Tag: Mike Beebe

Site News: Holy moly. We just passed ten million all-time visitors yesterday. Wow. Just really have to take a step back for a moment. When I started this site almost exactly seven years ago, I never, ever imagined we’d achieve anything like this. Just a huge thank you to every reader who has checked in since Oct. 19, 2003 to today – and beyond.

AR-Gov (Mason-Dixon): Mike Beebe (D-inc) 59, Jim Keet (R) 26

CA-Sen, CA-Gov (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner & American Viewpoint for the LA Times/USC): Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 50, Carly Fiorina (R) 42; Jerry Brown (D) 52, Meg Whitman (R) 39

CA-Gov (John McLaughlin & David Hill (R) for Meg Whitman): Jerry Brown (D) 46, Meg Whitman (R) 43

CO-Sen, CO-Gov (SurveyUSA for 9News/Denver Post): Michael Bennet (D-inc) 47, Ken Buck (R) 47; John Hickenlooper (D) 46, Dan Maes (R) 15, Tom Tancredo (ACP) 34

Bonus: SUSA also tested the state AG, SoS, and Treasurer races.

CO-Gov (Magellan): John Hickenlooper (D) 44, Dan Maes (R) 9, Tom Tancredo (ACP) 43

FL-Sen, FL-Gov (Ipsos for Florida media): Kendrick Meek (D) 20, Marco Rubio (R) 41, Charlie Crist (I) 26; Alex Sink (D) 41, Rick Scott (R) 44

Bonus: Ipsos also tested the AG, Ag Comm’r, and CFO races.

FL-Gov (Susquehanna for Sunshine State News): Alex Sink (D) 45, Rick Scott (R) 45

IL-Sen, IL-Gov (Mason-Dixon for St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV): Pat Quinn (D-inc) 40, Bill Brady (R) 44; Alexi Giannoulias (D) 41, Mark Kirk (R) 43

Note: The poll apparently asked respondents about “Alex Giannoulias.”

IL-Sen (Market Shares Corp. for the Chicago Tribune): Alexi Giannoulias (D) 41, Mark Kirk (R) 44

LA-Sen (Anzalone-Liszt (D) for Charlie Melancon): Charlie Melancon (D) 45, David Vitter (R-inc) 48

MA-Gov (Western New England College): Deval Patrick (D-inc) 44, Charlie Baker (R) 36, Tim Cahill (I) 8

MA-Gov (UNH): Deval Patrick (D-inc) 43, Charlie Baker (R) 39, Tim Cahill (I) 8

MD-Gov (OpinionWorks for the Baltimore Sun): Martin O’Malley (D-inc) 52, Bob Ehrlich (R) 38

ME-Gov (Critical Insights): Libby Mitchell (D) 20, Paul LePage (R) 32, Eliot Cutler 19

MN-Gov (Princeton Survey Research for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune): Mark Dayton (D) 41, Tom Emmer (R) 34, Tom Horner (I) 13

MO-Sen (Mason-Dixon for St. Louis Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV): Robin Carnahan (D) 40, Roy Blunt (R) 49

NY-Gov (Marist): Andrew Cuomo (D) 60, Carl Paladino (R) 37

PA-Gov (Quinnipiac): Dan Onorato (D) 44, Tom Corbett (R) 49

WV-Sen (Global Strategy Group (D) for Joe Manchin): Joe Manchin (D) 48, John Raese (R) 43

Margins & Errors: On Sunday, Pat Toomey moved out to a 3-point lead in the Muhlenberg tracker, while Tom Corbett is +9… some sketchy details of IN-02 internals from Brian Howey: “Howard County Republican Chairman Craig Dunn said internal polling has shown Walorski chipping a 9-point Donnelly lead to “at the margin of error” around 4 percent.” … CNN sources tell them that Harry Reid’s internals have him up 6 over Sharron Angle in NV-Sen… PPP will have polls out for CA, CO, KY & WV this week

• CT-Sen: Remember how Linda McMahon was touting how the WWE dialed things back to “PG-rated” entertainment this decade? That didn’t seem to take into account some corporate synergy between WWE and the Girls Gone Wild empire, who collaborated on a 2003 pay-per-view. My Left Nutmeg has the rundown on GGW’s greatest legal hits, and also some compare and contrast with WWE’s own most luridly misogynist moments from its pre-PG days.

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth, after a few weeks in the dark, is going back on the air with an ad hitting Dan Coats on outsourcing, including his lobbying ties to job-shippers and his own NAFTA vote in the early 90s. However, it looks like this ad is coming out of the Ellsworth campaign coffers, as the DSCC (contrary to a brief flurry of reports) still doesn’t seem to be buying any time here.

• MD-Sen: Washington Post (9/22-26, likely voters, no trendlines):

Barbara Mikulski (D): 61

Eric Wargotz (R): 29

(MoE: ±3.5%)

Here’s the Senate half of WaPo’s last Maryland poll, with Barbara Mikulski looking like she might match the 65% she got in her 2004 re-election. Her lead is 59-24 among RVs, so Maryland, like many solidly blue states, has less of an enthusiasm gap problem than the swing states. Her opponent’s problem is, naturally, name rec: he has 10/9 favorables, with 81% with no opinion.

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle will be in Washington DC tomorrow, fundraising at the NRSC headquarters at a minimum-$500 event replete with many lobbyists and ex-Senators. If that causes a little head-spinning cognitive dissonance for you — in the wake of revelations of her inexplicably tape-recorded summit with Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian in which they both agree that the GOP has been corrupt since, oh, at least 1994 — well, then, clearly you’re not a Republican.

• CA-Gov: While Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown have actually gotten down to some debating lately, tomorrow’s planned debate is suddenly off… and without any explanation it’s by mutual agreement, not purely a Whitman pullout (while she retrenches in the wake of her illegal employment arrangement with her housekeeper). If you’re wondering what the first poll of the race taken since the story broke looks like and whether it’s hurting Whitman, well, there’s a box called “Rasmussen” down at the bottom of the digest…

• CO-Gov: Here’s a little more info on what happens to the Colorado GOP if Dan Maes doesn’t reach 10% in the gubernatorial race. You probably know they get stuck in “minor party” status, which affects their ballot position in both 2012 and 2014. But (this is new, at least to me) it also has major fundraising ramifications for state legislative candidates in those cycles, halving what they can raise from individual donors.

• MA-Gov: Tim Cahill, whose right-leaning indie campaign lost its wheels months ago and last week seems to have lost most of its chassis as well too, still plans to go on the air with $1 million worth of attack ads (his only ads so far have been positive, which may explain why he’s polling in the single digits). And here’s the good news… he’s going after Republican Charlie Baker. If he were to join Baker in training his guns only on Deval Patrick, that could be a problem, but he won’t. (Makes me wonder if he was a Patrick plant all along? Probably not, but it’d be one of the greatest stories in the history of ratfucking if true.)

• NY-Gov: Now here’s one big financial disparity, at least on paper. Andrew Cuomo’s warchest, as of required reports last week, is more than $19 million CoH. That contrasts sharply with Carl Paladino’s $209K. Of course, Paladino can write his own checks, and has promised to spend up to $10 million of his own money if necessary. (Even if he did, that’d still be a 2:1 disadvantage, with little likelihood of ‘recouping’ that money in the form of a win, so don’t count on it.) Cuomo spent almost $3 million on TV ads in the last few weeks, so he’s leaving nothing to chance.

• AL-02: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for DCCC (9/26-28, likely voters, 8/23-26 in parentheses):

Bobby Bright (D-inc): 52 (52)

Martha Roby (R): 43 (43)

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Not a typo. The numbers seem to have stayed exactly the same over the last month, since GQR’s previous internal on behalf of Bobby Bright. In this climate, consistency is good.

• IA-01: If, like me, you’ve been wondering why AFF is pouring $800K into the race against Bruce Braley in the 1st, which no observer has taken much interest in or seen any smoke coming from, well, now you have an answer: Sandy Grenier is the head of AFF. She’s also running for state Senate in her spare time… in Iowa. In other words, she’s pouring money into a race that’s her own personal hobby horse, at the expense of other races that are actually competitive. (And that’s not even the main point of the article… it turns out that Grenier, like so many other members of the current wave of GOP candidates, is a big believer in sucker-punching the government with one hand even as you take money from it with the other. Her family has received over $935K in farm subsidies over the last 15 years.)

• NY-20: Grove Insight for DCCC (9/28-30, likely voters, no trendlines):

Scott Murphy (D-inc): 51

Chris Gibson (R): 38

(MoE: ±4.9%)

We haven’t seen an internal in this district until now. While the numbers are nice, this actually isn’t as good as Siena’s poll of the district mid-September, which put Murphy up 54-37.

• WV-03: Anzalone Liszt for Nick Rahall (9/27-29, likely voters, no trendlines):

Nick Rahall (D-inc): 59

Spike Maynard (R): 34

(MoE: ±4.5%)

With the DCCC out with a poll a couple weeks ago giving Rahall a 55-37 lead (and even that round of AFF polls showing him up by 16), I think it may be time to stop discussing this race as competitive. What’s most remarkable here is that the Dems manage to have a 47-37 edge on the generic ballot question, and Maynard (a controversial ex-state Supreme Court justice) still manages to underperform that low bar.

• DCCC: Now who’s copping out on their DCCC dues payments? CQ finds that the Congressional Hispanic Caucus has been particularly remiss on making its payments, with only junior leadership member Xavier Becerra having paid all his dues as of the Aug. 24 tally. (Two more, including CHC chair Nydia Velazquez, report having paid up since then.) Some members cite failure to move immigration reform as a reason for holding out and giving directly to cooperative individual Reps instead.

• AL-St. Sen.: Despite having a 25-10 20-15 Democratic edge in the Alabama state Senate, many observers are thinking it’s high on the list of legislative chambers that could flip this year, given a perfect storm of local and national dynamics. And this isn’t going to help: 4 different members of the 35-person body got snared in a federal probe of a bingo operation. One is a retiring Republican, but the others are a Dem running in a tossup seat, a Dem running in a safe seat, and an independent running for re-election who was expected to caucus with Dems next session (Harri Anne Smith, whom you might remember from the AL-02 2008 GOP primary). This scandal looks like it’ll drive the legislative race conversation in the state for the remaining weeks.

• NY-St. Sen.: There are four more polls from Siena of state Senate races in New York, showing two pretty safe incumbents (one from each party) but two open seats in true tossup territory. The safe-ish incumbents are Dem David Valesky in SD-40 (beating Andrew Russo 50-40) and GOPer James Alesi in SD-55 (beating Mary Wilmot 55-35). The other two races seem close mostly because of their screwy circumstances. In the Hudson Valley’s GOP-held SD-40, GOPer Greg Ball (an inflammatory teabagger out of step with a district more amenable to moderate GOPers) leads Dem Michael Kaplowitz 45-44. And in Buffalo-area Dem-held SD-58, GOPer Jack Quinn (not the ex-Rep., but a relative) leads at 42, but that’s because Tim Kennedy (on the Dem and Con lines) is at 39 and William Stachowski (whom Kennedy beat in the Dem primary) is at 12 on the WFP and IP lines.

• State legislatures: At SSP, we’re always about finding ways for you to maximize the leverage you get out of your political contributions, and there’s no better way to do that than through giving at the state legislative level, where a little money can go a long way (especially a lot of vulnerable chambers and redistricting looming.) The DLCC is out with its second list of Essential races, in the contests they consider important ones in the quest to hold important legislative chambers.

One other resource you should check out is the “Win Big By Thinking Small” ActBlue page, courtesy of Progressive Kick. They have 18 different progressives in important state legislative races all in one place. (One name you might remember is Patsy Keever, who ran in NC-11 in 2004.)

• SSP TV:

• CT-Sen: The DSCC is out with an ad simply called “Bad” focusing on Linda McMahon as bad CEO of WWE; meanwhile, the McMahon camp is out with an ad calling Richard Blumenthal a liar for the nth time over his Vietnam service

• MD-Sen: Barbara Mikulski seems to have an easy race, but is still hitting the airwaves touting her education record

• OH-Gov: John Kasich says that 400,000 Ohio jobs were lost under Ted Strickland’s watch (without, of course, guessing at how many of those job losses were proximally related to the devastation of the credit market in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers)

• CA-03: Ami Bera hits Dan Lungren for using ethical loopholes to party with lobbyists in Hawaii

• FL-12: Faced with a state Rep. opponent, Dem Lori Edwards tries running against Tallahassee instead of Washington (and against big insurance, while she’s at it), in what’s definitely today’s most cut-through-the-clutter ad

• PA-11: Paul Kanjorski keeps going to the well of how bad a mayor of Hazleton Lou Barletta was

• NRCC: The NRCC is out with freakin’ 27 different ads today… you can see the full list at their blog, and even watch them if you have 13½ minutes of your life you don’t want to get back

• Rasmussen:

• AR-Gov: Mike Beebe (D-inc) 51%, Jim Keet (R) 41%

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 37%, John Boozman (R) 55%

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 49%, Meg Whitman (R) 44%

• NM-Gov: Diane Denish (D) 41%, Susana Martinez (R) 51%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 41%, Tom Corbett (R) 53%

• WY-Gov: Leslie Peterson (D) 25%, Matt Mead (R) 61%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• SSP TV:

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

DE-Sen: Interesting – Mike Castle isn’t ruling out a write-in bid. If he does pull the trigger, let’s see if the NRSC and the Senate GOP caucus have the stomach to tell Castle to fuck off. It’d be a great test of their will – and their willingness to embrace Christine O’Donnell.

FL-Sen: Al Gore Alert! In a rare sighting on the campaign trail, Al Gore (still my president!) will headline a rally for Kendrick Meek in Tampa on September 30th. Have we seen Gore do events for any other candidates this cycle?

KY-Sen: Objectively pro-methamphetamine senate candidate Rand Paul keeps running into trouble over his views on drugs. Republican Clay County Sherriff Kevin Johnson endorsed Paul after Paul told him he supported Operation UNITE, a federally-funded anti-drug task force. Paul’s hostility to UNITE, though, is what’s gotten him into hot water in the first place – and amazingly enough, when asked to confirm his pledge to Johnson, Paul’s campaign refused to back it up! I had always hoped/prayed/expected that Rand Paul was such a hardcore libertarian that he’d rigidly – and publicly – cling to beliefs that halfway-competent politicians would be smart enough to elide, deny, or just plain hide. I just figured it would be something like the gold standard, not, you know, meth.

Surprisingly, Paul has smelled the glove belonging to a very different interest group, the neocons. They mistrust Paul’s views on Israel and probably just on the general concept of randomly invading countries and killing people.

AR-Gov: That Ipsos poll which showed Blanche Lincoln “only” 14 points into her political grave also has a gubernatorial component. Dem Gov. Mike Beebe is beating Republican Jim Keet by a 55-37 margin among LVs. You want an enthusiasm gap? Beebe wins 58-30 among RVs. (It was 57-35 among RVs back in July.)

CO-Gov: God, I love the smell of ratfucking in the morning. So, we all know about Scott McInnis’s now-legendary implosion thanks to his plagiarism/theft scandal, but Democrats had a big hand in consigning him to the dustbin of history. It turns out that a group called the Colorado Freedom Fund spent half a million bucks on ads blistering McInnis during the primary, in order to help bolster Dan Maes. The DGA was a big contributor to this effort, chipping in $150K, while unions and wealthy philanthropist Pat Stryker gave the rest. Excellent fucking work, guys.

MN-Gov: The RGA is funneling $428K to a pro-Tom Emmer group, while the DGA sent a quarter mil to an org helping Dem Mark Dayton.

TX-Gov: Rick Perry may not be the suckiest suck who ever sucked, but you’ll have to agree that he is pretty sucky. The Texas Farm Bureau finally agrees, too. Though they’ve always endorsed him in the past (and have always endorsed Republicans for governor), they’re giving up on his sorry ass this year and staying neutral in the race. (They previously endorsed Kay Bailey Hutchison against him in the primary.) It probably didn’t help that a Perry spokesman, in an attempt to bolster his boss’s teabagger/secessionista cred, derided the bureau as “an insurance company that supported the bailout.”

IL-14: We could call this the Hypocrisy State Project and still have tons to write about. The latest chapter in this never-ending saga is penned by Republican Randy Hultgren, who was responsible for marketing his investment firm’s funds. One of the firm’s offerings invested entirely in bailout-backed securities, which were described by one Wall Streeter as “an incredibly free lunch.” This is a two-fer, because this fund was also based in the Cayman Islands, to take advantage of lax tax laws, of course.

MA-10: Massachusetts, at least, is one place where Republicans still need to run away from their own party in order to be electable. So it’s no surprise to see Jeffrey Perry declare that he doesn’t want Sarah Palin showing up in his district. (Don’t worry, bud, I think you’re safe.) Of course, Perry isn’t exactly from the non-crazy wing of the Republican Party (to the extent there still is such a thing), since he has teabagger ties himself.

MI-07: Rossman Group/Team Telcom (9/20, likely voters, no trendlines):

Mark Schauer (D-inc): 38

Tim Walberg (R): 42

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±5.6%)

NY-18: This interview with Jim Russell – remember him from yesterday? the guy whose writings have been favorably cited by the KKK? – is just brutal. He doesn’t disavow anything. So we’ve gotta ask: Why isn’t the press giving this guy the Alvin Greene treatment? After all, Greene’s weirdest idea was to sell bobblehead dolls. Russell thinks there are too many Jews. Anyhow, the Westchester GOP is trying to get Russell off the ballot through legal means, and they say if they can’t, they’ll run a write-in candidate.

NY-19: A judge ruled against a group trying to knock Nan Hayworth off the Independence Party line for a lack of valid signatures. Hayworth gets to keep the line, while incumbent John Hall has the Working Families line.

NY-23: With the vote count all but completed, it looks like Matt Doheny is (still) the winner of the Republican primary, but Doug Hoffman ain’t conceding yet. I guess he feels burned after what happened in the special election, where he tried to “un-concede” after some counting errors emerged (but still lost anyway). The vote count does not officially get certified until the 27th, but Doheny could declare victory (and/or Hoffman could concede) before then. Hoffman still hasn’t said anything about how vigorously (if at all) he plans to wage war from the Conservative Party line.

PA-10: Another day, another NRA endorsement for a Dem. Chris Carney is the latest in a string of mostly-conservative Democrats to rack up the group’s support, even though they labeled him a “true enemy” of guns just four years ago.

TN-09: Heh – the Memphis Flyer commissioned a poll by Yacoubian Research, which found Steve Cohen leading Charlotte Bergmann 66-23. There were only 205 respondents, and note that we previously flagged a Yacoubian poll of the primary for attempting to screen voters by asking them if they lived in the 9th CD – how many people actually know what district they live in, by number? But whatever, Steve Cohen ain’t losing.

VA-09: Rick Boucher successfully got an ad by Americans for Job Security pulled off the air for making a misleading statements. The ad said “Rick Boucher supports Nancy Pelosi 96 percent of the time,” but this claim was based on the Washington Post’s “party voting” score, which Boucher rightly argued does not measure “support for Pelosi.” (A good time to remind folks that it’s much, much easier to get third-party ads yanked because stations are liable for defamation when they run these ads. Media outlets are immune from liability for candidate ads.)

SSP TV (by James L.):

• LA-Sen: “Diaper” David Vitter hits Charlie Melancon for attending a fundraiser in Canada, of all places.
• AR-01: Chad Causey’s latest spot takes a shotgun approach to messaging, touting his heritage, his support for a balanced budget amendment and a paycut for Congress, while hitting Republican Rick Crawford over the bad kind of SSP and for his support of a 23% national sales tax
• FL-22: Allen West takes on Ron Klein over a Florida Democratic Party mailer that boneheadedly revealed West’s Social Security number
• GA-08: Dem Rep. Jim Marshall goes heavy negative on GOP state Rep. Austin Scott on immigration – not once, but twice
• MI-07: GOP douche Tim Walberg says that Dem Rep. Mark Schauer is spending America into ruin, and also makes the dubious claim that he “strongly supports” Social Security. The ad, a coordinated expenditure partially paid for by the RNC, is airing in the Lansing media market and cost $85,000.
• MI-15: John Dingell goes negative on Republican Rob Steele over his support from the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is Wall Street, while Steele has gone up with an ad of his own touting his record as a physician and poking Dingell over spending
• NC-02: Dem Rep. Bob Etheridge’s latest ad features the testimonials of locals who say that Etheridge saved their jobs
• OH-12: Dem Paula Brooks touts her record on the Franklin County Commission while spilling marbles all over her kitchen island
• OR-05: GOPer Scott Bruun will stop the spending… except when it comes to restoring Medicare cuts, apparently
• SC-02: Libruhl Rob Miller and libruhl Nancy Pelosi will liberally kill all your jobs; meanwhile, Joe Wilson still sounds like he uses a speech synthesizer instead of a functional set of vocal cords. Seriously, what a creepy-sounding asshole.
• VA-09: Republican Morgan Griffith plays a clip of Barack Obama saying “I love Rick Boucher” – four times in thirty seconds

• AK-Sen: All signs are now pointing toward a Lisa Murkowski write-in bid, although nothing is official yet. But she’s inviting supporters to a “campaign kickoff” tonight, which are certainly not the words of someone ready to go gently into that good night. She seems undeterred by the fact that the Tea Party Express already fired a shot across her bow yesterday, warning her to be a “good team member” and saying they’ll resume spending money against her if she does. Meanwhile, hilarious and slightly damning news on the Joe Miller front, as it turns out that he, like so many other teabagger candidates this year, was a recipient of $14K in farm subsidies over the decade for a thousand acres of land he owned near Fairbanks. Y’know, subsidies from the federal government that he hates so much, in order to pay for the otherwise-unprofitable way of life that he chose. (Can you even grow anything near Fairbanks? That may be the most surprising part of the story to me.)

• DE-Sen: Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons faced off in their first appearance together, and O’Donnell seemed to be doing a lot of rhetorical distancing from the O’Donnell that had existed up until Tuesday. Meanwhile, O’Donnell is now facing the wrath of multiple ex-aides, all willing to dish to Politico on the trainwrecks that were previous O’Donnell campaigns.

• IL-Sen: Illinois-based Republican-linked robo-pollster We Ask America is out with their second poll of the IL-Sen race, giving Mark Kirk a 39-36 link over Alexi Giannoulias. That’s better than their previous offering, which gave Kirk a 6-point edge.

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold’s “Cheddarbomb” sounds like it was very successful, bringing in at least $435K in one day’s worth of contributions.

• AR-Gov: With yesterday’s PPP NH-Gov poll, I think it’s now safe to say that Mike Beebe is officially the nation’s safest Democratic incumbent governor this year. The gubernatorial half of yesterday’s Mason-Dixon poll on behalf of Arkansas News Service is out, and Beebe leads Republican challenger Jim Keet by 21 points, 54-33. (One other very important detail: currently, Beebe has $2.5 million CoH, while Keet has $9,000.) Given the state’s turn to the red this cycle, Dems should be glad that they aren’t defending an open seat here, though, as in the open Lt. Governor race, Dem state Sen. Shane Broadway is barely leading Some Dude (Mark Darr) 36-34.

• CA-Gov: Well, my cynicism has been eased a bit, I guess: Bill Clinton will be giving Jerry Brown the full endorsee treatment and not just throwing him a bone, including stumping on his behalf (and Gavin Newsom’s behalf too) in mid-October.

• HI-Gov: It feels like the primary season wrapped up on Tuesday, but there’s one last race that needs to be previewed: the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Hawaii, which will be settled in their regularly scheduled election tomorrow. The race pits ex-Rep. Neil Abercrombie against former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann in what’s literally a clash of titans (the 72-year-old Abercrombie can bench-press 272 lbs., while former basketball player Hannemann is 6’7″). Hannemann seems to running a bit to Abercrombie’s right, at least on social issues, and Abercrombie seems to have the late momentum based on polling and fundraising. The linked WaPo article points to some intriguing behind the scenes drama (with Dan Inouye behind Hannemann and Ed Case behind Abercrombie) and the racial resentments stirred by the race (Abercrombie is white, Hannemann is Samoan).

• NM-Gov: The DGA is keeping the pressure on in New Mexico, hitting Susana Martinez again on staff bonuses and sweetheart deals. Bill Clinton, who’s increasingly turning out to be the #1 Dem surrogate on the stump this cycle, is also now scheduled to stump on Diane Denish’s behalf on Oct. 14 in the heavily-Latino northern town of Espanola.

• NY-Gov: This may be the dumbest idea in the history of political advertising: send intentionally bad-smelling mailers to people’s houses. Carl Paladino is trying to make the point that “something smells” in Albany, but there has to be a smarter way to do it than invading people’s houses to intentionally physically sicken them.

• CO-04: Hot on the heels of the NRA backing John Salazar next door in the 3rd, now they’re also endorsing Democratic freshman Betsy Markey in the similarly rural, reddish 4th.

• MI-09: There’s a poll out in the 9th from a previously unknown (to us) pollster (The Rossman Group/Team Telcom) giving Rocky Raczkowski a small lead over Dem freshman Gary Peters, 45-41. Thanks to Paleo in the comments, we know that the Rossman Group is a PR firm associated with state-level GOP operative Audrey Perricone, so salt this one as you see fit.

• NY-23: All that hoping paid off, and now the cat is now officially in the dryer! A replay of the special election is on, as Doug Hoffman, who narrowly lost the GOP primary to Matt Doheny, is saying that he is going to stick with the Conservative Line no matter what. (More accurately, Conservative party chair Michael Long, who’s basically been Hoffman’s puppetmaster for the last year, is the one saying that.)

• TN-04: Sure, we’ve all been accused of harassment, intimidation, and physical abuse, but… oh, wait. We haven’t? Well, Republican candidate Scott DesJarlais was accused by his ex-wife of all of that, in divorce filings from a decade ago. It’s unclear how much this’ll affect the direction of the race, though; buried deep in the Roll Call article is word of a late August internal poll on Lincoln Davis’s behalf (released in response to a DesJarlais internal showing him within 4 of Davis), giving Davis a 51-40 lead. (No word on who Davis’s pollster is.)

• Mayors: Primary-defeated Dem incumbent Adrian Fenty somehow won the Republican mayoral primary. There wasn’t a candidate, and Fenty got more write-in votes than anyone else. It didn’t sound like Fenty was interested in turning coats and running again under the GOP aegis, and now the DC BoE is arguing that he couldn’t anyway, as he would have had to be a member of the Republican Party as of the election date.

• IE Tracker:

• MO-Sen: $124K from Commonsense Ten against Roy Blunt

• WV-01: $439K from American Future Fund against Mike Oliverio

• NC-02, VA-09: $341K from Americans for Job Security against Bob Etheridge, $431K against Rick Boucher

• AL-02: $414K from AFF against Bobby Bright

• SC-05: $191K from AFF against John Spratt

• NJ-03: $170K from AFF against John Adler

• MI-01: $304K from AFF against Gary McDowell

• GA-08: $346K from AFF against Jim Marshall

• MI-07: $501K from AFF against Mark Schauer

• SSP TV:

• PA-Sen: The DSCC rides to Joe Sestak’s rescue with an ad tying Pat Toomey to George Bush’s deficit-swelling tax policies, while the Club for Growth tries to walk a delicate balance, thanking Sestak for his military service before laying into his voting record

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard’s out with not one but three different ads using footage of Jan Brewer’s tongue-tied performance at last month’s debate, one of which focuses on her unproven allegations about headless bodies in the desert (and ending with the tagline “Is this the best Arizona can do?”)

• KS-Gov: The Kansas Moderate Majority PAC runs an anti-Sam Brownback ad hitting him on the flat tax, while Brownback is out with two ads of his own

• MI-Gov: Virg Bernero’s on the air, hitting Rick Sndyer for outsourcing jobs while he was head of Gateway

• ID-01: Walt Minnick actually hits Raul Labrador for being too soft on illegal immigrants, saying it’s “good business” for Labrador’s immigration law practice

• MI-01: 2 ads from Gary McDowell, one about cleaning up the Great Lakes and one hitting Dan Benishek on Social Security privatization

• TX-17: Chet Edwards is doing the distancing-from-DC-Democrats game in his newest ad

• WA-08: Suzan DelBene’s first TV ad starts negative against Dave Reichert, hitting him on his financial reform vote and on earmarks, of all things

• Rasmussen:

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 34%, Dan Coats (R) 50%

• MA-Gov: Deval Patrick (D-inc) 45%, Charlie Baker (R) 42%, Tim Cahill (I) 5%

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 44%, Ron Johnson (R) 51%

• KY-Sen: The online “moneybomb” technique seemed to help Rand Paul get a lot of traction in the early months of the Republican primary, but his latest few scheduled moneybombs have been fizzles. Yesterday’s was a case in point: $258K is still a lot of dough for two days, but it was far short of the planned $400K. (And every penny counts: Paul reported only $319K CoH at the end of June.) Are Paulists feeling tapped out these days, or are his early-adopting libertarian-minded nationwide fans chafing that he’s increasingly parting ways with his dad and becoming more of an NRSC sock puppet? (As seen just today with their divergence over Cordoba House.)

• PA-Sen: Two pieces of good news in Pennsylvania: first, Joe Sestak is rolling out an endorsement from Chuck Hagel, the former GOP Senator from Nebraska who was on the short list for an Obama cabinet position. Not that Hagel is probably a household name in the Keystone State, but it certainly burnishes Sestak’s bipartisan (and military) cred. Also, the DSCC is planning to spend even more on this race, letting Sestak, presumably, keep marshaling his resources for a big late push (the kind that helped him shoot past Arlen Specter in the closing weeks in the primary). They’re spending $546K on broadcast media this week, on top of $494K last week; the DSCC’s total spending and reservations so far in this race amount to $4.4 million.

• WI-Sen: Hmmm, maybe all that sunspot and Greenland stuff actually started to stick. Republican wingnut candidate Ron Johnson is trying to undo the crazy on his various climate change comments, offering the usual last refuge of the pathetic walkback, that his remarks were “taken out context.” Johnson is also trying to walk back his previous support for elimination of the home mortgage interest deduction, about as popular a provision of the tax code as there is. If you wanted to simultaneously set back both the entire real estate business and the middle class by several decades, eliminating the home mortgage interest deduction would be a good way to do it.  

• IL-Gov: The exodus from the field of broken dreams that is the Pat Quinn camp just continues. Today, the departee is CoS Jerry Stermer, and while it isn’t a rancorous departure (as was the case with Quinn breaking it off with David Axelrod’s media firm last week), he is resigning to avoid being a distraction with an ethics investigation (over whether he sent political e-mails from his government account) hanging overhead. With Quinn seemingly circling the drain, that ain’t gonna help.

• AZ-05: In the “ooops, spoke too soon” department, presumed Republican primary frontrunner David Schweikert opted for a last-minute ad buy for $14K on cable, apparently worried that he was losing momentum going into tomorrow’s primary. Last week, his camp had said he was so far ahead they were just going to go dark and start saving money for the general. Meanwhile, next door in AZ-03, Steve Moak, the only candidate who rivals Ben Quayle on the money front, is out with a new ad hitting Quayle over his pseudonymous tenure writing for the website that was the precursor to TheDirty.com.

• FL-24: Wow, Craig Miller actually went there: he sent out a last-minute mailer going after the widely-known, but not yet broached in the campaign context, issue of GOP primary opponent Karen Diebel’s mental stability. Maybe he’d been planning to do a last-minute boom-lowering all along, but it seems kind of strange, as Miller’s millions have seemed to have the race locked down, not requiring him to get his hands dirty. Was there a last minute Diebel surge (she’s been attacking him on being too soft on immigration)?

• TX-23: Republican challenger Quico Canseco is out with an internal poll, via OnMessage, giving him a small lead over incumbent Dem Rep. Ciro Rodriguez. The poll gives Canseco a 43-37 lead, a turnaround from Rodriguez’s lead of 48-45 in a Canseco poll from June.

• Ads: Bobby Bright’s out with his first ad, in AL-02. SSP southern correspondent Trent Thompson’s description of the ad says it all, so I’ll just quote him: “”Bobby” voted against everything Obama. Also, he kisses a baby.” Ben Chandler is also out with an ad in KY-06, touting his saving the local VA Hospital. Finally, Rick Boucher’s GOP opponent, Morgan Griffith, is also out with a new TV spot, reminding you that he’s a conservative. (As an interesting ethno-linguistic observation, one clear indicator that VA-09 is an Appalachian district, not a Southern district, is that Griffith cites “Warshington” as being the source of all our problems.) NWOTSOTB, in all three cases.

• We Ask America: The quirky little Republican-linked pollster that could, We Ask America, is out with an array of polls in Illinois (the state where they’re based). They find Mark Kirk leading Alexi Giannoulias 39-33, but they also look at three House races. In fact, they looked at these races back in March, so we now have trendlines. In IL-11, they find Adam Kinzinger leading Debbie Halvorson 52-32 (down from an already bad 42-30); in IL-14, they have Randy Hultgren leading Bill Foster 44-37 (also down, from 38-36). The good news: they have Dan Seals leading Bob Dold! in IL-10, 43-40 (Seals led 40-37 in March, so he’s holding his own). We’ve also discovered a few recent WAA odds and ends that we didn’t cover earlier: they also see Roy Blunt leading Robin Carnahan 47-43 in MO-Sen, and see Sean Duffy leading 42-33 over Julie Lassa in WI-07.

• Rasmussen:

• AL-Sen: William Barnes (D) 28%, Richard Shelby (R-inc) 60%

• AR-Gov: Mike Beebe (D-inc) 53%, Jim Keet (R) 33%

• MD-Sen: Barbara Mikulski (D-inc) 55%, Eric Wargotz (R) 39%

• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 41%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 49%

We’re back from a successful Netroots Nation, and in the midst of sweeping up from half a week of limited posting, we’re going to do a polls-only digest first and tackle the rest of the damage later today.

• AK-Sen (pdf): Local pollster Ivan Moore is out with the first (and probably only) public look at the Republican primary between incumbent establishment figure Lisa Murkowski and Tea Party fave (and proxy for foxy GOP doxy Sarah Palin) Joe Miller. Y’know what? Alaskans know that their local economy is largely propped up with federal dollars, and the teabagger message isn’t likely to have much resonance here, no matter how much pro-gun posturing it gets dressed up in. The poll finds Murkowski with 53/29 positives, and a 62-30 lead over Miller.

• FL-Sen, FL-Gov (pdf): The Attack of the Shady Billionaires seems to continue unabated, as they pour even more money into advertising. PPP looks at both of their primaries. It’s still a close race in the Democratic Senate primary, where Rep. Kendrick Meek leads the yacht-crashing Jeff Greene 28-25 (with Tom Jensen observing “Democratic voters seem uninterested in this election,” with many of them already having settled on Charlie Crist). In the GOP gubernatorial primary, Columbia/HCA-crashing Rick Scott is in firm control, though, leading AG Bill McCollum 43-29. McCollum’s favorables among Republicans are a horrible 26/40, while Scott’s are 35/32.

• KY-Sen: Another public poll places the Kentucky Senate race in near-dead heat territory. Braun Research, on behalf of local politics website cn|2, finds Rand Paul with a 41-38 lead over Jack Conway. Conway has substantial leads among moderates (52-18) and among women (43-36).

• LA-Sen: The Charlie Melancon camp and the NRSC exchanged fire over the last few days, issuing dueling internal polls with dramatically different takes on their races. Melancon struck first with an Anzalone Liszt internal showing a much closer race than anyone has seen before: David Vitter led Melancon only 44-43 (the previous A-L internals had 10-point spreads). The NRSC responded with a POS poll over the weekend, giving Vitter a more predictable 48-31 lead when including leaners. Maybe more importantly, this poll is the first look at the GOP primary, and it shows Vitter may not have too much trouble with it: he claims a 76-5 lead over Chet Traylor.

• NC-Sen: Here’s one more Democratic internal that really serves to shake up what’s been considered a Republican-leaning race. The Elaine Marshall camp released a poll from Lake Research last Thursday giving her a 37-35 lead over Richard Burr (with 5 to Libertarian Mike Beitler). Burr’s favorables are 34/43, and he has a re-elect of 25/31, numbers no incumbent would like to see.

• GA-Gov (pdf): I have trouble believing this one, but maybe Nathan Deal, who seems to be staking out more conservative turf than Karen Handel, is consolidating more of the votes of the various primary losers than is Handel. Deal is out with a new internal, from McLaughlin & Associates, giving him a 39-38 lead over Handel in the GOP gubernatorial (or goober-natorial, in Georgia) runoff. 56% of respondents say Deal is conservative, while 35% say Handel is and 30% call her a moderate.

• MI-Gov: A new poll of the Democratic primary from Inside Michigan Politics gives a different result from just about everybody else: they give a significant lead to Virg Bernero, who leads Andy Dillon 36-22. The article is strangely silent on other details about the poll, especially the issue of sample size, where Inside Michigan Politics has been pushing the limits of credibility.

• OK-Gov: SoonerPoll.com, on behalf of the Tulsa World, is out with what’s probably the last word on the gubernatorial race before this Tuesday’s primaries. Tuesday night looks to be pretty drama-free: on the Dem side, AG Drew Edmondson leads LG Jari Askins 49-33 (up from a 10-point gap in their previous poll, way back in January). For the GOPers, Rep. Mary Fallin leads state Sen. Randy Brogdon 56-18 (which is actually a drop for Fallin from the last poll). They also look ahead to November matchups, finding Fallin leading Edmondson 47-39 and Askins 46-40.

• TN-Gov: The Tennessee primary will also be fast upon us, and Mason-Dixon, on behalf of the Tennessee Newspaper Network, takes their first look at the GOP gubernatorial primary there. Like other recent polls, they give the edge to Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, who’s at 36. Rep. (and now, apparently, aspiring secessionist) Zach Wamp is at 25, and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey is at 20. (All three candidates are from the eastern third of the state, and western Tennesseeans are disproportionately undecided (29%). That would tend to benefit the biggest advertiser, which is Haslam.) Mason-Dixon also tried out November matchups, finding Dem Mike McWherter looking DOA against the sorta-moderate Haslam, 49-31, but in closer races against the more strident Wamp (45-38) and Ramsey (43-38).

• PA-03: There’s one House internal to mention, and, as has been the trend lately, it’s from a Republican. It’s from a race that been on most people’s back-burners; we’ll have to see if this raises auto dealer Mike Kelly’s profile. Kelly’s own poll, via the Tarrance Group, give him a 48-37 lead over freshman Dem Kathy Dahlkemper.

• Rasmussen

• AR-Gov: Mike Beebe (D-inc) 50%, Jim Keet (R) 40%

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 35%, John Boozman (R) 60%

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 37%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 56%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 20%, Marco Rubio (R) 35%, Charlie Crist (I) 33%

• FL-Sen: Jeff Greene (D) 19%, Marco Rubio (R) 34%, Charlie Crist (I) 36%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 43%, Nathan Deal (R) 49%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 44%, Karen Handel (R) 45%

• ID-Gov: Keith Allred (D) 36%, Butch Otter (R-inc) 53%

• ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy (D-inc) 46%, Rick Berg (R) 49%

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 58%, Rick Lazio (R) 27%

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 58%, Carl Paladino (R) 29%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 30%, John Robitaille (R) 23%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 37%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 33%, Victor Moffitt (R) 18%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 36%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 51%, John Raese (R) 35%

• Election results: Last night’s Georgia primary election went pretty much as expected. The main surprise was the collapse of John Oxendine in the GOP gubernatorial primary, who had the most money and led most polls, but his collapse was plainly foreseeable via polls over the last few weeks. He finished fourth, behind Karen Handel and Nathan Deal (who’ll advance to the runoff, where the Palin-backed Handel will attack Deal for being corrupt and the Gingrich-backed Deal will attack Handel for being a RINO), and Eric Johnson. Ex-Gov. Roy Barnes locked down the Democratic nomination without a runoff. Labor Comm. Michael Thurmond easily advanced to face GOP incumbent Johnny Isakson in the Senate race.

In the House races, Dems in two of the three potentially competitive races in Georgia know who their opponents will be: Mike Keown in GA-02 and Austin Scott in GA-08 won without runoffs. John Barrow — who beat back a challenge from the left from Regina Thomas in GA-12 (with a final score of 58-42, as Thomas’s Savannah stronghold reported late) — will need to wait for a runoff between Ray McKinney and Carl Smith. Hank Johnson in GA-04 escaped his three-way primary against Vernon Jones and Connie Stokes without a runoff, too. Finally, two dark-red seats will feature GOP runoffs: GA-09’s newly-elected Rep. Tom Graves will face off yet again against Lee Hawkins, who lost the special election, while the GA-07 race features a runoff between Rob Woodall and Jody Hice.

• AR-Sen, AR-Gov: That internal poll from Blanche Lincoln didn’t seem to do anything to stem the gusher of bad polls. One additional poll came out yesterday, from Ipsos on behalf of Reuters. It finds John Boozman leading Lincoln 54-35. On the plus side, it also looks at the Governor’s race and finds that the Zata|3 poll finding only a 9-point lead for incumbent Dem Mike Beebe may have been a bit pessimistic. They find Beebe leading Republican challenger Jim Keet 57-35, more consistent with other polling.

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth is out with a new introductory TV ad in the Indiana Senate race. It focuses on his blue collar roots and his experience as Sheriff; there’s nary a mention of his time in Congress.

• LA-Sen: It turns out David Vitter may actually be a better family-values role model than his newly minted GOP primary opponent. Faulkner character State Rep. Noble Ellington says that Chet Traylor was “significantly involved” in his divorce from his ex-wife Peggy McDowell, who then married Traylor. Traylor is currently romantically involved with the estranged wife of one of his stepsons via McDowell. The two stepsons have also filed a lawsuit against Traylor, accusing him of hiding information about his financial assets, as part of their probate case concerning McDowell’s recent death without a will. (If someone wants to call me classist in the comments, please feel free, but I can’t help but notice that Traylor’s name is a homonym for a certain type of dwelling whose residents are stereotypically and often unfairly associated with such behavior.)

• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: As expected (at least as expected since late last night), Shelly Moore Capito announced this morning that she won’t run in the Senate special election in November, despite the nice Capito Carveout specifically designed by the legislature to facilitate her doing so. This leaves self-funding businessman John Raese the likely candidate. (In fact, he’d sounded likely to run in the primary with or without Capito, which may have been a major deterrent for Capito. She cited not wanting to run for two things at once, though, and the potential legal challenges to her doing so.) The primary is Aug. 28, so someone will need to fill the gap soon. West Virigina political analyst Hoppy Kercheval seemed to be the first to correctly diagnose the situation earlier yesterday, pointing out her risk-averse past.

There was one surprise, today, though: Joe Manchin drew a primary opponent, theoretically from the left. He was recently in the news for his staunch opposition to Mike Oliverio in WV-01; it’s former SoS and former Rep. Ken Hechler. Hechler, by the way, is 95 years old, older even than Robert Byrd was, so, well, take that for what it’s worth. Most of the speculation today instead seems to involve what happens with the Governorship. Succession laws aren’t very clear (and there’s no Lt. Gov.), but apparently State Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin will be acting Governor in the event of a Manchin move to the Senate. The bigger question is when the election to fill that job would occur: in a 2011 special election, or in 2012 when Manchin’s term would end anyway? Any discussion of GOP candidates for that begins and ends with Capito, but the Dem list is endless, ranging from temp Sen. Carte Goodwin to SoS Natalie Tennant, but almost certain to include state Treasurer John Perdue and state Sens. Jeff Kessler and Brooks McCabe.

• AL-Gov: Following the lead of Artur Davis on the Democratic side, Bradley Byrne finally got around to endorsing Robert Bentley, sticking his knife in his back a few more times along the way for good measure. His parting shot was that Bentley still needs to answer questions about his relationship with the teachers’ union, the Alabama Education Association.

• CO-Gov: OK, so it’s looking like if Scott McInnis does get kicked to the curb, no one is going to rally behind Dan Maes. His vaunted financial small-business acumen turned out to be a lot of inflated boasting, as newly-released tax returns reveal that his credit reporting business turns out to be a small operation and one that paid him earnings that put his family below the poverty line in 2005 and 2008. When asked how he made ends meet, he responded, “there are other ways to pay yourself than salary,” without further elaboration. Well, that’s true… are those ways legal, though?

• HI-Gov: After padding things out as long as he could, Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann finally resigned his day job today and launched his gubernatorial campaign in earnest. Hawaii has a “resign to run” law, so Hannemann wasn’t officially running until now, despite having been transparently campaigning for many months in the Dem primary against Neil Abercrombie.

• MA-Gov: Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorsed ex-Dem indie candidate Tim Cahill, rather than Republican Charlie Baker. Baker, from the moderate blue-blood side of the party, is pro-choice.

• NV-Gov (pdf): PPP’s Tom Jensen finds it ironic that somehow the Nevada GOP managed to pick the strongest possible Republican for the gubernatorial race and the weakest possible one for the Senate race. The telegenic and inoffensive Brian Sandoval is somehow managing to avoid having his GOP predecessor Jim Gibbons’ unpopularity (25/63) rub off on him (Sandoval is at 42/31). Sandoval leads Rory Reid (who’s at 34/48) by 52-38 in the general election.

• RI-Gov: Bill Clinton will be appearing in Rhode Island on behalf of Democratic candidate Frank Caprio, last man standing in the Dem primary, on July 29. Caprio backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.

• WI-Gov: Fundraising numbers in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race are out. Democrat Tom Barrett raised $2.39 million in the period of January through June, while GOPers Scott Walker and Mark Neumann raised $2.59 million and $1.96 million respectively (although some of Neumann’s money seems to be out of his own pocket). In terms of CoH, it’s Barrett (with no primary opposition) with $2.89 million, Walker with $2.57 million, and Neumann with $1.05 million.

• IA-02: Marianette Miller-Meeks, the ophthalmologist who lost severely to David Loebsack in 2008, is back for a rematch, and seems to be in better shape this time (better, even, than Raul Labrador), if her own internal is to be believed. Her poll from Susquehanna Polling & Research gives Loebsack a 46-41 lead.

• NJ-03: The Courier-Post wonders aloud “who the heck is Peter DeStefano?” That’s because no one really seems to know. He’s the independent Tea Party candidate in the 3rd, who hasn’t done anything to promote himself and whose main claim to fame was polling in the double-digits in John Adler’s recent internal poll where he was dominating Jon Runyan. This led, naturally, to GOP claims that DeStefano was some sort of plant from the Adler camp. DeStefano denies that, but isn’t helping matters with his pattern of ducking publicity, not just among the teabagging rank and file but even with the Courier-Post too.

• PA-11: Naturally, it’s never a sign of strength for an incumbent to go negative on his challenger this early… but it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Paul Kanjorski is in a heap of trouble in his rematch against Lou Barletta. But Kanjorski may feel he’s not only better served by localizing, not nationalizing his race, but also that he has a target-rich environment for hits on Barletta, given Barletta’s tenure as mayor of city of Hazleton, which has the highest unemployment in the state and whose local government is in danger of going into receivership.

• TX-06: I suppose this is an example of karma at work. Rep. Joe Barton’s campaign fund took a loss of $154K over the last three months because of hits to its investments… perhaps most significantly, because of losses at BP.

• RNC: It seems like Michael Steele can say all the dumb things he wants and keep his job (fo shizzle), but could financial mismanagement be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? The RNC has had to report new debts that were kept off the books by staffers loyal to Steele, and treasurer Randy Pullen (not a Steele ally) is going public alleging that the debts go much deeper than what was reported to the FEC, claiming that more than another $7 million in debt is out there. The dispute is likely to dominate matters at the RNC’s annual meeting in two weeks. This also leads to speculation that American Crossroads, the Karl Rove 527 operation that finally seemed to kick into high gear last month, will be the de facto main source for independent expenditures this year while the RNC sputters.

• House: Well, it looks like we’re stuck with 435 for the foreseeable future. A federal district court ruled against the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that claimed that only 435 seats was unconstitutional under 14th Amendment grounds, because of malapportionment between different states (i.e. Montana and Wyoming each getting one Rep., despite their population differences).

• Rasmussen:

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 41%, Rand Paul (R) 49%

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 40%, Tom Emmer (R) 36%

• MN-Gov: Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D) 40%, Tom Emmer (R) 35%

• MN-Gov: Matt Entenza (D) 37%, Tom Emmer (R) 36%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc): 43%, John Kasich (R) 48%

Zata|3 (D) for Talk Business (7/17, likely voters, no trendlines):

Blanche Lincoln (D-inc): 32

John Boozman (R): 57

Trevor Drown (I): 3

John Gray (G): 2

Undecided: 6

Mike Beebe (D-inc): 50

Jim Keet (R): 41

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±3.7%)

This is the first non-Rasmussen poll of the race following the June runoff, and while it’s certainly a little gaudy for John Boozman, I have every reason to believe this is going to be a painful race to watch. Somewhat frustratingly, Zata3 doesn’t provide party breakdowns (PDF). I’ll also note that their sample is older and more male than the 2008 exit polls, though of course, 2010 ain’t 2008.

Mike Beebe’s numbers also stand out – not because they’re terrible or anything, but because pretty much everyone had him figured as unassailable, even in a year like this. Indeed, PPP has regularly found him to be one of the most popular governors in the nation, a pretty remarkable feat given how badly almost every incumbent is performing. So it’s possible that these numbers are a little too good for Keet, a former state legislator who hasn’t held office since 1996 and who’s been absolutely swamped on the fundraising front. I definitely would like to see confirmation before concluding this race might be competitive.

• AK-Sen: Moose man endorses Some Dude. That’s SSP shorthand for: Todd Palin just endorsed Joe Miller, the right-wing lawyer who’s taking on Lisa Murkowski in the Republican Senate primary. Recall that Mr. Palin has had some fairly fringey politics in the past (as with his membership in the Alaskan Independence Party), so I wonder if this was done with his wife’s approval (or, given her busy schedule these days, whether he was even able to block out some time with her to get her say-so). Given her rumored brief interest in taking on Murkowski in the primary herself (back when she was still Governor rather than itinerant book-selling motivational-speaking grifter), and her long-standing beef with all things Murkowksi, I’d suppose yes.

• CA-Sen: Carly Fiorina, trying to make up last-minute ground in the GOP primary against Tom Campbell, has thrown $1.1 million of her own money into her campaign. On top of previous loans to her campaign, that brings her total self-contributions to $3.6 million. Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner were both heard scoffing loudly.

• CT-Sen: Chalk this one up to bad, bad timing. Linda McMahon just sent out a mailer proposing to “put Connecticut back to work” by “increasing offshore drilling and production” (um, in Long Island Sound?). The mailer features a large, lovely picture of a (non-burning) offshore oil rig.

• NH-Sen: Has Kelly Ayotte just given up on any pretense of trying to look moderate? She’s appearing at a Susan B. Anthony List (the anti-abortion group) fundraiser today, headlined by Sarah Palin, along with a supporting cast like Rep. Steve King. I know that she still needs to survive her GOP primary, but her main opposition these days is looking like moderate Bill Binnie, not right-wing Ovide Lamontagne.

• NV-Sen: Steve Kornacki looks at the Nevada Senate race and the “what if” scenario if Sharron Angle somehow wins the primary. History indicates that Harry Reid can’t pin too many hopes on winning just because the GOP puts forth its most extreme candidate… maybe the biggest case in point, the Carter camp’s hopes that wacko Ronald Reagan would make it out of the GOP primary in 1980.

• NY-Sen: Wow, there’s actually going to be a GOP primary for the right to get mulched by Chuck Schumer! Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos, who’s only been on the job half a year, is already looking to move up. He’ll still have to get past political consultant Jay Townsend in the primary.

• UT-Sen: She stopped short of a formal endorsement, but fringey activist Cherilyn Eagar, who finished fourth at the GOP convention, said that Tim Bridgewater would be “an excellent senator” and complimented him on a “clean, honest race.” Eagar is back to her day job fighting the menace posed by gnomes.

• AL-Gov: I’m losing track of all the weird outside groups popping up to play dirty pool in the Alabama governor’s race. Today’s entrant is the mysterious New Sons of Liberty, whose main agenda seems to be Barack Obama’s birth certificate. They’ve reserved $1.1 million in TV airtime, although it’s unclear what they’ll be advertising about or on behalf of whom. The leader of a group, Basics Project, affiliated with the New Sons is mystified at where they would have gotten that kind of money, so it seems like they’re being used as a conduit for… well, somebody.

There’s also a new poll out of the Republican primary, by Republican pollster Baselice (on behalf of local PR firm Public Strategy Associates… there’s no word on whether any of the candidates are their client). They find Bradley Byrne barely leading Tim James 24-23. Roy Moore, who many thought would be the man to beat, is lagging at 18, with Robert Bentley at 12 and Bill Johnson at 2. The juicier numbers might be down in the AG race, where GOP incumbent Troy King is in all kinds of trouble. He’s losing 50-25 to challenger Luther Strange. There are three Dems in the AG field, most prominently James Anderson, ready to try to exploit the cat-fud fight.

• AR-Gov: One thing we didn’t mention in our writeup of Research 2000’s AR-Sen poll from yesterday is that they were the first pollster to throw the Arkansas Governor’s race into the mix. Incumbent Dem Mike Beebe routinely sports some of the highest favorables of any politician (64/24 here), and he seems immune from Arkansas’ reddish trend and the nation’s overall anti-incumbent fervor. He leads Republican former state Sen. Jim Keet, 62-19.

• CT-Gov: Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy picked up another potentially useful endorsement today as we make our way toward Connecticut’s endorsing conventions. He got the nod from Rep. John Larson, the #4 man on the House totem pole. UPDATE: On the GOP side, ex-Rep. Chris Shays has an endorsement of his own: Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele.

• NY-Gov: It’s kind of more meta than we’d like, to report on an announcement about an announcement (about an announcement), but it sounds like we’re getting closer to pinning down a date from Andrew Cuomo. It’s being reported that he’ll announce his gubernatorial candidacy on or around May 25, the start of the state Democratic convention.

• AL-05: Rep. Parker Griffith is already up with a negative ad hitting one of his Republican primary opponents, Madison Co. Commissioner Mo Brooks, calling him a “career politician” and “big spender.” Brooks observed, perhaps correctly (although the Alabama primary is fast approaching), that an incumbent attacking a challenger is a big-time sign of weakness.

• GA-09: Former state Rep. Tom Graves, in the runoff for the special election in this seat against fellow Republican Lee Hawkins, got the endorsement from nearby Rep. Lynn “Uppity” Westmoreland. In a district this red, that may actually be a plus.

• MN-06: An unaffiliated independent, Troy Freihammer, may appear on the ballot, in addition to Independence Party nominee Bob Anderson. He needs 1,000 signatures by month’s end, though, so he may not make that hurdle. Getting him on might be a net plus for the Dems, as his website makes pretty clear he’s a Tenther and he’s only likely to take votes away from Michele Bachmann.

• OR-01: SurveyUSA is way down in the weeds here (although that’s because the poll where they get paid to do so, in this case by local TV affiliate KATU), with a look at the primaries in the 1st. In a four-way field on the GOP side, the NRCC’s preferred candidate, sports-industry consultant Rob Cornilles, leads at 31, beating mortgage broker John Kuzmanich at 19. The other guy whose name you hear in connection with this race, Stephan Brodhead (mostly because he somehow summoned up $298K CoH) is polling at all of 3, probably because his main campaign activity seems to be trolling the online comment sections of local newspapers and people have ascertained thusly that he’s a wackjob. Rep. David Wu is at 75% against token opposition on the Dem side.

• PA-04: What was supposed to be a victory lap for former US Attorney and loyal Bushie Mary Beth Buchanan has turned into a real dogfight with attorney Keith Rothfus, seemingly helped along by her apparent ineptitude at electoral politics. She’s currently drawing fire for a “deceitful” mailer which uses the National Rifle Association logo without its permission. Things have actually been going badly enough on the message-control front that improbable rumors have her dropping out of the race (with days to go), although her camp is saying her “major political announcement” is just a press conference to go on the offensive against Rothfus.

• Census: An interesting article from Stateline looks at what various states are doing to amp up Census participation. The real interest, here, is a neat map they’ve put together rating the states not on their overall participation percentages, but on the overall shifts in participation percentage from 2000 to 2010. Intriguingly, the biggest improvements in participation were clustered in the Deep South (especially North and South Carolina, both of which are on the cusp of adding another seat), while the Mountain West states suffered the most. California also seemed to fall off a bit, as budget limitations kept them from doing much outreach this time around, which could conceivably hurt their hopes of staying at 53 seats.