Tag: NRSC

• CA-Sen: Best wishes to Carly Fiorina, who’s temporarily off the campaign trail and in the hospital after an infection associated with reconstructive surgery that she had over the summer after recovering from breast cancer. She’s says she’ll be back in action soon.

• CO-Sen: The Democrats in Colorado have filed an FEC complaint with Ken Buck, alleging illegal coordination. The coordination was between Buck and Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund (which has spent $370K here so far). This doesn’t look likely to get addressed before Election Day, though.

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul eventually got around, today, to cutting ties with and condemning a volunteer involved in assaulting a MoveOn activist before last night’s debate, outside the venue. An activist trying to give a fake award to Paul was shoved to the ground and kicked/trampled.

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle has always been the prime example of the GOP’s apparent strategy for its more troublesome candidates (which is to have them hide from the media), but this is a little extreme: all manner of sleight-of-hand was used at a Reno appearance to keep her away from about 40 reporters who were looking for her, to the extent of using a decoy to get into her official vehicle while she left through a side door. Also, here’s an interesting catch, especially since Angle supposedly has a lot of cash these days: her latest filing has nothing about salaries for her staff. Oversight, or is there more of a burn rate problem than we’d been led to believe?

• WA-Sen: This CQ article is your generic this-race-is-tight-and-important piece, but it has a few interesting tidbits buried in it: one, Patty Murray’s internals have her up “around 4,” although that’s all we get to find out. And two, this election is already effectively more-than-half over: the state SoS’s office says that 50% of all voters have submitted their ballots, on track for turnout of at least 66%, which would be third-highest non-presidential turnout ever in the state. (I assume you all know which party tends to do better in higher-turnout models.) Finally, Dino Rossi’s doing a little hiding from the media himself: on a conference call with reporters, Rossi actually refused to say where he was calling from, just that he was “traveling all over right now.” (Maybe we should be looking for the guy in the red and white striped shirt?)

• VT-Gov: Biden alert! Here’s one election where every single vote will count (seeing as how it has fewer constituents than most House districts), and the veep is trying to roust out some votes with a Burlington appearance with Dem nominee Peter Shumlin the day before the election.

• CA-47: This was a weird election even before this, with stark racial overtones, and now it’s even weirder: an independent candidate, Cecilia Iglesias, is making her presence known with a TV ad buy (although just on local cable on Univision). Who will this hurt? The GOP says it’ll hurt Loretta Sanchez, because it splits the Latino vote. The Dems say it’ll hurt Van Tran, since Iglesias is a “known Republican.”

• CT-05: Hmm, here’s a novel strategy for dealing with ads from third party groups that contain blatant lies: push back against them, and TV stations just may stop running them. That’s what happened in Connecticut, where the American Action Network’s ads against Chris Murphy got taken down, by Fox-CT (on cable) no less. (The ad is part of the series saying that you can go to jail for not having health insurance.)

• VA-05: This is big all around: that the President is stumping on behalf of a House candidate (albeit one within a helicopter ride away from DC), and that said House candidate in a red district is welcoming him. In case you didn’t guess, it’s Tom Perriello, who’ll be rallying UVA students with the Prez in Charlottesville.

• American Crossroads: Here’s part of the Crossroads road map for the last week: at a cost of $3 million altogether, they’re moving into NC-11, NY-20, and GA-02, as well as continuing their presence in HI-01 and NY-22. They’re also launching ads in CA-20, IN-02, MO-03, ND-AL, TN-04, OH-16, and TX-23.

• SSP TV:

• KY-Sen: The NRSC and Rand Paul both turn the tables on Jack Conway, saying he wants to talk about Paul’s checkered past (i.e. Aqua Buddha) to avoid talking about Obama

• NV-Sen: The NRSC is out with a rather incoherent ad about how Harry Reid fancies himself a superhero, while Sharron Angle‘s out with another border-themed ad with menacing shadowy men who, of course, aren’t actually Latino

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak’s closing argument cites his independence

• WV-Sen: Thank God for trackers… Joe Manchin’s camp strings together John Raese’s greatest hits at various appearances to demonstrate his “crazy” ideas

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown wins the jujitsu black belt for his closing ad (if not the overall Zen master award for his whole campaign): unlike the very busy Manchin ad, he only needs one quote from Meg Whitman to make his own case for himself… she says she came to California 30 years ago because it back then it was a land of opportunity and it worked (uh, Meg? who was governor of California 30 years ago?)

• GA-Gov: Nathan Deal’s closing ad says Roy Barnes is too ambitious, and Deal is just a humble public servant

• TX-Gov: Bill White’s new ad says 10 years is too long, playing the dread “career politician” card on Rick Perry

• MA-10: The DCCC’s new ad in the 10th goes after Jeff Perry’s controversial police sergeant tenure, in case anyone there was unaware of it

• OH-18: Zack Space goes after Bob Gibbs on outsourcing and immigration

• VA-05: The Sierra Club’s out with an ad bolstering Tom Perriello

• CA-Init: I’m not sure I thought I’d live to see the day where there ads running in favor of the legalization of marijuana, but apparently the Yes on 19 campaign was able to scrape together enough stems and seeds for a TV buy

• Rasmussen Classic:

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy (D) 49%, Tom Foley (R) 46%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 39%, Nathan Deal (R) 49%, John Monds (L) 5%

• NM-Gov: Diane Denish (D) 42%, Susana Martinez (R) 52%

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 45%, Sharron Angle (R) 49%

• SC-Sen: Alvin Greene (D) 58 21%, Jim DeMint (R-inc) 21 58%, Some other 15%

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold (D-inc) 46%, Ron Johnson (R) 53%

• New Rasmussen (aka Fox/Pulse):

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 50%, Meg Whitman (R) 41%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 48%, Carly Fiorina (R) 44%

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 39%, Bill Brady (R) 44%, Scott Lee Cohen (I) 6%, Rich Whitney (G) 4%

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 41%, Mark Kirk (R) 43%, LeAlan Jones (G) 7%

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 43%, Rand Paul (R) 50%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 43%, John Kasich (R) 47%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 46%, John Raese (R) 48%

• AK-Sen: I hope the Alaska journalist corps is fueled up on coffee and is ready to go on a week-long dumpster diving binge, because the mother lode just got opened up. A state superior court judge just ordered that Joe Miller’s Fairbanks borough personnel records get released, saying the people’s right to know trumps Miller’s privacy concerns. The release won’t happen until tomorrow, though, to allow time for an Alaska Supreme Court decision if necessary.

• CA-Sen: The polls can’t seem to decide whether the California Senate race is tightening, loosening, or staying basically the same, but it was enough to finally get Carly Fiorina to do what the NRSC had probably hoped she would have done months ago: she put $1 million of her own money into the race. (She’d spent $5 mil of her own on the primary, but nothing since then.) On top of that, the NRSC is throwing an additional $3 million into the race for the last week, while Barbara Boxer is calling the bluff with $4 million from her account for ads of her own.

• NV-Sen: As we expected, Harry Reid’s been keeping up a steady drip-drip of endorsements from prominent Republicans around Nevada. The most recent one: term-limited state Sen. Dean Rhoads, who represents almost all of the state (geographically) except Clark and Washoe Counties. (H/t LookingOver.)

• FL-Gov: Wow, Bill McCollum actually ate his own cat fud. With little time left on the clock, he swallowed any remnants of his pride and endorsed primary rival Rick Scott, the guy he swore he’d never endorse.

• RI-Gov: Interesting approach from a blue state Dem: Frank Caprio just told the President to “shove it,” in reaction to Barack Obama’s apparent decision not to endorse him when he was in Rhode Island today. Payback for Lincoln Chafee’s Obama endorsement in ’08? Or reverse payback for Caprio’s reported flirting with a party switch? Or elaborate theater staged for Caprio’s benefit, to help distance himself from the White House?

• OH-Gov: Obama and Biden alert! The Dynamic Duo are adding yet another campaign stop in Ohio, where saving Ted Strickland seems to be one of the White House’s top priorities. On Sunday, both will appear with Strickland, and then there’ll be a Biden/Strickland stop later in Toledo.

• CA-47: Um, maybe someone should tell Van Tran that taking a page from the Carl Paladino playbook isn’t really a good idea right now… Tran’s out with foul-smelling scratch-and-sniff mailers in the district, hitting Loretta Sanchez for the “stench of Washington.”

• CO-04: Add one more body on the plague wagon: the DCCC brought out Betsy Markey on Friday. They announced that they won’t be spending any more on the 4th this cycle. They’d previously drawn down their efforts here, but now they’re fully pulling out. (If there’s a bright spot, this is probably their last triage move… with one week left, there’s really no time left to cut anyone else off.)

• FL-12: Is there a growing sense of Republican worry in this district? They shouldn’t lose an R+5 district in this climate, but they have probably the most credible 3rd party Tea Party challenger anywhere here, in the form of an actual county commissioner, Randy Wilkinson, who internals polls have seen taking gobbling up double-digit vote shares. They’re taking the problem seriously enough to have Newt Gingrich doing robocalling on behalf of GOP nominee Dennis Ross, suggesting that Wilkinson is a plant from next door’s Alan Grayson.

• IN-02: Oooops. Jackie Walorski ran footage in a web video of a South Bend neighborhood as an example of a neighborhood “in ruin” from Democratic policies. The residents of the neighborhood are now deeply offended, saying their neighborhood is hardly ruined at all, and are demanding an apology.

• KS-03: In a more normal year, this might be enough to do some serious damage in a close race: just-released police records show that Kevin Yoder (the GOP’s nominee here) refused to take a breath test during a 2009 traffic stop. He pled guilty to speeding, also received a citation for not taking the test, and it was left at that.

• MS-04: Look who’s in a bit of a panic, and revealing his true stripes: Gene Taylor just let his district’s voters know that he isn’t one of those Demmycrats at all! Why, he even voted for John McCain in 2008, he says.

• PA-11: Bill Clinton’s traveling schedule takes him to three blue-collar districts that were, in the ’08 Dem primaries, some of the most die-hard Clinton districts anywhere, now all home to pitched battles. He’s appearing in the 11th tomorrow in support of Paul Kanjorski (who we’d expected, a few months ago, to be the first Dem incumbent we wrote off, but who seems to still be in the thick of things). On Thursday, he also visits PA-03 and PA-15.

• VA-05: If you weren’t already sold on Tom Perriello’s particular brand of awesome, check out the highlight reel of some of the best clips from his most recent debate with Rob Hurt.

• WA-06: Here’s an internal poll that’s a real head-scratcher, that requires a bit of explanation. Rob Cloud, the same doofus who runs against Norm Dicks every cycle (four times in a row now) and gets crushed, claims to have an internal poll out giving him a four-point lead over the long-time Dem. (Well, four if you do your own math. For some reason, the poll gave actual respondent totals only, 609 to 558 with 95 undecided. If that strange method doesn’t by itself set off alarm bells, the polling firm is someone called Wenzel (out of Ohio), a company I’d only heard of once, when they polled OH-Gov and OH-Sen last year on behalf of Ohio Right to Life… but (h/t to quiller) it turns out have a regular gig as WorldNetDaily’s pollster and have been responsible for extremely leading-question-rife polls about Barack Obama’s citizenship. And on top of all that, Dicks won the Top 2 primary (the most reliable poll possible) with 57% of the vote, with a combined GOP vote share of 43% (of which Cloud got a pathetic 29%),which shouldn’t imply much vulnerability. On the other hand, Dicks’ district is “only” D+5, one of the least-blue districts that isn’t home to an on-the-radar race… and moreover, Dicks has seemed pretty invisible as far as I can tell, compared with next-door neighbor Adam Smith who’s in a similarly D+5 district but got a polling-related wake-up call and has been working his butt off lately. So, uh… who knows?  

• NRCC: Eager to maximize last-minute take-over opportunities, the party of fiscal responsibility is throwing some more debt on the pile. The NRCC just took out a $20 million line of credit to fund some more late-in-the-game advertising.

• Dark Money: Just as the actual universe’s mass is mostly composed of dark energy and dark matter, so too the political universe is apparently mostly composed of dark money these days. Hotline’s Jeremy Jacobs has an excellent piece that pulls together all the GOP spending by shadowy third-party groups, fleshing out the IE picture greatly, and also showing a remarkable amount of avoidance of duplication of efforts in the districts. They couldn’t actually be coordinating their efforts behind-the-scenes, you think? (Not that that’s illegal, as far as I know.)

• IEs: Speaking of IEs, if you haven’t been following spiderdem’s weekly series over in the diaries regarding the back-and-forth battle of the independent expenditures between the DCCC and NRCC, you absolutely should. It rounds all the numbers up in one handy place, and puts them in the context of the probable lay of the land.

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: Here’s that NRSC ad mentioned late last week, where they hit Scott McAdams in a preemptive attack to keep him from shooting the gap (and here’s the SOTB: $75K)

• CA-Sen: No more giddy Carlyfornia Dreaming here, with a dour ad from the Fiorina camp hitting Barbara Boxer for California’s dire economic straits

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio’s closing statement is a plain talk-to-the-camera spot saying “Reclaim America!”

• WI-Sen: Russ Feingold’s out with the ad that he should have run about two months ago, making fun of Ron Johnson’s whiteboard and platitudes

• NM-Gov: Susana Martinez makes the Diane Denish/Bill Richardson connection about as explicit as humanly possible in her new spot

• FL-22: Ron Klein seems to have finally moved away from Allen West’s homeowners association liens, with the Outlaws gang connections too juicy even for him to ignore

• ID-01: Walt Minnick cites his independence and rags on Raul Labrador for getting his own last ad pulled for its bogusness

• MN-06: Taryl Clark hits Michele Bachmann for, well, being a “celebrity”

• VA-05: Robert Hurt goes after Tom Perriello for being a Washington insider

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 48%, Meg Whitman (R) 42%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 48%, Carly Fiorina (R) 46%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 56%, Linda McMahon (R) 43%

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 34%, Dan Coats (R) 52%

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D-inc) 52%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 42%

• ND-Sen: Tracy Potter (D) 25%, John Hoeven (R) 72%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 45%, Tom Corbett (R) 50%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 44%, Pat Toomey (R) 48%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 28%, John Robitaille (R) 25%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 35%

• SD-Gov: Scott Heidepriem (D) 36%, Dennis Daugaard (R) 55%

• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 42%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 51%

• AK-Sen: Where even to start in Alaska? With vague reports of Joe Miller in “free fall” in private polling, both the NRSC and his own personal kingmaker, Jim DeMint, are having to step in with advertising in order to back him up. The NRSC’s buy is for $162K, which I’m sure they’d rather spend putting out fires in Pennsylvania and Kentucky instead of on a should-have-been-sure-thing… and the ad (which focuses on Barack Obama, not Lisa Murkowski or Scott McAdams) can be seen here. DeMint’s ad is for $100K and touts Miller’s pro-life credentials.

Meanwhile, the drip-drip of unsavory stuff from Miller’s past keeps coming. It turns out he worked for one of Alaska’s top law firms after graduating from Yale, prior to sliding down the food chain to working for the borough of Fairbanks; while they wouldn’t elaborate because of personnel policies, a firm partner said they were “not eager” to have him stay on and “relieved” when he left after three years. Also, a CPA with commercial property knowledge should double-check a look at this story before we start alleging wrongdoing, but it’s an interesting catch: Miller may have been paying himself ridiculously-above-market rents on the law office he owned, in order to game his taxes. And finally, with the damage already done, it looks like no charges will be filed in the “irrational blogger” handcuffing incident, either against Tony Hopfinger or Miller’s hired goons.

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway succeeded in getting an NRSC ad pulled from a local TV station, seeing as how the whole premise was based on a lie (that Conway has supported cap-and-trade). WHAS-TV pulled the ad after the NRSC was unable to provide convincing sources for the alleged quotes.

• MO-Sen: This might be too little too late, but Roy Blunt is the third Republican candidate in the last month to get a bad case of housekeeper-itis. State Democrats released documents yesterday showing that in 1990 Blunt hired an “illegal worker” and then tried to expedite the citizenship process for her. Blunt’s campaign says she never worked directly for them, only for some church events, but the documents say she had “done some work” for Blunt’s wife at the time.

• NY-Sen: Charles Schumer, one of the few people anywhere routinely polling over 60%, has decided to dole out more of his gigantic war chest to other Democrats rather than spending it on himself. (It may not be entirely altruistic, as he may still have a Majority Leader battle in mind if Harry Reid can’t pull it out.) In recent weeks, he gave an additional $1 million (on top of a previous $2 mil) to the DSCC. He’s also given widely to state parties, including $250K in both New York and Nevada, as well as smaller amounts in 11 other states.

• PA-Sen: Before you get too excited about the major shift in polling in the Pennsylvania Senate race, absentee ballot numbers out of the Keystone State should be considered a dash of cold water. Of the 127,000 absentee ballots requested, Republicans have requested 50% and Dems have requested 42%, and also returning them at a faster clip. (I’m sure you could parse that by saying that Republican voters are likely to be older and thus less likely to want to vote in person, but either way it’s not an encouraging figure.)

• WV-Sen: Rush Limbaugh’s endorsement of John Raese last week — apparently predicated on the fact that they have lockers near each other at an expensive private country club in Palm Beach, Florida — may have done more damage to Raese beyond the obvious problem of making him look like a rich, entitled carpetbagger. After a little digging, it turns out that the Everglades Club is an all-white affair. Although it doesn’t have specific membership requirements, it’s never had a black member, and only one Jewish member. (In fact, remember that membership in this club was considered one of the disqualifying factors when Limbaugh was making noises about buying the St. Louis Rams several years back.)

• CO-Gov: Credit Dan Maes for entrepreneurial spirit: when he needed a job, he created one for himself… running for Governor. In the last year, Maes’ campaign has reimbursed his family $72K. That’s actually his campaign’s second-biggest expense, and nearly one-third of the paltry $304K he’s raised all along. Maes says much of that money was “mileage,” though.

• OR-Gov: Here’s something that we’ve been seeing almost nothing of this cycle, even though we saw a lot of it in 2008 (especially in Oregon, with Gordon Smith): kissing up to Barack Obama. But that’s what Chris Dudley did in an open letter published as a print ad in the Oregonian this week, saying that while they might have their differences he’ll work together with him on educational issues (one area where Dudley’s been making some Democratic-sounding promises, albeit without any discussion of how to do that and pay for his tax cuts at the same time). With Barack Obama more popular in Oregon than much of the nation, and about to host a large rally with John Kitzhaber, the timing is not surprising.

• MA-04: I don’t know if Barney Frank knows something that his own internals aren’t telling us, or if he just believes in not leaving anything to chance, but he’s lending himself $200K out of his own wallet to fund the stretch run in his mildly-interesting House race.

• MA-10: The illegal strip search issue (where Jeff Perry, then a police sergeant, failed to stop an underling from strip searching two teenage girls) is back in the media spotlight in a big way today, with one of the victims ending her silence and speaking to the press. Perry has defended himself saying it wasn’t “in my presence,” but she says he was a whole 15 feet away, and that he tried to cover up the incident.

• NJ-03: It seems like every day the honor of dumbest person running for office changes, and today the fickle finger seems to be pointing at Jon Runyan. When asked in a debate what Supreme Court case of the last 10 or 15 years he disagrees with, Runyan’s answer was Dred Scott. As TPM’s David Kurtz says, given the crop of GOPers this year, maybe we should just be grateful that he disagrees with Dred Scott.

• VA-05: If Tom Perriello loses this cycle, he’s one guy who can walk out with his head held high:

In return, Hurt asked Perriello if he was willing to admit his votes on stimulus funding, health care and energy were mistakes.

Perriello stood behind his votes and the positive impact he says they have had or will have on the district….

“Leadership is about making tough decisions,” he said.

• IA-St. House: The Iowa state House is one of the most hotly contested (and likeliest to flip to the GOP) chambers in the nation this cycle, and here’s a Des Moines Register analysis of the 23 biggest races to watch in that chamber. (Bear in mind, though, that although Iowa is on track to lose a House seat, it uses independent commission redistricting, so the state legislature is not pivotal in that aspect.)

• DNC: The DNC somehow raised $11.1 million in the first 13 days of October, putting them on track for one of their best months ever for a midterm election. Wondering what’s happening with that money? The DNC is out with a new TV ad of their own, saying don’t go back to failed Republican policies and decrying the flow of outside money into this election. I have no idea where it’s running, but the non-specificness of the pitch leaves me wondering if it’ll run in nationwide contexts. (The DNC is also running $3 million in radio ads on nationally syndicated programs, particularly targeted to black audiences.)

• Independent expenditures:

• America’s Families First Action Fund (all anti-GOP buys): ND-AL, FL-02, WI-08, VA-05, AZ-07, WI-07

• NRSC (variety of buys, including Alaska)

• AFSCME (all anti-GOP, naturally): OH-16, MI-07, CO-Sen, PA-03

• Hospital PAC (multiple buys, all pro-GOP)

• First Amendment Alliance (anti-Joe Manchin)

• SSP TV:

• IL-Sen: Someone called WFUPAC (funded by SEIU and AFT) hits Mark Kirk for being buddy-buddy with George W. Bush in the bad ol’ days

• NH-Sen: Kelly Ayotte’s out with a boilerplate litany of everything Dems have done wrong

• WV-Sen: The NRSC returns to the “Manchin’s a good governor, keep him here, and send a message to Obama” theme

• MN-01: The DCCC has to push the playing field boundaries a little further with their first ad in the 1st, hitting Randy Demmer on Social Security privatization

• NH-02: Ann McLane Kuster has two different ads out, both on outsourcing and job creation, one hitting Charlie Bass and one positive

• PA-03: Here’s that AFSCME ad (see above for the IE) hitting Mike Kelly

• PA-06: Manan Trivedi says Washington hasn’t been listening to you

• WA-08: Suzan DelBene’s fourth ad touts her as “smart moderate” and wields her Seattle Times endorsement

• Rasmussen:

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

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 20%, Marco Rubio (R) 43%, Charlie Crist (I) 32%

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 40%, Mark Kirk (R) 44%, LeAlan Jones (G) 4%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 43%, John Raese (R) 50%

• AK-Sen: I thought Joe Miller (last seen praising the COMMUNISTS!!1! in East Germany for their wall-building skills) wasn’t going to talk about his personal life anymore (i.e. personal stuff like his on-the-job politicking while working for the borough of Fairbanks)? Well, now he is, and he’s openly admitted on CNN that he was disciplined by the borough for an ethical violation. “John, I’ll admit I’m a man of many flaws,” he said. Apparently one of those flaws was using his various co-workers’ computers while they were away for lunch to rig an online poll intended to displace Randy Ruedrich as state GOP chair, then wiping out their caches to cover his tracks, then getting caught when the wiped caches were discovered. Miller said he was reprimanded and docked pay as a result. However he maintains the incident had nothing to do with his departure from the office a year and a half later (which others maintain was imminently before he was about to be fired). So… a guy is possibly about to go from not being able to hack it as a contract attorney for a city of about 25,000, to a Senator, in the space of about a year? Geez, only in America.

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon’s no slouch either on the self-funding front: she loaned herself $20 million last quarter, bringing her all-cycle total to $41.5 million. (No word, of course, on how much of that $20 million actually has been or will be spent.) Meg Whitman was heard sniffing disdainfully and saying McMahon should call once she reaches the eight digits.

• DE-Sen: Sometimes, it’s best to keep your mouth shut and let everyone assume you’re a fool, rather than open your mouth and categorically prove it. The highlight of last night’s debate:

Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion….

“The First Amendment establishes the separation, the fact that the federal government shall not establish religion,” Coons said.

“The First Amendment does?” O’Donnell interrupted. “You’re telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?”

• KY-Sen: With Aqua Buddha suddenly back dominating coverage of this race, no one’s really stopped to ask Aqua Buddha lady what she thinks of all this. She thinks that Jack Conway’s ad’s tone is over-the-top, but agrees with the fundamentals, that it’s an accurate reflection of Rand Paul’s past views and that he should acknowledge that he’s just changed his religious views since then (instead of playing the victim).

• MA-Sen: Wait, the 2010 election hasn’t happened yet? Still not too early to talk about 2012. Rep. Mike Capuano, runner-up in the Dem primary in the special election and considered the likeliest opponent against Scott Brown in two years, is openly “mulling” the race, although his official line is “Talk to me in December.”

• NV-Sen: We finally have some confirmation on what we’d suspected, regarding Sharron Angle’s burn rate, thanks to Salon’s crack team. She may have raised $14 million, but she also spent $5.3 million on direct mail expenses last quarter in order to get that money. $920K of that went to BaseConnect and its affiliates, with $1.5 million to somebody called Patton-Kiehl, who seemed responsible for the actual printing and postage. Another $4 million went to TV ads, leaving her with the $4 million CoH she reported.

• MD-Gov: This one looks closer and closer to being wrapped up in favor of Martin O’Malley. On top of today’s Gonzales poll, there’s also news that the RGA is scaling things back in Maryland, planning to spend less than $200K for Bob Ehrlich in the final two weeks. O’Malley may also benefit from an across-the-aisle endorsement (although it’s from a figure who’s committed his fair share of apostasies): ex-Rep. Wayne Gilchrest gave him his backing today.

• MN-Gov: Here’s one more across-the-aisle endorsement (the only kind we’d bother reporting on, at this stage in the game). Tom Horner, the Independence Party candidate in Minnesota, got an endorsement from Mike Ciresi, a wealthy attorney who you might remember from losing the 2000 DFL Senate primary to Mark Dayton (wonder if there are any hard feelings there?) and ran again for Senate in 2008 but dropped out pre-convention. That may make things a smidge harder for Dayton, who needs Horner to draw votes mostly from the R column.

• AL-02: This has to be one of the weirdest IEs of the cycle: Blue America is spending in AL-02 of all places, and they’re spending $48K against Bobby Bright. I guess they hate Blue Dogs just that much.

• FL-22: You know, if you’re fighting allegations that you have links to the outlaw biker gang conveniently known as the Outlaws, probably the best way to do that is by not having bikers providing security at your rallies. Well, that’s what happened at an Allen West appearance, where bikers physically drove off a Ron Klein tracker. Video is available at the link. (At least “Sympathy for the Devil” wasn’t playing in the background.)

• NC-07: Here’s some interesting scuttlebutt out of the 7th, where Mike McIntyre is joining the I-won’t-vote-for-Pelosi brigade but where he’s also saying that he’s heard that she won’t be running for Speaker again. (That would, of course, presume having a majority; no word on whether he’s heard if she plans on running for minority leader.) Relatedly, even Mike McMahon, who’s looking like a good bet to survive his red-leaning district this year, is now sounding noncommittal but at least Pelosi-skeptical.

• OR-04: Wondering who the mysterious Concerned Taxpayers of America are, who’ve trained most of their advertising firepower on Peter DeFazio, turning this into at least a mildly competitive race? Well, it turns out there’s a grand total of two of them, each of whom has ponied up hundreds of thousands of dollars. One of them, Robert Mercer, appears to be the one with the beef against DeFazio, probably because he’s a hedge fund manager and takes issue with DeFazio’s leadership on taxing major hedge-fund transactions.

• VA-05: I guess demanding the moon and the sun when you make your initial offer in a negotiating session is a good strategy, but independent teabagger Jeffrey Clark may have taken that ridiculously far in his attempts to negotiate a dropout from the race and an endorsement for GOP candidate Robert Hurt. Clark offered to drop out if he got the chance to debate Hurt one-on-one, and then if subsequent polling didn’t have him at 25% of the vote! Hurt has refused to appear any at any debates where Clark is included, and doesn’t seem any likelier to do so now.

• WA-08: I know it’s fashionable to paint Dave Reichert as not being one of the sharpest tools in the shed, but it’s hard not to do so when he gives you so much material: at a forum with opponent Suzan DelBene, confessed in response to a question that he wasn’t familiar with the Glass-Steagall Act. (The resurrection of Glass-Steagall was one of the main things being debated as part of the financial reform package passed this year.)

• DCCC: Here’s some activity from the D-Trip that doesn’t bode well: they’ve started going on the air in NC-11 for Heath Shuler, previously thought safe based on most of the polling we’ve seen so far but has been in the crosshairs of a lot of third-party advertising from folks like Americans for Job Security. (NWOTSOTB.) They’re also increasing their buys in the coming weeks in neighboring districts SC-05 (John Spratt) and NC-07 (Mike McIntyre). Also, file this under a sorta-kinda triage decision: the DCCC is cutting off ads in NM-02, on behalf of Harry Teague. Chris Van Hollen says they’re leaving Teague in “great position,” which (shades of Steve Kagen here) is probably code for “he’s personally wealthy” and it’s time for him to buy his own bandaids.

• Polltopia: PPP is letting you choose an unprecedented six states to poll in, as part of their final round of polling. They must be renting some extra robots, because they’re planning to poll 18 different states the week before the election, although 12 states (basically, the most obvious ones) are already locked in. Go vote!

• SSP TV:

• CA-Sen: EMILY’s List is out with a TV spot featuring an opera guy singing a ditty about Carly Fiorina (and her time as Hewlett-Packard CEO)

• NV-Sen: Both the DSCC and NRSC are out with ads; the DSCC says that while you’re angry, don’t take it out by voting for Sharron Angle, while the GOP says Harry Reid lives in a fancy hotel and parties with supermodels

• WA-Sen: One of the Dems’ few big-money behind-the-scenes groups, Commonsense Ten, looks at Dino Rossi’s cozy connections

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin’s new ad just flat out says “John Raese uses people”

• CA-Gov: Too bad this is only a Jerry Brown web ad, because it’s one of the most effective ones we’ve seen this cycle: it ties Meg Whitman to unpopular Arnold Schwarzenegger, matching them quote for quote (UPDATE: Good news, everybody! The ad is going to be running on television, despite its one-minute length! It’s that good.)

• TX-Gov: Bill White’s new ad hits Rick Perry on his rental mansion

• SC-02: Joe “Yewwwwww Laaaaaah!” Wilson talks about dodging mortar fire in his newest ad (mortar fire that apparently landed on the other end of the airport while on what Rob Miller has been calling a Congressional junket, but that’s OK)

• TX-17: Here’s a sign that Chet Edwards has done something to show that he’s stemmed the bleeding (or at least that he called in some serious favors), as the DCCC’s back on the air here with an effective ad about bailout funds for Bill Flores’ oil company

• Original recipe Rasmussen:

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 42%, Rand Paul (R) 47%

• MI-Gov: Virg Bernero (D) 34%, Rick Snyder (R) 54%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 37%, Brian Sandoval (R) 56%

• Extra crispy Rasmussen (aka Fox/Pulse):

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 48%, Meg Whitman (R) 43%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 48%, Carly Fiorina (R) 44%

• CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 40 45%, Dan Maes (R) 10%, Tom Tancredo (C) 45 40%

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 45%, Ken Buck (R) 46%

• MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan (D) 43%, Roy Blunt (R) 49%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 43%, John Kasich (R) 49%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 45%, John Raese (R) 48%

• AK-Sen: The elections officials in Alaska are out with some further guidance on just how stringent they’ll be about misspellings of Lisa Murkowski’s name: “Murkowsky,” for instance, will probably be OK, but misspellings of “Lisa” (hard to misspell, but anything’s possible in a state that elected Sarah Palin, I guess) won’t. Also, are MurkStrong bracelets on the horizon? They’ve said it’s acceptable for voters to wear wristbands with Murkowski’s name printed on them into the ballot booth, as long as they don’t show them to other people.

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias offers up an internal poll from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, taken Oct. 10-12, giving him a 44-41 lead over Mark Kirk (with 4 for LeAlan Jones and 3 for Mike Labno). I don’t know how much confidence to get filled with here (especially in view of Nate Silver’s seeming ratification of the +5 rule on internal polls, in fact saying it’s more like a +6)… but with most public pollsters, even Rasmussen, showing this race to be a game of inches, maybe this is truly worth something.

• NV-Sen: Here’s a clear illustration of burn rate, especially when your fundraising strategy is centered around direct mail appeals to small donors (including me… I just got another Sharron Angle snail-mail pitch yesterday). Despite her $14 million 3Q haul, her CoH is $4.1 million. That’s almost exactly the CoH that Harry Reid just announced ($4 mil, based on raising $2.3 mil in 3Q).

• FL-Gov: Wow, the next Alex Sink attack ad writes itself. It turns out that Rick Scott was actually sued by the state of Florida (the same state, of course, that he’s vying to lead) in the late 90s for insider trading at the same time that the FBI was investigating assorted malfeasance at Columbia/HCA. (The case never went to trial, getting subsumed into the larger federal case.)

• RI-Gov: This is pretty late in the game to fall into this state of disarray: Lincoln Chafee’s campaign manager, J.R. Pagliarini just resigned. It wasn’t over any sort of disagreement (or, Tim Cahill-style, over the candidate’s hopelessness), though, but rather because of the impropriety of having received unemployment benefits at the same time as working on the Chafee campaign (which he attributes to a payroll snafu). With or without Pagliarini, though, there’s already a cloud of disarray hanging overhead, as seen by how little attention the Chafee camp seems to have drummed up surrounding their own internal poll giving them a 34-30 lead over Frank Caprio (with John Robitaille at 15).

• CA-11: It was just yesterday that I was pointing out how clownish OR-04 candidate Art Robinson was a big proponent of eliminating public education altogether. Well, now it’s turned out that David Harmer, certainly a “serious” candidate by standard media definitions, is of essentially the same mind, having made the same argument in a 2000 op-ed article in the widely-read San Francisco Chronicle.

• FL-02: At this point I don’t expect to see Allen Boyd back in Congress next year, but this poll seems weird even if you feel the same. It’s from someone called P.M.I. Inc., only mentioned in a rather sketchily-reported article from the right-leaning Sunshine State News site (complete with a tasteless headline that sounds like something I would write) that doesn’t make it clear whether this is an independent poll or taken on someone’s behalf (and doesn’t include dates or MoE). It shows Steve Southerland leading Allen Boyd 56-30, with two independent conservative candidates pulling in an additional 14 percent of the vote.

• GA-02: With Mike Keown having released a poll showing him trailing Sanford Bishop by only 1, Bishop is rather predictably out with a poll of his own today. The Oct. 7-10 poll from Lester & Assocs. gives Bishop a 50-40 lead. (Keown’s poll was taken several weeks earlier, before the DCCC started running ads here.)

• MN-07: Here’s one more race where there were “rumors” (without an actual piece of paper) about a competitive race, where the incumbent Dem whipped out an internal to quash that. This is one of the more lopsided polls we’ve seen lately: Collin Peterson leads Lee Byberg 54-20 in the Sept. 28 poll from Global Strategy Group.

• NY-17: And here’s one more mystery poll (expect to see lots more of these bubble up in the coming weeks): it shows Eliot Engel at 31 but leading his split opponents: Conservative York Kleinhandler at 25 and Republican Tony Mele at 23. The poll is from somebody called “YGSBS.” Considering that “YG” is the initials of the proprietor of the blog where this poll first emerged (yossigestetner.com), and the “forthcoming” crosstabs still don’t seem to have arrived, color me a little suspicious.

• WV-03: Yet another internal poll in the why-are-we-still-talking-about-it WV-03 race: Dem Nick Rahall leads Spike Maynard by 19, in an Anzalone-Liszt poll from Oct. 10-12.

• Fundraising: Here are some fundraising tidbits: via e-mail press release, Taryl Clark just announced $1.8 million last quarter, giving her $1 million CoH. (In any other House race, that’d be huge, but she’s up against Michele Bachmann.) Two other fundraising machines who are sort of the polarizing ideological bookends of Florida also reported: Alan Grayson reports $967K last quarter while Allen West reports $1.6 mil (although no CoH numbers, important as his campaign relies heavily on direct-mail churn). Finally, CQ has some assorted other numbers, including $626K for Rick Boucher in VA-09, $700K for Dan Debicella in super-expensive CT-04, and $507K for Andy Harris in MD-01.

• RGA: And here’s the biggest number of all: yesterday the RGA reported $31 million in the 3rd quarter, which gives them a lot of leverage in the closing weeks in the tight races. (Bear in mind, of course, that a lot of that would have gone to the RNC instead in a more competent year.)

• Polltopia: Nate Silver adds some thoughts on the cellphone debate, reignited by new Pew findings that we discussed yesterday. His main takeaway, one that I agree with whole-heartedly, is don’t just go start adding 5 points in the Dem direction on every poll you see, simply because the cellphone effect isn’t likely to apply uniformly in every population and in every pollster’s method.

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski finally, as promised, rolls out Ted Stevens dancing with a vacuum cleaner endorsing her from beyond the grave, in a one-minute ad

• KY-Sen: The NRSC is still pouring money into Kentucky (consider that good news), with another boilerplate Conway = Obama ad

• NV-Sen: The Harry Reid team must have spent all last night in the editing suite, as they’re already using Sharron Angle’s words from last night’s debate, on health insurance coverage exemptions, against her

• PA-Sen: If internal polling and press release content are any indication, they’ve finally something that works against Pat Toomey: China, and outsourcing more in general (which explains why the DSCC is out with another ad on the topic, and also pointing out that in Toomey’s last ad that, during the period where he was being a “small businessman” by owning a restaurant, he was really an absentee owner while being a large businessman in Hong Kong)

• WA-Sen: Ditto the DSCC’s new ad in Washington, up against Dino Rossi (which, I’ll admit, is a strange tack in Washington, one of the most pro-trade states you’ll see, and where Patty Murray is a regular vote in favor of trade agreements)

• MO-04: Vicky Hartzler’s ace in the hole? She has an ad up with footage of Ike Skelton telling fellow Rep. Todd Akin where to stick it, with repeated obscenities bleeped out (hmmm, that would just make me want to vote for Skelton more)

• NRA: The NRA is out with a planned $6.75 million buy in a number of statewide races, including a few of their Dem friends, but mostly on behalf of GOPers; you can see a variety of their TV ad offerings at the link

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 50%, Meg Whitman (R) 44%

• CO-Gov: John Hickelooper (D) 42%, Dan Maes (R) 12%, Tom Tancredo (C) 38%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 51%, Linda McMahon (R) 46%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 51%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 40%

• HI-Gov: Neil Abercrombie (D) 49%, Duke Aiona (R) 47%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 40%, Brian Sandoval (R) 55%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 40%, Tom Corbett (R) 54%

Orion Strategies for Marshall University (10/11-12, likely voters, no trendlines):

Joe Manchin (D): 48

John Raese (R): 38

Undecided: 12

(MoE: ±4.6%)

Here’s some more evidence that Joe Manchin’s on an upswing in West Virginia, after having bottomed out for a few weeks there when John Raese hadn’t yet been defined and was a shiny new object that fit nicely with voters’ discontent with Washington. We don’t have trendlines from this pollster (so, for all we know, their model might not have seen a Raese lead at any point), but it’s probably not a coincidence that Manchin climbing back into the lead in multiple polls has to do with Dems having engaged the ad war and exposed Raese, as well as help from surrogates like Bill Clinton and of course the NRSC‘s “hicky” ad controversy, which seemed to have more legs than I originally gave it credit for and, if nothing else, took the GOP off-message here.

Orion Strategies is a local firm that has worked on behalf of both Democratic campaigns and nonpartisan organizations. Here, they’re working on behalf of Marshall University, and the chair of the State Elections Commission (a registered Republican and professor) was consultant to the poll, so things seem above-board here.

• AK-Sen: The story of how his employment with the city of Fairbanks ended is one of the key reasons why Joe Miller suddenly clammed up and said he wouldn’t answer questions about his personal background anymore. Now the city’s former mayor, Jim Whitaker, is offering his version of the story, saying Miller is “not truthful” about it. Whitaker says Miller’s use of borough resources for political purposes (namely, for gaming an online vote for state party chair in a Sarah Palin-orchestrated party coup) was a violation of borough ethics policy and it would have been a cause for termination if they hadn’t been so understaffed. Miller eventually resigned in 2009 anyway, partly because his request to go elk hunting got denied.

• FL-Sen: There are so many Kennedys I really can’t keep track which one is allied with who, but any time one leaves the reservation it’s interesting. Robert Kennedy Jr. announced that he’s backing Charlie Crist for Senate, saying that Kendrick Meek can’t win and the most important thing is blocking Marco Rubio. Meanwhile, with the current race not looking very interesting anymore, PPP has its eye on 2012 (which seems like it could be close, especially if Jeb Bush gets involved). They ran two other hypotheticals, one not very likely: Bill Nelson beats Rush Limbaugh 50-36 (if Limbaugh for whatever reason decided to take the huge pay cut). More plausibly, he also beats Rep. Connie Mack IV by 42-33.

• LA-Sen: Charlie Melancon is out with an internal poll from Anzalone-Liszt. Public pollsters have generally seen this as a double-digit race, but his poll, taken over Oct. 9-12, gives David Vitter a not-overwhelming 49-42 lead. The campaign says that’s a major improvement (no specific numbers, though) over their September poll.

• FL-Gov: The Florida Education Association (obviously a Democratic-leaning organization) polled the gubernatorial race, and found numbers very close to PPP’s results yesterday. The poll from Tom Eldon, taken Oct. 9-12, gives Alex Sink a 47-41 lead over Rick Scott. Scott’s faves are down to 33/50.

• IL-Gov: This is quite the screwup: Green candidate Rich Whitney’s name will appear as “Rich Whitey” on electronic voting machines in nearly two dozen wards in Chicago (half of which are predominantly African-American). And that leads inevitably to the question (to quote the Illinois Nazi Party): “Well, what are you going to do about it, Whitey?” Apparently, he can’t do much, as there isn’t adequate time left to reprogram and test the machines, although he’s looking into various legal options.

• AZ-07: I don’t know if there’s any hard evidence other than a Magellan poll and a McClung internal to prove there’s a real race here, but judging by efforts by some organizations on both sides, something’s going on. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee had members make 21,000 phone calls to the district to shore up Raul Grijalva, while Americans for Tax Reform is going to spend $230K on advertising in the district, hitting Grijalva with an ad for encouraging a boycott of his state in the wake of SB 1070.

• CA-44: Like CA-03, this is one offense opportunity in California that still seems to be alive and kicking. The Bill Hedrick campaign, short on cash but facing an underwhelming opponent that he nearly knocked off last time, is out with a Zata|3 internal poll showing Hedrick trailing GOP incumbent Ken Calvert by only a 48-43 margin (improved a 49-38 showing in September).

• GA-08: He made it implicit with his most recent ad (distancing himself from Nancy Pelosi, even going so far as to show 60s-era San Francisco hippies), but Jim Marshall is now explicitly joining Bobby Bright in the camp of incumbents saying they won’t support Pelosi for Speaker in the next Congress (if they’re there for it).

• IA-03: I didn’t think I’d be saying this a few months ago, but Leonard Boswell is starting to look like he’s in healthy shape for the election, thanks in large part of a variety of damaging details about Brad Zaun that went public. Boswell leads Zaun 47-38 in an internal from his campaign, taken Oct. 3-5 by Anzalone-Liszt.

• IL-10: Bob Dold sure can rake in the fundraising dollars, even if Bob Dold can’t seem to come up with a lead in the polls, in what’s looking like one of the Dems’ few pickups this cycle. Bob Dold raised $843K in the third quarter and is sitting on $979K CoH, enough to start running two broadcast ads this week, while Bob Dold’s opponent Dan Seals has yet to release any numbers. Bob Dold!

• MD-01, VA-02, VA-05: Another testament to the unpredictability of elections: even a few months ago, who’d have thought, that at this point, the DCCC would have cut loose Debbie Halvorson and Steve Kagen, but would be keeping on pumping money into the races of Frank Kratovil and Tom Perriello? Those two, along with Glenn Nye, are among the survivors of the triage process and will receive continued ad buys.

• NH-02: This race is also turning out to be close, and this can’t help Charlie Bass this close to the election: questions are emerging about a stock buy (in New England Wood Pellet, his nephew-in-law’s company) that he made while in Congress the previous time. He then set up a meeting between company officials and Bush administration officials, which is a potential House ethics violation.

• OH-01: Credit Steve Driehaus for having some fire in the belly. After having gotten thrown onto the bring-out-your-dead cart by the DCCC, instead of just shrugging and starting to look for a lobbying job, he’s doubling down on his fundraising efforts, using it as an incentive to ask for more from his supporters. In particular, he’s pissed that the DCCC let him go even while giving money to various Reps. who voted “no” on health care reform.

• OR-04: Well, here’s one more race to add to the watch list. Peter DeFazio hasn’t faced credible opposition in… well, ever. And he’s still not facing credible opposition this year (Art Robinson is kind of a clown; his main action item seems to be the elimination of public schooling, which would kind of help him out considerably, since his day job is selling curriculum supplies for home schoolers). Nevertheless, the mysterious group Concerned Taxpayers (who’ve also made a six-digit ad buy against DeFazio) is out with an internal poll from Oct. 4-5 from Wilson Research showing a single-digit race, with DeFazio leading Robinson 48-42. (MoE is a hefty 5.6%.)

• PA-10: Chris Carney is on the wrong end of a Critical Insights poll of his district (which will be in our Poll Roundup later), but he’s already getting out in front of it with an internal poll. The Oct. 12-13 poll from Momentum Analysis has Carney leading Tom Marino 48-41. With both candidates able to point to leads not just in internal polls but public polls too, this is quite definitely a “Tossup.”

• TN-08: Whew! One last internal. Not much surprise here… GOPer Stephen Fincher has an internal out giving him a double-digit lead in the open seat race against Roy Herron, very similar to yesterday’s 47-37 Penn/Hill poll. The Tarrance Group poll from Oct. 11-12 gives Fincher a 47-36 lead (with 3 to indie Donn James).

• FL-AG: This is one of the higher-profile downballot races around, and it gets a fair amount of polling attention too. This time, it’s Susquehanna’s turn (on behalf of Sunshine State News), and they give a lead to Republican Hillsborough Co. Prosecutor Pam Bondi, who leads state Sen. Dan Gelber 50-42.

• Money: Zata|3 is out with more of their super-helpful charts on the behind-the-scenes money game, which is where the Republicans are really winning this cycle, even more so than the polls. Compared with 2008, spending on Senate races (from both sides) has nearly doubled, and it’s up more than 50% on House races. And Republican groups are leading the way: the top 5, and 8 of the top 10, outside groups, spending-wise are GOP-leaning. That starts with the cash-flush RGA ($12 mil so far), followed by the Chamber of Commerce and American Crossroads.

• Polltopia: You may have already seen the new Pew study on cellphone use, but it’s a real eye-opener, one that should cast some measure of doubt on the accuracy of current polls or even the whole sense that polls can tell us anything. Pew, which in 2008 found a certain amount of pro-Republican bias in polls because of the exclusion of cellphone-only users, is out with a new round of polling showing that bias has only increased. At this point, nearly 25% of adults are “cell-only.” Pew finds a 5-point Republican increase would have occurred in their most recent generic ballot test if they hadn’t polled cellphones.

Also, on the polling front, Daily Kos is taking a page from PPP and asking where readers what gubernatorial and House race they’d like to see polled in the coming weeks.

• SSP TV:

• AK-Sen: This is actually kind of funny: Joe Miller spoofs Old Spice ads in an attempt to get voters to not write in Lisa Murkowski

• CO-Sen: Ken Buck’s out with a base-rallying ad using speech footage of him getting teabaggers fired up about how they got ignored for the last two years and are now out for blood; the NRSC is also on the air, hitting Michael Bennet over his support for the stimulus

• MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan’s new TV spot pushes back against various Roy Blunt negative ads, especially on the subject of an extended family member’s wind farm

• PA-Sen: This may be an interesting tea leaf that those Dem internals yesterday may be showing some actual tightening: the NRSC, after letting surrogate orgs do all the work here, is finally having to step in with its own IE ad (a basic HCR/stimulus/cap-and-trade troika)

• WV-Sen: The DSCC goes after John Raese again over the minimum wage

• CA-Gov: What is this, the 80s? Meg Whitman’s new ad hits Jerry Brown for being soft on crime

• TX-Gov: Bill White’s newest ad goes after Rick Perry’s seeming habit of steering state contracts to cronies

• Rasmussen:

• AK-Sen: Scott McAdams (D) 27%, Joe Miller (R) 35%, Lisa Murkowski (WI-inc) 34%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 49%, Carly Fiorina (R) 46%

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 40%, Bill Brady (R) 46%, Scott Lee Cohen (I) 4%, Rich Whitney (G) 2%

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall (D) 38%, Richard Burr (R-inc) 52%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 39%, Pat Toomey (R) 49%

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett (D) 42%, Scott Walker (R) 51%

• CO-Sen: This probably doesn’t count as an October Surprise since it made a big media impression five years ago, but it’s suddenly popped back into view, and making things dicier for Ken Buck, already on the wrong end of a sizable gender gap in the polls. Buck refused to prosecute a rape case as Weld Co. DA five years ago (despite the police having recommended charges), and the alleged victim is now back in the news. She has a taped recording of their meeting (transcript available at the link) in which he seems to blame the victim and suggest that the case wouldn’t pass muster with a jury.

• FL-Sen: Mason-Dixon (10/4-6, likely voters, 9/20-22 in parens):

Kendrick Meek (D): 21 (23)

Marco Rubio (R): 42 (40)

Charlie Crist (I): 27 (28)

(MoE: ±4%)

With Marco Rubio way ahead, it looks like a Kendrick Meek dropout (rumored on Friday) and a cobbling-together of some sort of Meek/Crist hybrid cyborg would be the only way for the non-Rubio forces to get an advantage in this race. However, Meek’s definitely not acting like a man who’s dropping out, if getting the president of the United States to cut a radio ad for you is any indication.

• WV-Sen: Remember that “hicky” ad that the NRSC ran, and then promptly got apologetic over, once the casting call instructions got leaked? (I know, that was last week, a lifetime ago in politics…) Now it sounds like it just kept running anyway, through last Friday for several days after the story broke, despite promises to take it down.

• NM-Gov: Yep, this is definitely the most over-polled, or at least over-internal-poll-leaked, race around. Today it’s Diane Denish’s turn to retaliate, and she’s out with another poll from one of her apparently two pollsters, Third Eye Strategies, with a 46-46 tie (a little stale, taken 9/21-23). I think we get the general idea, already: Denish sees a tie, Susana Martinez sees a high-single-digits lead for herself, public pollsters see something in between. (UPDATE: That’s odd… we reported this poll several weeks ago. Not sure why it’s back in the news today.)

• CA-47: This is the kind of unity that Loretta Sanchez (last seen alienating her district’s small but politically active Vietnamese community with an ill-advised remark) probably doesn’t like to see: apparently there was a major rift with the Vietnamese Republican community that just got sealed up, as long-time Van Tran rival Janet Nguyen (an Orange County councilor) gave a late-game endorsement to Tran.

• CT-02, CT-03: Merriman River Group hits the quinella in Connecticut, with polls of the two House races in the Nutmeg State that aren’t interesting. In the 2nd, despite getting some touting when she got in the race, GOPer Janet Peckinpaugh is making little impression against Joe Courtney, trailing 55-41. And in the 3rd, Rosa DeLauro is the state’s safest Dem, leading Jerry Labriola 58-37.

• FL-22: Endorsements from primary challengers, especially at this stage in the game, are interesting only when they go to the guy from the other party. But that’s what’s happening in the 22nd, where the guy who lost to Allen West, David Brady, gave his backing to Democratic incumbent Ron Klein today. (So too did several minor-league local elected GOPers, including Palm Beach mayor Jack McDonald.) Says Brady, apparently from the sane wing of the GOP (to the extent that the Palm Beach Post endorsed him in the primary): “I ran against Allen West. I debated him and I can tell you: Allen West is too extreme for this community.”

• MS-04: Dueling polls in the 4th, where everything still averages out to a Democratic lean but unfortunately this is looking like one more real race. GOP state Rep. Steven Palazzo offered a poll a few weeks ago saying incumbent Gene Taylor led by only 4, and now Taylor says, no, he’s leading by 8 (without giving us any other useful information, like the toplines, let alone the pollster or dates). Hmmm, that’s only a difference of four points, so why show your hand, especially in such haphazard fashion? Somehow I don’t think Taylor would be a very good poker player.

• NY-22, NY-25: Bill Clinton showing up in upstate New York to stump on behalf of Dan Maffei, that’s not a surprise, as this race seems to be competitive. But also Maurice Hinchey in the 22nd? We haven’t gotten any smoke signals out of that district before, but that’s an indication that something may bubbling under here. (It’s a D+6 district, and Hinchey barely won in ’94.)

• OH-01: One more unfortunate though unsurprising triage decision to report: Steve Driehaus seems to have run out of time at the DCCC, who are canceling their remaining ad buy in the Cincinnati market for the next two weeks. The deadline for reservations cancellations is coming up soon, so we’ll soon know who else gets the shortest straw drawn for them.

• PA-10: After seeing a incumbent Chris Carney up by single digits in a recent public poll from Lycoming, GOP challenger Tom Marino rummaged around in his poll drawer and pulled out one from the Tarrance Group giving him a 47-42 lead on Carney. (No word from the Fix on the dates, though.)

• TN-04: One last GOP internal to throw into the mix: a POS survey (from 9/27-28) on behalf of Scott DesJarlais shows him tied with Dem incumbent Lincoln Davis, 42-42. We haven’t seen any public polling of this race (and may not, as the NRCC doesn’t seem to be pushing this one hard, maybe on the off chance that it’s the kind of district that’ll flip in a wave regardless of what they do), but Davis claimed an 11-point lead in a late August internal.

• House: If you’re thinking that it seems like there are a lot more races in the “Tossup” and “Lean” categories this year, you’re not alone. Nate Silver quantifies various ways in which there are way more competitive races this year than in other recent cycles, including number of races where there are polls within single-digits, where there are polls period, and where there are major financial contributions.

• Redistricting: This is an interesting, if counterintuitive, piece from HuffPo on redistricting, which proposes that we’ll be in better shape in 2010 redistricting than 2000 redistricting because (based on projected gubernatorial and state legislative outcomes) we’ll have more control over the process in more important states: oddly he leaves out California, but also including Florida, Illinois, Michigan, and Virginia (all states where there was a GOP trifecta last time), and Minnesota and New York (where we might get the trifecta this time)… while the states where the GOP will improve its position aren’t as large (Alabama, Indiana, Tennessee… with Georgia the most significant one). The article also gets into the nitty-gritty of where the population growth within the fast-growing states has occurred (i.e. among minorities).

• Polltopia: You might have noticed that Political Wire briefly had some Senate polls up today from somebody I’ve never heard of before, called “TCJ Research.” Those polls mysteriously vanished after Nate Silver, vanquisher of bogus pollsters, showed up on the scene with a simple tweet:

A WordPress blog getting ~500 hits a day on posts like “October Giveaway: 32 Gigabyte Apple iPad!” suddenly commissions 5 polls? Not likely.

• SSP TV:

• IL-Sen: Two different ads from the DSCC attacking Mark Kirk, hitting him for his House voting record and also revisiting Kirk’s misrememberment of his military record

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall’s finally out with a TV spot, going after Richard Burr for helping to break the economy

• WV-Sen: While John Raese nods to the ‘hick’ ad semi-apologetically before changing the subject back to Washington Dems, Joe Manchin seems to be trying to out-hick the hick ad by touting his pro-gun and anti-environment credentials in one fell swoop by (I kid you not) shooting a copy of the cap-and-trade bill

• IL-Gov: The most famous Illinoisian, Barack Obama, cuts a radio spot on behalf of Pat Quinn

• RI-Gov: The DGA pounds Lincoln Chafee one more time from the right, accusing him of being a tax-hiking hippy

• FL-22: Ron Klein moves past the boring fixation on Allen West’s tax liens and onto the really juicy stuff about 2nd Amendment remedies

• MN-06: Taryl Clark hits Michele Bachmann on Social Security

• PA-03: Kathy Dahlkemper touts her pro-life credentials in her new ad, explaining her siding with the Stupak bloc on health care reform

• VA-02: The DCCC’s IE unit points the “hypocrite” arrow at Scott Rigell, for making hundreds of thousands of dollars off “Cash for Clunkers”

• WI-08: Ditto the DCCC ad in the 8th, where they hit Reid Ribble for making hundreds of thousands of dollars for his roofing business off stimulus projects

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy (D) 49%, Tom Foley (R) 44%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 47%, Rick Scott (R) 50%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 19%, Marco Rubio (R) 50%, Charlie Crist (I) 25%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 41%, Nathan Deal (R) 50%

• GA-Sen: Michael Thurmond (D) 38%, Johnny Isakson (R-inc) 53%

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 40%, Tom Emmer (R) 38%, Tom Horner (I) 15%

• NE-Gov: Mike Meister (D) 24%, Dave Heineman (R-inc) 66%

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

• NM-Gov: Diane Denish (D) 43%, Susana Martinez (R) 52%

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

• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber (D) 48%, Chris Dudley (R) 46%

• SD-Gov: Scott Heidepriem (D) 33%, Dennis Daugaard (R) 57%

• TX-Gov: Bill White (D) 42%, Rick Perry (R-inc) 53%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D-inc) 46%, Dino Rossi (R) 49%

• Angus-Reid: Some of you might have gotten excited about the California numbers offered up today by Angus-Reid (a well-established Canadian pollster, but apparently making their first foray into the States). Well, don’t, because they’re using an RV model, and more importantly, it’s an Internet sample. (Now presumably there’s some scientific selection behind it, not just a “click here!” banner ad, but we’re highly skeptical nonetheless, especially since that seemed to produce notably pro-Dem results in California.)

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 53%, Meg Whitman (R) 41%

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 55%, Carly Fiorina (R) 39%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc) 46%, John Kasich (R) 48%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 42%, Rob Portman (R) 53%

• CT-Sen: I hope Joe Lieberman has a nice lobbying firm picked out for a job starting in 2013. PPP threw in some Lieberman-related questions in their Connecticut sample, and he generates genuine bipartisan support in terms of the desire to replace him with someone else (72% of Dems, 63% of indies, and 61% of GOPers say “someone new”). He has 31/57 approval, including 20/69 among Dems. In a three-way with Dem Chris Murphy and GOPer Jodi Rell, Lieberman finishes 3rd, with Murphy winning 37-29-17. Substitute Peter Schiff for Rell and it’s about the same: 39-25-19. If Lieberman goes the full GOP, he still loses a head-to-head with Murphy, 47-33.

• IL-Sen: Barack Obama’s coming to town today, on behalf of Alexi Giannoulias. No stumping though, just two fundraisers. (On a related note, though, Obama will be in Oregon on Oct. 20 to appear with gubernatorial candidate John Kitzhaber.)

• NH-Sen, NH-Gov: American Research Group (10/3-5, likely voters, 9/9-14 in parens):

Paul Hodes (D): 42 (32)

Kelly Ayotte (R): 47 (46)

Undecided: 7 (20)

John Lynch (D-inc): 51 (42)

John Stephen (R): 41 (40)

Undecided: 6 (14)

(MoE: ±4%)

Wow! Wild fluctuation in an ARG poll! I’m sure that’s never happened before! Well, at any rate, if all undecideds are rapidly breaking toward the Dems, I guess we can call that good news.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov: Muhlenberg for Allentown Morning Call (9/28-10/4, likely voters, 9/18-23 in parens):

Joe Sestak (D): 38 (39)

Pat Toomey (R): 45 (46)

Dan Onorato (D): 36 (37)

Tom Corbett (R): 47 (46)

(MoE: ±4%)

These races just don’t seem to budge. Muhlenberg’s newest numbers are just where they were a few weeks earlier, and they’re pretty much at the median for all pollsters’ averages in these races.

• VA-Sen: More looking ahead to 2012: George Allen is probably figuring that ‘macaca’ has faded into the mists of time, and he’s starting to publicly let it be know that he’s interested in a rematch with the man who beat him, Jim Webb. No formal preparatory activities, but it seems like he’s engaging in some pre-emptive GOP field-clearing.

• WA-Sen: Here’s something we haven’t seen in a while: a poll with a lead for Dino Rossi. Of course, it’s a Republican poll (from Fabrizio & Associates, on behalf of American Action Forum (that’s AAF, not AFF)), so take it with some salt, but it’s a reminder that this race is far from a done deal and that things may have tightened since that polling bulge for Patty Murray a few weeks ago. Rossi leads Murray 48-42 in a 9/26-27 sample.

• WV-Sen: You’ve probably already heard about this story: the NRSC has pulled an ad that it had started running in West Virginia featuring stereotypically blue-collar guy sitting around a diner grousing. Well, if they seem a little stereotypical, it’s because they were intended to be, if you read the details from the NRSC’s casting call for the ad that was shot in Philadelphia, asking for a “‘hicky’ blue collar look” and listing the various blue-collar clothing items that they should wear, including “John Deer [sic] hats (not brand new, preferably beat up).”” Somehow, I’m not hopeful this flap will become a game-changer in the race, but maybe it’ll help West Virginians see what Beltway Republicans really think of them. The NRSC is in fact distancing itself from the ad, throwing the talent agency under the bus.

Meanwhile, this seems like a richer vein to mine: the ongoing and seemingly growing controversy of John Raese’s residence. He owns a Florida mansion, where his wife and kids spent most of their time. But Dems are trying to raise questions about whether Raese is a West Virginia resident at all, and are asking whether he’s filed West Virginia income taxes (Florida, as you might know, doesn’t impose income taxes).

• NM-Gov: Can a race have too much internal poll leaking? There seems to be more tit-for-tat in this race than any. In response to yesterday’s Diane Denish internal showing a 3-point race, today Susana Martinez brandishes a POS internal from 10/3-5 giving her a 51-42 lead over Denish.

• NY-Gov: Quinnipiac (10/1-5, likely voters, 9/16-20 in parens):

Andrew Cuomo (D): 55 (49)

Carl Paladino (R): 37 (43)

Undecided: 6 (7)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

Either Carl Paladino had a huge primary bounce that quickly faded, people who hadn’t been paying close attention a few weeks ago suddenly found out that Paladino is a sputtering rage volcano who’d be a huge liability in office, or Quinnipiac put up a big stinky outlier a few weeks ago. (Probably a little of all three.)

• WI-Gov: Marist for McClatchy (9/26-28, likely voters, no trendlines):

Tom Barrett (D): 43

Scott Walker (R): 51

Undecided: 6

(MoE: ±4.5%)

Ooops, we missed that there was a gubernatorial half to that Marist poll from a few days ago.

• AL-02: I don’t know which is a bigger story here: that Bobby Bright is the first Democratic incumbent to announce, pre-election, that he won’t vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker, or that he’s trailing in a Martha Roby internal after having, for most of the cycle, seemed safer than a lot of other incumbents in less hostile districts… although the announcement seems pretty clearly motivated by the polling trends here. He says he certainly won’t vote for John Boehner, though, saying he wants to vote for a centrist “more like me.” Roby’s poll comes from POS, giving her a 45-43 lead (with the memo saying their July poll gave Bright a 49-41 lead). Bright still overperforms the generic ballot by a wide margin, which is 51-32 for the GOP in this R+16 district.

• CT-01: Merriman River Group (who put up a surprising poll finding Chris Murphy trailing in CT-05 yesterday) are out with another poll that should give some pause: they find John Larson only ahead by 7 against no-namer Ann Brinkley, 52-45, in what’s Connecticut’s bluest (D+13) congressional district. For what it’s worth, this district is eleven points bluer than D+2 CT-05, so the spread (Murphy was down 5) is consistent… but also remember that Merriman was about five points to the right of where everybody else was seeing the statewide races in that big pile of CT polls from the last couple days, so feel free to adjust accordingly.

• IL-17: Yep, we’ve definitely got a real race here this time, after Phil Hare got away unopposed in 2008. He’s up only slightly over Bobby Schilling in a POS internal (which I assume is on behalf of the Schilling camp, as the NRCC has been using Tarrance in this district), leading 38-37 in a 9/26-27 sample.

• IN-02: EPIC-MRA for WSBT (10/1-3, likely voters, no trendlines):

Joe Donnelly (D): 48

Jackie Walorski (R): 39

Mike Vogel (I): 6

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±4.9%)

These numbers (which include leaners) look pretty good for Donnelly, in the first public poll of the race (although he’s seemed to fare OK in partisan polls of the race, compared with many other vulnerable Dems, leading in both AFF and Susan B. Anthony List polls). Donnelly has 47/32 faves, while Walorski is at 32/35.

• NY-23: Here’s one more Republican internal, that was taken before Doug Hoffman officially pulled the plug on his Conservative Party bid, but suggesting that he wasn’t having much of an effect this year anyway. In the POS poll taken for the NRCC 9/22-23, Matt Doheny leads Dem incumbent Bill Owens 51-37. (Somehow they didn’t leak what percentage Hoffman was getting… obviously it couldn’t be more than 12%… but they do tell us 68% of Hoffman supporters would, in the alternate, support Doheny.)

• PA-07: Monmouth (10/4-6, likely voters, no trendlines):

Bryan Lentz (D): 45

Pat Meehan (R): 49

Undecided: 7

(MoE: ±3.8%)

Believe it or not, this is the first public poll of this race, and it’s definitely better than the conventional wisdom on this race would dictate: although Bryan Lentz is still losing, it’s by a 4-point margin. It’s a seat that leans Dem-enough that even with a strong GOP candidate and a strong GOP tailwind it looks like it’ll still be at least close. (That conventional wisdom seems founded largely on a June Meehan internal giving him a 21-point lead.) One other interesting tidbit: Joe Sestak, the district’s current Rep., is leading Pat Toomey 49-46 within the district in the Senate race. He’d need to be cleaning up by a much wider margin than that, here, to be competitive statewide.

• WA-08: Let’s throw in a Democratic internal poll to break up the monotony. It’s from one of the few Dem challengers who seem to be keeping things within striking distance, Suzan DelBene. She trails GOP incumbent Dave Reichert by only 48-44 in a Fairbank Maslin poll taken 10/4-5 (where they gave Reichert a 9-point lead in August). That coincides, perhaps not coincidentally, with Dave Reichert finally having to come out and say “no, I don’t have brain damage.” Reichert, you may remember, had to have emergency surgery after getting hit in the head by a tree branch in March. Reichert’s fitness had been the subject of increasing whispers and question marks in recent months, some of which may have rubbed off on his poll numbers.

• Early voting: Fun fact of the day: early voting is up 50% over this point in time over the 2006 midterm, with nearly 6 million votes already having been cast. This, of course, is in large part because states have, in the intervening years, made it easier to vote early. (Nearly 30% of votes were cast early in 2008; officials don’t expect this year’s numbers to reach that peak, though.) At any rate, it looks like early voting is increasingly here to stay, and campaigns will have to adjust their strategies accordingly. (I.e. planning for the “September Surprise” instead?)

• Demographics: Now these are some interesting numbers: a chart breaking down the “voting-eligible” (not just “voting age”) population by percentage in each state, eliminating non-citizens as well as prisoners and ineligible felons. And here’s an interesting statistic: despite the fact that we haven’t completed the dang fence, the percentage of non-citizens in the U.S. has actually dropped from 2006 (8.6%) to 2010 (8.3%), partly because the government has processed a backlog in citizenship cases and partly because the lousier economy has made the U.S. a less attractive destination.

• SSP TV:

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln uses Bill Clinton as surrogate to talk about John Boozman’s privatization mania

• PA-Sen: The Club for Growth does some stimulus act cherry-picking to portray Joe Sestak as a sockpuppet for the sockpuppet lobby

• WV-Sen: The DSCC hits John Raese on outsourcing

• ND-AL: The NRCC attacks Earl Pomeroy for taking money from the insurance industry

• SD-AL: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s newest ad focuses on her work on parochial issues, while Kristin Noem’s ad says Sandlin’s gone Washington

• Rasmussen:

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid (D-inc) 46%, Sharron Angle (R) 50%

• CA-Gov: Another few weeks go by, and Meg Whitman keeps smashing the barriers on over-the-top self-funding: she’s spent $140 million out of pocket over the entire cycle now. Here’s the number that’s gotta suck for her, though: Jerry Brown, having spent all of $10 million so far this cycle, is sitting on $22 million in reserves for the remaining month, allowing him to compete on perhaps an even financial footing for the last month. Whitman’s cash reserves are $9 million, but even if she cuts herself the biggest check of all to re-up, there’s only a finite amount of TV time left for her to buy. Truly the story of the ant and the grasshopper.

• NM-Gov: The Diane Denish camp keeps up the onslaught of internal polls showing her behind but within arm’s length of Susana Martinez. This time, the poll is from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, and gives Martinez a 49-46 lead. That still feels kind of “meh” to me, but there’s an interesting kernel in the fine print: Martinez has fallen into net negative favorables for the first time (39/42, down from 42/31 in August), suggesting the ad war is having its effect.

• OH-Gov: I’m going to wait until I start seeing these kind of numbers in public polls before I start getting too optimistic about whether Ted Strickland’s comeback really has legs, but here’s another strong internal from his camp. The Feldman Group poll taken 10/3-5 gives Strickland a 46-42 lead over John Kasich, and finds Strickland with 47/40 favorables.

• CA-03: Ami Bera continues to be a fundraising force among Democratic challengers (not that he has much high-profile competition on that front); he raised $550K in 3Q, and $2.1 million raised over the cycle. He beat incumbent Dan Lungren yet again, who raised $480K for a $1.7 mil total.

• FL-02: We still haven’t seen any public polling of this race, but here’s a second GOP poll for challenger Steve Southerland giving him a double digit lead over Allen Boyd (the first one was an NRCC poll from the Tarrance Group way back in May, giving Southerland a 52-37 lead). This one’s from National Research (presumably on Southerland’s behalf?), taken 9/29-30, giving Southerland a 46-30 lead.

• VA-05: The US Chamber of Commerce gave its backing to Robert Hurt, not much of a surprise as he’s the kind of non-threatening establishment conservative that wing of the GOP tends to like. Tom Perriello picked that up and is using it as a cudgel that seems to combine various elements that have apparently polled well for Dems (outsourcing and Citizens United), saying that the endorsement means “foreign money” is pouring into the race now, citing companies in Bahrain, Russia, and China that give money to the US Chamber.

• DCCC: Here’s some more detail on the various ways in which the DCCC is, um, advancing in other directions (we told you about their pullout in AZ-08 last night, which probably has to do with Gabby Giffords having enough money to pull her own weight). They’ve also reduced buys for one week in a few other districts: a mix of ones where they seem genuinely hosed (CO-04, TX-17, FL-24, and the KS-03 and IN-08 open seats), one that seems a true tossup but where our guy has money (Harry Teague in NM-02), and one that’s looking like a pickup (LA-02). The DCCC will be using at least some of that money putting out a new brushfire that popped up in NY-23, where Doug Hoffman’s ceasing and desisting makes the race a tossup, and where they’re spending $500K.

• NRCC: Speaking of CO-04 and being hosed, here’s some additional evidence: the NRCC is taking $700K out of the 4th, and moving it next door to another race that’s looking decidedly tossup-ish: John Salazar’s CO-03.

• Redistricting: This may be the single best use of money anywhere by Dems this cycle: they’re finally putting some money into Florida’s redistricting amendments that purport to make the process less subject to gerrymandering. Over $1 million has flowed from Democratic groups to Fair Districts Florida, who are behind the measures. Fair Districts is ostensibly nonpartisan, but obviously the net effect of a less partisan map would be to dismantle one of the most effective Republican gerrymanders anywhere.

• Polltopia: With dramatically different results (especially in the generic ballot tests, but also in head-to-head polls) popping up that often seem to have very different definitions of “likely voter,” Mark Blumenthal looks at the various ways pollsters cobble together their LV models. There’s a marked difference between the way academic pollsters and partisan pollsters do it, revealing major disparities. If you haven’t seen it already, this should be required reading.

• Independent expenditures: The folks at Zata|3 have put together a very useful table, adding up and comparing DCCC and NRCC independent expenditures in all the districts where they’ve weighed in. (The NRCC has spent a lot more so far, despite their cash shortfall vs. the DCCC. The D-Trip seems to be saving up for a massive blast in the final weeks. Or maybe just saving up for 2012.) They also have charts for the DCCC and NRCC that break down each district’s expenditures by category (media buys, production, internet, etc.).

• SSP TV:

• CO-Sen: The DSCC hits Ken Buck for his enthusiasm for privatizing everything he can get his hands on

• CT-Sen: The Chamber of Commerce has a fairly boilerplate ad against Richard Blumenthal for being too anti-(big) business

• KY-Sen: There are six different ads embedded in this Inquirer article, several of which you’ve already seen (including the DSCC ad on Medicare deductibles), but including a new Rand Paul campaign ad on the “Conway = Obama” theme; separately, the NRSC has a new ad here on Conway waffling on extending Bush tax cuts

• MO-Sen: The DSCC has yet another ad about Roy Blunt and his lobbyist friends

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand’s out with a second bio ad that seems specifically aimed at the upstate market, pointing out her roots in that part of the state

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak’s new ad points to what we junkies have long known, that Pat Toomey’s free market fundamentalism has given him aggregator ratings even more conservative than Rick Santorum

• WI-Sen: A second cookie-cutter ad from the Chamber of Commerce, this one targeting Russ Feingold

• KS-Gov: Tom Holland’s out with his first ad of the cycle, a comparison spot that’s half negative against Sam Brownback, half positive intro of Holland

• TX-Gov: Bill White’s newest ad rebuts some of Rick Perry’s claims about his mayoral leadership and lists his various commendations

• AZ-05: The National Education Association gets into the ad war in a big way, hitting David Schweikert for being anti-public education (this buy is part of a $15 million initiative on the NEA’s part, also including TV in OH-13 and mailers in NC-08)

• CO-04: EMILY’s List is still sticking around in the 4th, bolstering Betsy Markey with an anti-Cory Gardener spot that’s a mother of a child with autism addressing Gardener not wanting to require insurers to cover that

• Rasmussen:

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 39%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 55%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 54%, Linda McMahon (R) 43%

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 38%, Bill Brady (R) 46%, Rich Whitney (G) 4%

• IL-Sen: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 41%, Mark Kirk (R) 45%, LeAlan Jones (G) 4%

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D-inc) 49%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 41%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 30%, John Robitaille (R) 22%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 33%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 44%, John Raese (R) 50%