Tag: Brian Sandoval

• CA-Sen: PPIC (9/19-26, likely voters, 7/6-20 in parentheses):

Barbara Boxer (D-inc): 42 (49)

Carly Fiorina (R): 35 (40)

Other: 6 (-)

Undecided: 17 (11)

(MoE: ±3.6%)

One more poll for the pile with a high-single-digits lead for Barbara Boxer, this time from the very trustworthy PPIC. They also look at the Governor’s race (see below) and a few initiatives: they find Prop 19 (pot) passing 52-41 and Prop 25 (simple majority budget) passing 48-35, but also finding Prop 23 (suspending greenhouse gas limits) passing 43-42.

• IN-Sen: We’d speculated that this was a possibility back around the time of the Indiana GOP primary, when Dan Coats (an unusually tepid gun supporter as far as GOPers go) won. The NRA today endorsed his Democratic opponent, Brad Ellsworth, who’s pretty much walked the pro-gun line in his red House district. (I know we’d said we’d shut up about NRA endorsements of conservaDems, but this one actually has the potential to move some votes in a key race.)

• PA-Sen: Susquehanna for Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (9/23-26, likely voters, no trendlines):

Joe Sestak (D): 42

Pat Toomey (R): 45

(MoE: ±3.5%)

I wish this had come out in time for our monstrous Pennsylvania wrapup from early this morning, as it’s an interesting post-script. Susquehanna (a Republican pollster, but one who’ve demonstrated that they know what they’re doing in Pennsylvania; for instance, they got the PA-12 special pretty close to right) sees it as a surprisingly close race, finding Sestak within 3. Is this the first sign of Sestak closing, or is this just the optimistic edge of the stable mid-single-digits band that the race has usually been pegged at?

• CA-Gov: PPIC (9/19-26, likely voters, 7/6-20 in parentheses):

Jerry Brown (D): 37 (46)

Meg Whitman (R): 38 (40)

Other: 7 (-)

Undecided: 18 (14)

(MoE: ±3.6%)

Unfortunately, this poll closes out the end of a run of remarkable luck for Jerry Brown of polls showing him spiking into the lead (although there’s a lot of movement from both candidates to “Other,” though I’m not sure who that would be). Importantly, though, the polling period ended before Meg Whitman’s illegal housekeeper problem burst into public view. The SEIU is doing its part to keep the issue front and center, pumping $5 million into a Latino outreach effort that’s largely field efforts but also includes an ad starting in a few days hitting Whitman on the housekeeper issue. Whitman’s also doing her part to keep it in the news, saying she’ll employ the scoundrel’s last refuge — a polygraph test — to prove she was unaware.

• NY-Gov: Marist (9/27-29, likely voters, 9/14-19 in parentheses):

Andrew Cuomo (D): 53 (52)

Carl Paladino (R): 38 (33)

Rick Lazio (C): – (9)

Undecided: 8 (6)

(MoE: ±4%)

Marist strikes back quickly with another poll following up on the news that Rick Lazio is no longer a candidate, preferring to enjoy the great prestige that comes with a trial court judgeship in the Bronx. At any rate, they don’t see anything changing other than what you’d expect: most of Lazio’s voters from the Conservative line gravitated over to GOP nominee Carl Paladino, with a few, unappetized by the bombastic Paladino, joining the ranks of the undecided.

• OR-Gov: One major explanation for how Chris Dudley has made a major race out of what looked like an easy Dem pickup hold a year ago is… money. (As with so many other races this year…) Dudley has raised $5.6 million all cycle long, as of Tuesday’s reporting deadline, more than doubling up on John Kitzhaber’s $2.6 million, the largest disparity between the two parties ever seen in an Oregon gubernatorial race. (The SEIU has been running ads on Kitzhaber’s behalf, and the DGA has $750K ready to go, but that’s still a big deficit.)

• RI-Gov: Fleming & Associates for WPRI-TV (9/22-26, likely voters, no trendlines):

Frank Caprio (D): 33

John Robitaille (R): 19

Lincoln Chafee (I): 30

Undecided: 15

(MoE: ±4.4%)

There’s been a general trend in the last month or two toward the Democrat, Frank Caprio, in this race. But the newest poll (apparently the first of this race from Fleming & Associates), on behalf of local TV stations, shows a much closer race, with Caprio up only 3 on his indie opponent, Lincoln Chafee.

• GA-08: American Viewpoint for Austin Scott (9/26-27, likely voters, late July in parentheses):

Jim Marshall (D-inc): 38 (44)

Austin Scott (R): 46 (39)

Undecided: 13 (14)

(MoE: ±5.7%)

Well, there’s only one alarming GOP House internal poll today, unlike yesterday’s onslaught. (Also, note the hypertrophied margin of error, based on an n of 300.) Still, this is another race that’s tended to be on the “Lean D” or at least “Tilt D” side of the equation, and one more juggling ball that the DCCC is going to have to keep in the air.

• ME-01, ME-02: Critical Insights, like last time, included both Maine House districts as part of their poll, so we actually have some trendlines now. In the 1st, Chellie Pingree is expanding her lead over Dean Scontras, 54-26. However, in the 2nd, Mike Michaud’s lead over Jason Levesque is a little smaller, down to 44-32 (from 48-28). (In a way, that’s reassuring, because that’s evidence that Critical Insights didn’t just stumble into a much Dem-friendlier batch, and that the flight from Paul LePage seems real.)

• DSCC: The DSCC is having to put some money into Connecticut, a race they probably thought they could avoid spending on when Richard Blumenthal got into the race. They’re starting with a smallish $250K, though. Other DSCC outlays today include $720K in CO-Sen, $464K in IL-Sen, $362K in MO-Sen, and $386K in WV-Sen.

• NARAL: NARAL rolled out endorsements of twenty different Dems running in House races, almost all of whom received $5K each. You can click for the full list, but it includes Cedric Richmond, Steve Pougnet, John Hulburd, and Joe Garcia on offense (the rest are defensive picks).

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski’s out with two different ads, one hitting Joe Miller as outsider, the other a PSA-type ad that verrrry slowly and carefully explains to people how to vote for her

• KY-Sen: Here’s a powerful new ad from Jack Conway hitting Rand Paul on the drug issue yet again, complete with tombstone and tagline “He doesn’t know us” (interestingly, though, the DSCC is following the NRSC’s lead here with an ad buy cancellation for the week of the 5th) (UPDATE: Looks like the DS un-cancelled)

• MO-Sen: Roy Blunt hits Robin Carnahan over the stimulus, pointing out that another member of the extended Carnahan clan got money for his wind farm

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold tries going back to firing up the base, running an ad based on the merits of health care reform

• MI-01: The NRCC weighs in with an ad in the 1st, an endless circle of meta wherein Dan Benishek attacks Gary McDowell for attacking

• WI-07: Julie Lassa goes back to the theme of Sean Duffy having prematurely abandoned his day job as DA to run for the House

• AJS: Americans for Job Security tries again in VA-09 (remember that’s where their previous ad got bounced for being too egregious), as well as in CO-03 and NY-24

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 43%, Ken Buck (R) 51%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 41%, Charlie Crist (I) 30%

• IA-Sen: Roxanne Conlin (D) 37%, Charles Grassley (R-inc) 55%

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 38%, Rand Paul (R) 49%

• MA-Gov: Deval Patrick (D-inc) 47%, Charlie Baker (R) 42%, Tim Cahill (I) 6%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 40%, Brian Sandoval (R) 53%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 48%, Sharron Angle (R) 47%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 42%, John Kasich (R) 50%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 47%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 42%, Ron Johnson 54%

Mason-Dixon for Las Vegas Review-Journal (9/20-22, likely voters, 9/7-9 in parentheses):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 43 (46)

Sharron Angle (R): 43 (44)

Scott Ashjian (T): 1 (-)

Tim Fasano (AIP): 1 (-)

NOTA: 4 (3)

Undecided: 8 (6)

Gubernatorial numbers, trendlines

Rory Reid (D): 37 (36)

Brian Sandoval (R): 51 (52)

Other: 3 (2)

NOTA: 2 (2)

Undecided: 7 (8)

(MoE: ±4%)

Is it safe to say that nothing new is going on in the Nevada races, at least according to Mason-Dixon? They see only a point or two of movement in each race.

Public Opinion Strategies (9/21-23, likely voters, no trendlines):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 45

Sharron Angle (R): 40

Scott Ashjian (T): 1

NOTA: 7

Undecided: 6

Rory Reid (D): 39

Brian Sandoval (R): 45

Other: 2

NOTA: 9

Undecided: 4

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Instead, all the excitement seems to be surrounding this poll from the Republican internal pollster, POS (although thanks to lots of leaking from Jon Ralston, we all knew about it last Friday). I’m not sure on whose behalf POS polled the race, or whose partisan interest they’re serving by leaking these results, but at any rate they give Harry Reid one of the best results he had since the GOP primary, and even more interestingly, the first poll ever to have Rory Reid within single digits of Brian Sandoval. Is there dual Reid-mentum going on, or just a blip?

UPDATE: atdleft, in the comments, points out that the poll was on behalf of the Nevada Retail Association, who are probably more interested in taxation issues and aren’t likely to be interested in trying to spin the statewide race toplines.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• SSP TV:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

• DE-Sen: It’d D-Day for the Republican Party: the “D” could stand for “Delaware,” or maybe for the “dipshits” in the Tea Party who we’ll see tonight whether they’ve fully succeeded in taking over the asylum. At any rate, the state GOP is rolling out a robocall from a former Christine O’Donnell 2008 staffer who’s now supporting Mike Castle; she says O’Donnell isn’t a “true conservative” (although that’s evidenced by her inability to get her own spending under control). O’Donnell’s camp responds saying the disgruntled staffer was fired after a week, rather than leaving on her own. The Beltway CW of today, at least as far as Politico goes, seems to be that Castle has regained some momentum over the last few days what with the increased scrutiny of O’Donnell, pointing to changes in responses to phonebanking in recent days.

• FL-Sen: Here’s an interesting endorsement for Charlie Crist, that may help him with the growing Haitian community in the Miami area. Haitian-American State Rep. Yolly Roberson, who recently lost the FL-17 Democratic primary, gave his backing to Crist instead of Kendrick Meek, whose newly-vacated seat he was vying to occupy.

• NV-Sen, NV-Gov: The first of three (count ’em) polls out in the Nevada Senate race has what just about everyone else has seen in this quickly-getting-overpolled race: Harry Reid leads Sharron Angle in the low single digits. Ipsos/Reuter’s second poll of the race gives Reid a 46-44 lead. (It was 48-44 in favor of Reid in their first poll in early August.) Apparently this wasn’t the respected pollster showing a single-digit gubernatorial race that Jon Ralston was rumbling about, though: their gubernatorial numbers are 60 for Brian Sandoval, and 31 for Rory Reid. (The trendlines were 50-39 for Sandoval, so that’s quite a drop, especially when considering that the Senate race has barely budged.)

• WA-Sen: Republicans hoping for some sort of reconciliation in Washington are out of luck. Clint Didier is still holding out on endorsement for Dino Rossi, popping up briefly yesterday to tell Politico that he won’t do so unless Rossi capitulates to Didier’s three demands regarding action items.

• RI-Gov: Michael Bloomberg parachuted into yet another race with an endorsement, as part of his nebulous goals of advancing some sort of center-left post-partisan zeitgeist. He offered his backing to moderate GOPer-turned-liberal indie Lincoln Chafee, who seems to fit the Bloomberg worldview pretty well.

• NY-St. Sen.: Veteran political reporter Liz Benjamin is out with her handicapping of the New York state Senate races this year (New York elects all Senators every two years, so everybody’s up this year, as always). She points to seven Tossups, four of which are Dems and three of which are GOPers (thanks in large part to open seats). That means that control of the body, currently 32-29 (with 1 previously-GOP vacancy), is truly up for grabs this year. It’s all presented in a nice-looking map format, although the functionality needs some help.

• SSP TV:

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer’s campaign’s first ad emphasizes veterans, small business, and green jobs

• MO-Sen: The winning ad of the day may just be a little radio ad from Robin Carnahan, which actually uses a jingle (how many political ads do that anymore?); the song goes amusingly negative against Roy Blunt

• KY-Sen: The newest Jack Conway ad works the law & order angle, saying Rand Paul is soft on crime, while the NRSC is out with an ad that seems to be poking fun at Conway’s horse-owning ways as a means of linking him to Barack Obama… or something like that

• CO-Gov: The Colorado trainwreck continues unabated, as Tom Tancredo’s first ad is an anti-Dan Maes hit job, featuring a nice little old lady who says that Maes conned her out of her money without getting into any of the specifics

• FL-Gov: Rick Scott’s back on the air after letting his money have a few weeks off, trying yet again to tie Alex Sink to Barack Obama

• MA-Gov: An anti-Charlie Baker spot from Bay State Future hits Baker on his stewardship of the Big Dig, a 90s public works debacle that turned into a collective scar on the Massachusetts psyche

• CA-03: Ami Bera’s first ad focuses on Dan Lungren’s last minute pay raise that he gave himself as state AG, boosting his pension

• CO-07: Ed Perlmutter’s out with his first ad, a positive spot

• IL-11: Debbie Halvorson’s first ad uses testimonials from the unemployed to hit Adam Kinzinger hard for his support of free trade agreements

• OH-15: Mary Jo Kilroy, similarly endangered, also opts for the negative ad route, hitting Steve Stivers for his work as banking industry lobbyist

• OH-18: Sensing a theme? Zack Space hits Bob Gibbs on his support for free trade agreements too

• PA-07: Bryan Lentz is out with two separate ads, one a basic intro spot, the other making an argument that all Dems should be making: that supporting extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy doesn’t jibe with wanting to reduce the deficit

• PA-08: Patrick Murphy talks to the camera to do some compare & contrast with Mike Fitzpatrick

• SD-AL: Two dueling ads from Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Kristi Noem: Noem’s first ad is a generic attack on Washington, while Herseth tries to rebut an ad from AFF, saying, no, she’s actually conservative

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 46%, Dan Maes (R) 21%, Tom Tancredo (C) 25%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 48%, Sharron Angle (R) 48%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 41%, Rob Portman (R) 49%

• A Rasmussen By Any Other Name Would Still Smell: When a gigantic slew of polls for Fox News came out, showing, as one might expect from Fox, bad results for Democrats, I wasn’t surprised. Something seemed off, though: I first noticed that this wasn’t Fox’s usual pollster (which is Opinion Dynamics), but someone called Pulse. Then some of the details really made my antennae twitch: these were auto-dialed polls conducted over one day (meaning no callbacks), and the day they chose was not only a Saturday (when young people tend to out, y’know, doing things) but freakin’ 9/11! Then Taegan Goddard helpfully pointed out this, which explains it all: Pulse Research is a subsidiary of Rasmussen. You may recall some discussion earlier in the year of a new Rasmussen venture that would let people pay $600 to poll anything or anyone they wanted… that’s Pulse. So, they’re just going in the Rasmussen containment pool with the “real” Rasmussen polls; for what it’s worth, the numbers are pretty much in line with where Rasmussen sees the races, so at least we know Pulse isn’t doing anything differently.

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 43%, Meg Whitman (R) 49%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 46%, Carly Fiorina (R) 44%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 49%, Rick Scott (R) 41%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 41%, Charlie Crist (I) 27%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 38%, Brian Sandoval (R) 56%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 44%, Sharron Angle (R) 45%

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

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 41%, Rob Portman (R) 48%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 40%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 41%, Pat Toomey (R) 47%

Mason-Dixon for Las Vegas Review-Journal (9/7-9, likely voters, 8/23-25 in parentheses):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 46 (45)

Sharron Angle (R): 44 (44)

Other: 1 (2)

None of these: 3 (4)

Undecided: 6 (5)

(MoE: ±4%)

There’s very little movement in the Nevada Senate race; most everyone has decided and it’s a game of inches. Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian is in better shape after a U.S. District Court judge dismissed a suit intended to keep Ashjian off the ballot, saying the time for legal challenges was long ago. Of course, with “Other” (not just Ashjian, but also the AIP candidate) polling at 1%, that really doesn’t mater one iota.

Gubernatorial numbers:

Rory Reid (D): 36 (31)

Brian Sandoval (R): 52 (53)

Other: 2 (2)

None of these: 2 (3)

Undecided: 8 (11)

(MoE: ±4%)

Jon Ralston has teased the existence of some other poll that has Reid the Younger within 9 (saying “he’s not dead yet”), which we’ll be on the lookout for. That, plus Ralston-tweeted word of another Reid internal that has him within 7, and the trendlines here, suggest that Reid somehow has gotten some momentum. Is there enough time left to capitalize, though?

NV-03 numbers (trendlines from 8/9-11):

Dina Titus (D-inc): 47 (43)

Joe Heck (R): 43 (42)

Other: 1 (3)

None of these: 2 (4)

Undecided: 7 (8)

(MoE: ±5%)

One other race where there’s some Democratic progress — and where it may actually affect the bottom line — is the 3rd, where Dina Titus moved from a 1-point edge to a 4-point edge, and closer to the 50% mark. It’s pretty easy to diagnose what happened there, though: the AFSCME poured $750K into the district on Titus’s behalf. Now if we could just get them to do that in about 30 or 40 other districts, then we’d be in pretty good shape overall.

If you’re wondering about the state’s downballot offices, they’re all crammed in there too. GOPer Brian Krolicki is poised to return for another turn as Lt. Governor, while the Dems, including sorta-embattled AG Catherine Cortez Masto, are winning the other four races.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Ads:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mason-Dixon for Las Vegas Review-Journal (8/23-25, likely voters, 8/9-11 in parentheses):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 45 (46)

Sharron Angle (R): 44 (44)

Other: 2 (2)

None of these: 4 (3)

Undecided: 5 (5)

(MoE: ±4%)

Sounds like Nevadans really, really would like another option. Maybe most interestingly, two-thirds of Sharron Angle’s supporters in this weekend’s Mason-Dixon LVRJ poll of NV-Sen say they wish someone else had won the Republican nomination. Now there’s a vote of confidence! By contrast, only 18% of Harry Reid voters wish the same regarding the Dem nomination. (Among undecided voters, that number for Angle goes up to nearly 80%, and 58% wish the same about Reid.) At any rate, Harry Reid’s favorables are 39/52 and Angle’s are 32/43. Strangely, though, Nevada’s vaunted unique NOTA option is only polling at 4%, not much higher than where it usually winds up with high-profile statewide races.

Gubernatorial numbers (7/26-28 in parentheses):

Rory Reid (D): 31 (31)

Brian Sandoval (R): 53 (50)

Other: 2 (2)

None of these: 3 (3)

Undecided: 11 (14)

(MoE: ±4%)

The son also does not rise.

• LA-Sen: That ginned-up internal poll that Chet Traylor released a few days ago (showing him within 12 of David Vitter) seems to have served its intended purpose, for what its worth: the contributions have started coming in at a much greater pace over the last few days. He pulled in $30K in three days, almost doubling up on the $42K he raised over the previous duration of his campaign (and most of which he blew on his new anti-Vitter radio ad). And this can’t please Vitter, either: a local paper is reporting to Vitter’s troublesome ex-aide, Brent Furer, traveled back from DC to Louisiana several times on the public’s dime, at points that just happened to coincide with his various trials on charges of drunk driving.

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle seems to be wandering all over the map in search of a position on Social Security privatization, one that’s extreme enough to satisfy her teabagging core supporters but not so extreme that it scares off, y’know, old people. She’s removed the words “transitioned out” from her website (regarding Social Security) but, when pushed yesterday, said that she hasn’t changed her view that that’s how she feels about it (despite running ads claiming that she wants to “save” Social Security).

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak, meet Raul Labrador? As you probably know, there’s a common-sense rule of thumb that you don’t release your internal polls unless they show you, y’know, ahead of your opponent. Nevertheless, somebody (unclear whether it was the DSCC or the Sestak camp) leaked NBC a Peter Yang internal of the race giving Pat Toomey a 2-point lead over Sestak, 46-44. Obviously, that’s not designed to create a sense of Sestak’s inevitable victory as most internals are designed to do, but it’s pushback against this week’s PPP poll, where the switch to LVs hurt Sestak’s numbers, probably oriented toward letting contributors know that this race is still in play. The DSCC has also been nailing Toomey on the rather arcane issue of derivatives, which had a key role in inflating the asset bubble that popped and left all our faces covered in pink sticky goo in 2008. Somehow I doubt more than 1% of the nation can offer a cogent explanation of what derivatives (especially credit default swaps) do, but at any rate, they’ve tracked down three separate times when Toomey as Congressman, on the House floor, praised the use of derivatives, something he’s lately tried to distance himself from.

• WA-Sen: We’re up to 67% reporting in Washington, with the numbers not really having budged from Tuesday night (still 46 Patty Murray, 34 Dino Rossi, 12 Clint Didier), but more than three-quarters of the remaining precincts are in the Dem-friendly King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties, so look for some future budging. Meanwhile, here’s a comparison that only true politics junkies will get… remember Fred Heineman? (The one-term Republican House member from NC-04 swept in in 1994, who then said that his $183,000 salary made him “lower-middle-class” and that the middle class extended up to $750K, and promptly got swept out in 1996.) Dino Rossi has apparently decided that he should be Washington’s answer to Heineman, as he essentially said that one-third of Washingtonians make over $200K per year. More specifically, he said 2.5 million Washingtonians would benefit from keeping the Bush-era tax cuts for those making more than $200K/yr. (In reality, 105K households, or 1.6% of the state’s population, fit that profile.)

• CA-Gov: Here’s an iceberg in the way for the serene cruise of the Queen Meg: activists at a convention of state conservatives this weekend plan a rude welcome for her. They plan to lambaste her on her non-extreme positions on an Arizona-style immigration law in California, and her support for greenhouse gas-limiting Proposition 19 23. Also, here’s some quantitative evidence for something that I’ve long suspected: Whitman has so oversaturated the airwaves with advertising that it went well past the point of having its desired effect and is now just getting people pissed off at her. A Jerry Brown staffer leaked that nugget from internal polling, finding that her own advertising has helped Whitman with 8% of voters and hurt her with 27% of voters.

• IA-03: Hot on the heels of the David Rivera story in FL-25, here’s another uncomfortable blast from the past for another Republican House candidate: records reveal that Brad Zaun, the GOP’s nominee against Leonard Boswell, had to be told by West Des Moines police to stay away from his ex-girlfriend after a late night visit to her house to pound on her windows and call her names.

• MO-03, MO-04: Odd little pollster We Ask America seems to be entering another period of being prolific, as now they’re out with a couple House polls from the underserved state of Missouri. They find Russ Carnahan fairly comfortable against Republican challenger Ed Martin in the 3rd, leading 48-39, but find veteran Dem Ike Skelton in a tighter race in the 4th, leading Vicky Hartzler 45-42. Skelton still draws the support of 27% of Republicans and 37% of indies, crucial to surviving this dark-red district.

• CfG: The Club for Growth is starting to switch gears from primaries (where they seem to have had a more productive run this year than in previous cyles) to the general. They’ve endorsed four Republican challengers who all cleared the primary bar: Stephen Fincher in TN-08, Todd Young in IN-09, Mick Mulvaney in SC-05, and Tim Griffin in AR-02.

• Ads: The most attention-grabbing ad today seems to be from Indiana Dem Joe Donnelly, who already tried to distanced himself from “the Washington crowd” in his previous ad. Now he’s basically thrown in the towel on trying to fight the messaging war and just start running with Republican memes, touting his opposition in his newest ad to “Nancy Pelosi’s energy tax.” Other ads worth checking out today include an RGA ad for Duke Aiona in HI-Gov, a Joyce Elliott ad in AR-02, a Michelle Rollins spot in DE-AL, and a Mike McIntyre ad in NC-07.

• Rasmussen:

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D) 45%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 44%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 36%, Brian Sandoval (R) 52%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 48%, Dino Rossi (R) 44%

Mason-Dixon (8/9-11, likely voters, 7/26-28 in parens)

Harry Reid (D-inc): 46 (43)

Sharron Angle (R): 44 (42)

Other: 2 (2)

None of these: 3 (7)

Undecided: 5 (6)

(MoE: ±4%)

OK, I can’t claim credit for the title (I stole it from mysterious but apparently hilarious pollster We Ask America, whom I just found out put out a poll of this race last week too: Reid led Angle 46-41). At any rate, in the most recent Mason-Dixon poll for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, it’s a duel to see which candidate can be less unappealing to Nevadans. Harry Reid’s favorables are 40/51, while Angle’s are 37/45.

Also troublesome for Reid: the poll’s finding that, by a 51 to 45 margin, Nevadans don’t think that his seniority is too valuable to give up. Good for Reid, though: 41% say Angle’s positions are too extreme for them (compare with 36% for Reid). Also good: Reid keeps inching closer and closer to the 50% mark as undecideds and NOTAs get off the fence; this is the closest he’s come in a M-D poll, even the one where he was up by 7.

One more thing Angle is also going to have to explain away: she outed herself last Thursday as a big fan of SSP. No, not this SSP: social security privatization. But no, it’s OK, she said, as Chile’s already done it (the last remaining vestige of the Pinochet regime). By Friday, her helpers were already trying to unspin what she’s spun, saying the federal government should manage a system where workers pick their own retirement plans.

Gubernatorial numbers (7/26-28 in parens)

Rory Reid (D): 36 (31)

Brian Sandoval (R): 52 (50)

Other: 1 (2)

None of these: 2 (3)

Undecided: 9 (14)

(MoE: ±4%)

Things aren’t looking up for Reid the Younger, at least not so much. Reid has gained some significant ground since the previous Mason-Dixon poll, as undecideds make their move, but Sandoval is already past the 50% mark. Reid, at 29/41 favorables (Reid’s new campaign slogan: “My Dad went to the Senate and all I got was these lousy favorable ratings”) will be hard-pressed to turn that around against Sandoval’s 48/18.

NV-03 numbers (7/12-14 in parens):

Dina Titus (D-inc): 43 (42)

Joe Heck (R): 42 (40)

Other: 3 (5)

None of these: 4 (4)

Undecided: 8 (9)

(MoE: ±5%)

Dina Titus’s 2-point lead from last month is down to a 1-point lead, all float within the margin of error. I have a feeling the race in NV-03 is going to stay this close consistently for the next few months, all the way through Election Day. While it’s good to see Titus holding her own, she’s at 42/44 favorables while Heck has lots of room to grow 35/16, so she needs to start defining him ASAP.

Ipsos for Reuters (7/30-8/1, likely voters, no trendlines):

Harry Reid (D-inc): 48

Sharron Angle (R): 44

Other: 2

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±4.6%)

The first poll of NV-Sen for Ipsos isn’t particularly surprising; most polls lately have averaged out to a lead for Reid in the low- to mid-single-digits. What is very interesting about this poll is that they release separate likely voter and registered voter numbers, and let me just say: holy crap, take a look at the disparity with the RVs! Among RVs (MoE 4%), Harry Reid completely dominates, leading 52-36 (with 2 for other). That points to as clear a quantification of the “enthusiasm gap” between the parties this year as I’ve seen, and certainly should spur more conversation on how Democrats should be looking to activate those currently “unlikely” voters who’d vote Dem if they actually voted.

It’s been a few days since we’ve talked about Nevada, and Sharron Angle has been very busy, saying enough bizarre things to fill a whole article. She started out on Monday with a Fox News interview, where she got a little too candid about her media strategy: she said she wanted “the press to be our friend,” and “ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported.” Well, that would certainly explain why she was appearing on Fox (whose Carl Cameron had to titter nervously and call her “naive” in the face of all that ill-advised honesty).

Then yesterday it came out that Angle, who’d previously referred to running for office as a “calling from God,” had gone way beyond that in a previously-unnoticed radio interview with a Christian news service from a few months ago. She attacked entitlement programs as wanting to “make government our God,” and referred to “dependency” on the government as “idolatry” and a violation of the First Commandment.

From his perch on the other side of the country, Mitch McConnell can clearly see the trainwreck unfolding, and he made it clear that there won’t be a repeat of 2004, when Bill Frist campaigned against Tom Daschle on his turf: McConnell confirmed he won’t campaign in person in Nevada this year. Nor can Angle count on help from Danny Tarkanian, whom she dispatched in the primary: Lois Tarkanian (Danny’s mom, and wife to basketball legend Jerry) announced she’s joining Harry Reid’s campaign, in order to “call out Sharron Angle’s extreme and dangerous positions.” At least Angle is still mixing it up on the airwaves, with her newest TV spot a relatively normal and coherent one, although it does make the leap of trying to blame the entire housing bubble collapse on Reid.

Rory Reid (D): 39

Brian Sandoval (R):  50

Other: 1

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±4.6%)

Ipsos isn’t so kind to the younger Reid, finding him trailing Brian Sandoval by 11 in the open gubernatorial race. The registered voter numbers, as you might expect, show a much closer race, giving Sandoval a lead of only 43-42.