around his electability, may fall on deaf ears: 42% of primary voters think that Fiorina has the best chance of beating Barbara Boxer, while 22% think that Campbell does (and 12% think that Chuck DeVore does — which is also about the same percentage of Californians who believe there is a 1,000 foot high pyramid in Greenland). There are also primary polls out from Republican pollster Magellan (who don’t have a horse in this race), who find things even worse for Campbell: they have Fiorina leading Campbell and DeVore 54-19-16. They also give a big edge to fellow rich person Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race; she leads Steve Poizner 64-22. The unfortunate moral of the story here: have a lot of money.

• DE-Sen: New Castle Co. Exec Chris Coons is pre-emptively getting ahead of Republican charges that he raised taxes, by, instead of hiding under the bed like conventional wisdom dictates, saying ‘guilty as charged’ and explaining how it helped. The county wound up with a AAA bond rating and a eight-digit surplus. Coons also previewed one of his lines of attack against Mike Castle: Castle’s role in deregulating the banking sector.

• FL-Sen: As Charlie Crist rebuilds his team from scratch, he’s rolling out a new media team that’s heavy on the Democratic ties. Most prominently, Chuck Schumer’s former chief of staff, Josh Isay, will be Crist’s lead media person. Isay’s firm SKD Knickerbocker may be best-known for helping out other moderate independents, like Joe Lieberman and Michael Bloomberg. One of the fires that Isay will have to put out as soon as he gets in the building, though, is what to do about the Jim Greer situation. Greer’s lawyer is saying that Crist gave the initial OK on Greer’s fundraising workaround which avoided usual party channels (which Greer allegedly turned into a scheme for filling his own pockets).

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk’s very, very bad week last week just seems to be spilling over into this week. There are allegations popping up that he fibbed on getting shot at in Afghanistan too, and also evidence that he made a lot of stuff up while talking off the cuff about the Somalia situation last year. Taking a page from Richard Blumenthal, late last week he finally dropped the playing offense against the charges and instead went to the Chicago Tribune’s e-board to say “I’m sorry” — but that apology comes after letting the story fester all week.

• NH-Sen: After a year and a half of having the Democratic primary to himself, there are hints that Rep. Paul Hodes might get some late-in-the-game company. Mark Connolly, the former head of the state’s Securities Division who resigned to become a whistleblower in the wake of the Financial Resources Mortgage coverup (the same one that’ll have Kelly Ayotte testifying before the state legislature soon), expressed some interest and said “he’s angry enough to do it.” (Looks like a common theme this year.) Speaking of Ayotte, it sounds like she doesn’t know how to read a poll: she says she won’t take drilling for oil off New Hampshire’s tiny coastline “off the table.”

• WA-Sen: You might remember from last week that the Univ. of Washington engaged in some methodologically weird stuff by adding an extra week’s worth of samples on the end of their already-released poll and re-releasing the numbers (which were nevertheless unchanged, at Patty Murray 44, Dino Rossi 40). Well, now they’re re-releasing the poll yet again with even more samples, with changed toplines and with specific numbers for that tiny extra sample for the days May 24-28 (following Rossi’s official announcement). The number that’s getting all the press is that Rossi led Murray 42-39 in that batch, although that’s only based on 221 likely voters with a margin of error of 6.6%, so its usefulness is, well, questionable. Their full numbers are now 42-40 for Murray for the entire RV sample and 46-40 for Murray for the entire LV sample (i.e. those who voted in 2006), and she leads Generic R 44-39 among RVs (and 46-41 in the May 24-28 sample), but this poll has gotten so methodologically convoluted I’m not really sure it’s worth much of anything at this point.

Murray got some good news today in the form of an endorsement, and it’s not from a human but a corporation: Boeing. While she’s received plenty of Boeing money in the past, I’m not aware of Boeing ever having explicitly endorsed her or anyone else before (although anyone with a pulse knows that Murray has taken over for Scoop Jackson as the “Senator from Boeing”). Frankly, in the state of Washington, this is a bigger endorsement than any human politician’s endorsement would be, considering the way Boeing’s tendrils reach so much of the state. Finally, the field of miscellaneous Republicans kept shrinking today, as chiropractor Sean Salazar (probably the first guy to try to grab the teabagger mantle here, although he got shoved over by Clint Didier) bailed out of the race and backed Rossi.

• WI-Sen: Here’s a strange vulnerability for Ron Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race: his fixation on opposing bipartisan Wisconsin state legislation making it easier for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers. That’ll require some explanation, and I assume it’ll be something other than his current explanation, that such legislation would only lead to more victims of sexual abuse by making organizations likelier to sweep it under the carpet.

• IA-Gov: After endorsing a variety of misspelled odds-and-ends last week (“Cecil Bledsoe,” “Angela McGowen,” and Joe Miller), Sarah Palin went with a big gun this weekend, and it was one who doesn’t match her carefully cultivated teabagging/religious right image at all: establishment retread Terry Branstad in Iowa. Is she counting on getting repaid by Branstad in the 2012 caucuses, if she decides to give up the grifting lifestyle and take the huge pay cut associated with running for President? (Branstad also has the backing of Mitt Romney, who seems more of a kindred spirit for him.)

• MI-Gov: The Schwarz is not with us after all. Joe Schwarz, the moderate ex-Rep. who got bounced from MI-07 in 2006 in the GOP primary by Tim Walberg, has decided against pursuing the independent bid in the Governor’s race that he’d been threatening. On the surface, the loss of a center-right indie looks like bad news for the Dems, but depending on which two candidates match up in November, Schwarz could just have easily pulled more left-of-center votes… and in all likelihood, he wasn’t going to rack up more than a few percent anyway.

• NY-Gov: In their standoff with Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, the Working Families Party seems to have blinked first. They went ahead and nominated placeholders in the Governor, Lt. Gov, and AG slots, presumably to allow coordination with the Dem choices later. Cuomo had been leaning hard on the WFP to do so. The person most affected by this is state Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Cuomo foe who had been considered the most likely WFP candidate for AG; instead, the WFP may wind up going with Nassau Co. DA Kathleen Rice, who’s Cuomo’s preferred AG for his informal “ticket.”

• TX-Gov: The Greens are actually going to be on the ballot in Texas this year, for the gubernatorial race? I’m as surprised as you are, but it’s less surprising when you find out who’s behind it: Arizona Republican consultant Tim Mooney, who set up the petition drive to get them on the ballot (and who’s also a veteran of the 2004 efforts to get Ralph Nader on as many states’ ballots as possible). GOP incumbent Rick Perry faces a tough race from Dem former Houston mayor Bill White, and he can have a little breathing room if the Greens siphon off a few lefties.

• AR-01: Chad Causey has an interesting argument for Democratic runoff voters in the 1st not to vote for ex-state Sen. Tim Wooldridge: he’s likely to bolt for the Republican Party at his earliest convenience. Causey’s evidence for the flight risk posed by Wooldridge includes his very conservative voting record in the state legislature, starting with his pro-public hanging legislation. Wooldridge, for his part, said he’d never switch. The Wooldridge camp is also offering up an internal poll (no word on the pollster) claiming a 48-24 lead over Causey in the runoff.

• CA-19: SurveyUSA has one last poll of the race in the 19th’s GOP primary, which they’ve polled exhaustively (and found almost exactly the same thing each time). However, this time it’s a little more interesting: there seems to be some late movement to former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson, who now leads state Sen. Jeff Denham 34-30. Ex-Rep. Richard Pombo is back at 17, with Larry Westerlund at 8. On the Dem side, it’s a 26-26 tie between Loraine Goodwin and Les Marsden.

• MN-06: What started out as a thorny three-way primary (when Elwyn Tinklenberg was in the race) has turned into a walk for Democratic state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Maureen Reed, a physician and former Independence Party Lt. Gov. candidate, ended her bid and endorsed Clark against Rep. Michele Bachmann. Reed had done surprisingly well at fundraising, but didn’t have the institutional advantages that Clark did, especially once Clark got the DFL endorsement. Clark still has an uphill fight against Bachmann, who’s insulated against likely future foot-in-mouth incidents by the district’s reddish lean as well as a huge war chest.

• TN-08: A Hill piece on the possibility of another NRCC-touted candidate (in the form of Stephen Fincher) going down in flames actually has some nice dirt on all three Republicans contesting the primary in the 8th. Fincher, of course, is widely noted for his hypocrisy on attacking the federal government while receiving millions in farm subsidies, but it’s also been revealed that he has voted in three Democratic primaries in the last eight years, “used virtually the same TV ad as a candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commisioner” (I have to assume it was an ad from one of the “thugs,” since if he’d riiiiiiipped off Dale Peterson’s ad, the whole blogosphere would already know about it by now), and perhaps most pathetically, misspelled “Tennessee” in a mailer. His challengers, Ron Kirkland and George Flinn, have their own troubles; Kirkland contributed to outgoing Democratic Rep. John Tanner in 2000 and 2004, while Flinn tried to cover up a lawsuit by a contractor who wasn’t paid for remodeling work.

• AR-Sen: I don’t know if this is outright shenanigans or innocent bureaucratic bungling, but a lot of eyebrows are being raised over a strange turn of events in Garland County that’s going to lead to long lines and voters avoiding the polls. The county, with a population of 80,000 and 42 precincts, will have a total of two polling places for the upcoming runoff election. Worth noting: Garland County (home of Hot Springs) is the most populous county in Arkansas that went for Bill Halter in the primary.

• IL-Sen: The Mark Kirk story seems like it’s finally catching hold in the Chicago market. At the link, you can check out the whole “misremembered it wrong” story splashed across the front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, and watch a withering WGN news story.

• WA-Sen: Dino Rossi has reported $600K in contributions in one week since announcing his bid. Anyone who is surprised by this number should get better acquainted with the term “low hanging fruit;” the interesting numbers will be the ones in future weeks to see how he does now that most of Washington’s major real estate and contracting players have, assumedly, maxed out. Also in the not-surprising file, state Sen. Don Benton dropped out of the race and endorsed Rossi. Benton was the more or less GOP frontrunner prior to Rossi’s entry, but also something of a Republican-establishment stand-in for Rossi with a lot of overlap in supporters, so there wasn’t much incentive for him to continue. Goldy correctly yawns at Benton’s departure, saying that Clint Didier (the Palin-endorsed teabagger in the race) was always the real speed bump for Rossi and one that’ll continue to pose a problem: he can’t run away from Didier and his supporters, whose enthusiasm he’ll need in November, but if he gets too close to them, he’ll lose whatever moderate image he once had, which he’ll also need in November.

• CA-Gov (pdf): The last pre-primary Field Poll, or at least part of it, is out. All that they’ve released today is the Republican gubernatorial primary numbers, which are very much in line with everyone else’s numbers lately. They see Meg Whitman leading Steve Poizner 51-25, only half the 49-point lead she had in the last Field Poll in March but still certainly enough to get the job done for her on Tuesday. Keep your eyes peeled for the rest of the data.

• NY-Gov: Maggie Haberman has an interesting retrospective of the big bag of Fail that was the Steve Levy campaign. She weaves together a number of threads that didn’t really make it into the national media — unwillingness to fully commit to the race, his reluctance to dip into his war chest, tabloid stories about law school friends — to paint a picture of a campaign that, in hindsight, was doomed from the outset.

• AR-03: Sarah Palin (and the Susan B. Anthony List) weighed in in AR-03, adding one more “Mama Grizzly” to her trophy room. She endorsed state Sen. Cecile Bledsoe, who’s in a runoff against Rogers mayor Steve Womack for the GOP nomination in the open seat race in this safely-red district. Bledsoe only compiled about 15% of the vote in the primary, although with a huge number of candidates, that was enough to squeak by into second place.

• NY-15: In case there was any doubt that a combination of age, sliminess, and having lost his Ways and Means gavel might prompt a last-minute retirement for Charles Rangel, they were laid to rest. He’ll be officially kicking off his next campaign this weekend.

• OH-18: The long-unresolved GOP primary in the 18th appears to be finally over, as former state Agriculture director and 2008 nominee Fred Dailey conceded. He lost to establishment pick state Sen. Bob Gibbs by 156 votes according to certified results, and the automatic recount only changed two votes. While this is one more in a string of recent GOP primaries where the establishment candidate beat the teabagger, this, like many of those races (like, say, IN-08 and IN-09, and IN-03 and IN-05 if you want to call the woeful Souder and Burton “establishment”) where the anti-establishment candidate came within a hair of winning, and where if there had been fewer teabagger candidates spoiling the broth or things that just bounced slightly differently, the media would be talking about an entirely different narrative.

• Media: So, speaking of media narratives, I’m wondering if the media are starting to dial down their “Dems are dooooomed!” narrative that’s been conventional wisdom for the last half a year. Not just because they may be noticing that the polling evidence for that is sketchy at best, but also, as this Newsweek piece points out, that they may have gotten suckered by the Democrats themselves, who seem to be engaged in the ages-old practices of expectations management, lowballing their predictions so they look like heroes later.

• Ideology: 538 has some fascinating charts up as part of a new post on where states (and where the two parties within each state) fit on the liberal/conservative scale, looking at it on multiple dimensions instead of on a left/right line. West Virginia (socially conservative and economically liberal) stands out as an interesting outlier on the chart, which does a lot to explain its particular brand of politics.