Tag: DSCC

CO-Sen: Andrew Romanoff has launched a new TV ad (a Joe Trippi Production), accusing Sen. Michael Bennet of “pushing companies into bankruptcy” while working for corporate raider (and right-wing zillionaire) Phil Anschutz. Bennet claims that his work for Anschutz Investments actually saved foundering movie theater chains from going out of business. Anyhow, NWOTSOTB.

CT-Sen: Politico’s Shira Toeplitz talked to a bunch of bigtime Rob Simmons supporters (including ex-Rep. and all-time SSP enemy Nancy Johnson), all of whom seem to be fairly down on his chances at pulling off his weird comeback attempt against Linda McMahon. Simmons also told Politico that his internal polling matching a recent Quinnipiac survey, which had him down 52-25 in the primary, but wouldn’t release any further details. So really, what’s he doing? P.S. Linda McMahon’s personal spending on the race is already up to $23 million.

FL-Gov: Obama alert! The POTUS will be doing a fundraiser with gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink in Miami Beach on August 18th. No word on whether he’ll also help out Kendrick Meek. (Extremely eagle-eyed digesters of the digest will note that the Sink event is planned for the same day as a Ted Strickland fundraiser. Busy guy!)

IA-Gov: Heh. Former Gov. Terry Branstad’s campaign is in trubba because it purchased two vehicles, including a $52K Winnebago – something that isn’t kosher, on account of a state law which requires that campaigns lease, not buy. This is an amusing bust, because the law in question was passed when Branstad was governor – on account of a previous campaign of his purchasing a van for less than half its market value. This reminds me of when Chicken Lady (seems like so long ago!) received an improper donation of a $100,000 RV from a supporter. Ah, good times!

KY-Gov: Businessman Phil Moffett, managing partner of the telecommunications management company CCS Partners, is the first Republican candidate to enter the race against Dem Gov. Steve Beshear. Moffett says he’s going after the teabagger vote, but he’s been a big proponent of the stimulus-funded “Race to the Top” education bill, which makes me think he’ll be anathema to the tribalist wing of the Republican Party. Anyhow, plenty more candidates wait in the wings for this race, which is not until 2011.

NV-Gov: Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate is now claiming to have had an out-of-body experience, claiming he doesn’t remember telling Univision that he wasn’t worried about his kids getting profiled in Arizona because they “don’t look Hispanic.” Sandoval’s exact, uh, apology: “If I did say those words, it was wrong and I sincerely regret it.” So deeply weird.

NC-11: Memo to media: Message-testing polls are totally normal and fair game in any campaign. So Heath Shuler is testing out attacks on Republican Jeff Miller – he’d be negligent if he didn’t do so. Not news. (At least no one called it a “push poll.”)

NH-01, NH-02: Dean Barker at Blue Hampshire is one of my favorite state bloggers, so you should just go read what he has to say about UNH’s new poll of NH-01 and NH-02. As for the toplines (PDF), in NH-01, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter leads all comers (April trendlines in parens): Frank Guinta 44-39 (38-42); Rich Ashooh 43-35 (36-39); Sean Mahoney 45-36 (37-40); and Bob Bestani 44-33 (37-38). In NH-02, it’s Ann McLane Kuster 29, Charlie Bass 47 (30-42); Kuster 32, Jennifer Horn 34 (32-33); Katrina Swett 30, Bass 47; Swett 31, Horn 35 (31-35).

NY-13: Just ugh.

NY-15: Alright, the whip count is definitely winding down. Paul Hodes is now the latest to call on Charlie Rangel to resign, in the wake of formal ethics charges being announced against the veteran New York congressman. And Joe Sestak has returned Rangel’s campaign contributions. At this point, I think pretty much everyone is gonna have to do that, so it’s going to get pretty boring. Anyhow, of more direct relevance, CQ points out that it’s now probably too late for Rangel to take his name off the September primary ballot, even if he wanted to. I wonder if he can still win re-election, somehow.

TN-08: It sounds like the NRCC is trying to game expectations with regard to Steve Fincher, their golden boy in the race to replace John Tanner. Fincher’s been caught in a mega-multi-million dollar three-way fight, with Ron Kirkland and George Flinn beating up on him and each other. An NRCC flack says that Fincher “probably has the edge,” but then immediately contradicts himself by saying a Fincher victory would be “against all odds” and that “anything can happen in primaries.” I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he lost in the primary next week (which, please note, is on a Thursday). Also important: Tennessee is the rare Southern state which does not feature runoffs.

DSCC/DCCC: God, pieces like this are just too depressing for me at this point. The Hill rounds up a pretty large list of retiring lawmakers who are still sitting on monster cash hoards. I mean, what the fuck is up with guys like Bill Delahunt? Says The Hill: “But Delahunt said there are competing political interests that need the money, and he’ll decide how to spend it when the time is right.” Shit, do I even need to say that the time is right… right now? Sigh.

Moose Lady: Heh again. The Washington Post has a special page devoted to tracking the Mama Grizzly-in-Chief’s endorsements. It even has helpful logos for each candidate denoting whether they are “Establishment” or teabaggers. Anyhow, so far, Palin has 10 wins to 4 losses, with a bunch more races in the works.

Site News: The Swing State Project just welcomed its nine millionth visitor! We passed the 8,000,000 milestone just four months ago, which I think makes this our quickest million ever. Help us celebrate by getting to 600 fans on Facebook (we need 22 more) and 2,500 followers on Twitter (45 more)!

There’s a tuppeny hapenny millionaire – looking for a fourpenny one. Here are the June fundraising numbers for the six major party committees (May numbers are here):

Just a quick note on the Dem vs. GOP cash disparities: In March, it was $21.5 mil, then $18.6 mil, then $18.0 mil, and now it’s down to $16.1 mil $18.1 mil.

UPDATE: I made a mistake and misreported the cash-on-hand totals for both the DSCC and NRSC. Both sets of numbers were in fact higher than I reported, the DSCC moreso than the NRSC, meaning the Dems added more net cash overall.

CO-Sen: Ken Buck raised $417K in Q2 and had $664K cash-on-hand – more than rival Jane Norton does, despite the fact that she outraised him.

KY-Sen: Rand Paul campaign chair David Adams is leaving – or being asked to leave. You never know with these things. Anyhow, Adams supposedly prefers state to federal politics (especially funny in the context of this campaign) and is going to manage some unspecified gubernatorial candidate. As CNN notes, though, Adams had actually been Paul’s campaign manager, but was recently demoted after Rand’s disastrous set of post-primary interviews.

NV-Sen: In an interview with Ralph Reed, Sharron Angle informs the world that “God has been in this” – her campaign – “from the beginning.” I think Harry Reid would agree, since it’s a damn near miracle that we landed an opponent so awful!

WA-Sen: Dino Rossi says he raised $1.4 million since launching his campaign six weeks ago, but no word on his cash-on-hand. That’s not too shabby, and it might look impressive compared to Patty Murray’s $1.6 million haul for the entire quarter. But that first batch of cash is always the easiest to raise – the proverbial low-hanging fruit. Can he sustain that momentum?

WI-Sen: King of the Loons Jim DeMint has endorsed Ron Johnson – a rare instance, as Dave Catanese points out, where the establishment choice has also been DeMinted.

WV-Sen: Gov. Joe Manchin says he’ll name a temporary replacement for Robert Byrd by 5pm on Friday. Manchin also released the text of proposed legislation to change WV’s succession laws. The new law would allow a special election this November, with primaries (if necessary) to be held on August 31st.

AZ-Gov: It’s pretty amazing how much becoming the standard-bearer for xenophobia has dramatically altered Jan Brewer’s entire candidacy. She was an accidental governor, elevated to the post by Janet Napolitano’s appointment to the Department of Homeland Security. She also looked like electoral roadkill, losing ugly fights with an even further-right state legislature and drawing several high-profile opponents. But along came SB 1070, Arizona’s infamous new immigration law. Brewer’s full-throated support for the legislation, and her hysterical ranting about undocumented immigrants, have made her the conservative belle du jour. Just a few days ago, one of her major challengers, state Treasurer Dean Martin, bailed on the race. And now, the other big name running against her – wealthy NRA board member Buz Mills – is also dropping out. So at this point, it’s pretty much game on between Brewer and Dem AG Terry Goddard.

GA-Gov: Magellan Strategies (7/8, likely Republican primary voters, no trendlines):

Karen Handel: 32

Nathan Deal: 18

John Oxendine: 18

Eric Johnson: 12

Ray McBerry: 3

Jeff Chapman: 3

Otis Putnam: 0

Undecided: 14

(MoE: ±2.8%)

MI-07: Former Rep. Joe Schwarz, who held this seat for one term, has endorsed Brian Rooney in the GOP primary, over the man who primaried him out in 2006, Club for Growth cabana boy Tim Walberg. It’s not clear how much a Schwarz endorsement helps in a Republican race, though, considering he also backed now-Rep. Mark Schauer (D) in 2008. And this bit of support is entirely conditional – not only does Schwarz say he’ll definitely support Schauer if Walberg wins the primary, but he might even do so if Rooney wins, saying he’ll re-evaluate things later.

MN-06: Both Michele Bachmann’s chief-of-staff and (of more relevance to her campaign) her finance director have parted ways with the polarizing congresswoman. It’s often tricky to tell whether a departure is a sign of turmoil, an indicator that a campaign is getting an upgrade, or really just nothing doing. But in this case, the fact that no replacements are being announced suggests that this isn’t part of an orderly transition. What’s more, why would Bachmann’s fundraiser leave right after announcing such an enormous quarterly haul? It’s especially telling that the fundraiser, Zandra Wolcott, wouldn’t say if she left or was pushed.

NM-01: A healthy quarter for Martin Heinrich: $376K raised, $1.3 million cash-on-hand.

PA-07: Fabrizio, McLaughlin and Associates for Pat Meehan (6/16-17, likely voters, no trendlines):

Bryan Lentz (D): 26

Pat Meehan (R): 47

(MoE: ±4.9%)

Meehan favorables: 33-12. Lentz favorables: 12-7. A Lentz spokesperson attacked the poll as “skewed” but offered no specific critiques.

SD-AL: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin is out with her first ad of the campaign season, a bio spot which touts her vote against a “trillion-dollar health care plan.”

TN-08: The hip-hop wars are raging again! But it’s no longer Tupac vs. Biggie – this time it’s Republican Rob Kirkland versus radio station owner George Flinn on the mean streets of Memphis, TN. You may recall the odd situation here where Rob has been spending a fortune on allegedly “independent” expenditures on behalf of his brother Ron, who is the actual candidate in this race. Anyhow, Rob’s latest broadside is against Flinn’s ownership of a local hip-hop station, which (according to a Kirkland tv ad) “promotes gang violence, drug abuse, and insults women.” Another mailer attacks Flinn for “filthy gangster rap into our district.” Hey, guess what? Tipper Gore called, she wants her 1992-era harangue back.

DSCC: Seriously, who in hell allowed this to happen? Pretty much every Democratic senate candidate under the sun participated in a trial lawyers fundraiser… in Vancouver, CANADA. WTF? Could the optics be any worse? A fundraiser in a foreign country? And I don’t want to get all GOP-talking-point on you, but the fact that it’s the trial lawyers doesn’t really help. I’m filing this one under “DSCC” because you can’t possibly pull off an event of this magnitude without the DS knowing – and someone there should have had the brains to stop it. Or at least change the fucking venue to, you know, the United States of America. Maybe? Jeez.

Iowa: Jonathan Martin has an interesting piece at Politico about Christie Vilsack, who says she is “really interested” in running for office, perhaps as soon as 2012. It sounds like the House is her most likely target, but it’s hard to say where she might run. She and her family have ties all over the state, and Iowa is likely to lose a congressional district after the census. Though Martin doesn’t mention it, it’s not inconceivable that Sen. Tom Harkin will retire in 2014 (when he’ll be 75), which would create a big opening.

A penny saved is a penny earned. Here are the May fundraising numbers for the six major party committees (April numbers are here):

For the first time this cycle (and for a very long time before that as well), the NRSC now has more money in the bank than the DSCC does. And the RNC is very close behind the DNC.

AR-Sen: The Big Dog is coming back home to stump for Blanche Lincoln, the first time he’s done so this race. Meanwhile, the SEIU just tossed in another $100K for phonebanking and another $100K for field on behalf of Bill Halter. (There’s also an amusing negative $100K entry for “reverse phonebanking.”)

CA-Sen: Chuck DeVore is as insane as this ad. A true must-see. In news of the normal, President Obama kept to his promise to return to CA for two more Barbara Boxer fundraisers. The events raised $1.75 million, $600K of which will go to Boxer and the balance to the DSCC.

KY-Sen: Heh, that was quick. Rand Paul is already planning the dreaded “staff shakeup.” The only problem is that he can’t fire himself. Barring that, Mitch McConnell is telling his least-favorite fellow Kentuckian to shut the fuck up and hide under a rock – “for the time being.”

PA-Sen: I agree – this is a magnanimous move. Arlen Specter introduced Joe Sestak to his Senate colleagues at their weekly lunch yesterday. Very gracious.

AL-06, AL-07: Unsurprisingly, corporate lawyer Terri Sewell is the only Democrat airing TV ads in the primary to succeed Rep. Artur Davis, spending about $200K so far. With $783K, she’s far outraised her chief competitors, Earl Hilliard, Jr. ($328K) and Shelia Smoot ($100K). Sewell can also count among her contributors Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

Crazily, though, ten-term GOP Rep. Spencer Bachus is also airing ads in advance of his primary in AL-06, some $70K worth. Bachus has spent an amazing $680K on his campaign so far, even though his challenger, teabagger Stan Cooke, has raised just $29K total. This is the reddest district in the nation according to Cook PVI (R+29), which may explain Bachus’s anxiety, since he is the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee and voted in favor of the bailout.

AR-01: A similar situation in AR-01 as in AR-02 below, where first-rounder David Cook endorsed the somewhat less-conservative Chad Causey over the extremely conservative Tim Wooldridge in (you might be a little surprised to hear me say this if you don’t already know the names) the Democratic runoff.

AR-02: Some runoff endorsements on both sides from the also-rans. Patrick Kennedy and John Adams (great names, huh?) both endorsed Robbie Wills in the Democratic race, while David Boling endorsed Joyce Elliott. I suspect national Dems would prefer Wills over the more-liberal Elliott, but this race is probably too touchy to get involved in.

DE-AL: Joe Biden returned home to do a fundraiser in Wilmington for John Carney. No word on whether he’ll also do one for Senate candidate Chris Coons, but it’s not like it’s a big schlep.

FL-25: The statewide Florida AFL-CIO, following the lead of its South Fla. branch, endorsed little-known longshoreman Luis Meurice in the Democratic primary, rather than Joe Garcia. The union, Florida’s biggest, backed Garcia in 2008.

IN-05: This is exactly the kind of weird that Dave Weigel specializes in. Tim Crawford, the teabagging “Democrat” who snuck to victory in the Democratic primary here, abruptly dropped out of the race after an unpleasant meeting with, you know, actual Democrats… and then wrote a long, rambly email saying he was un-dropping-out. Ah well.

IN-09: Speaking of Joe Biden, he’ll also be doing a fundraiser in late June for Rep. Baron Hill in Jeffersonville, Indiana.

NC-08: I would really freakin’ love to see Tim D’Annunzio pull this one off. The entire NC House GOP delegation just collectively endorsed former TV sportscaster Harold Johnson, terrified as they are of the spastic-fantastic Tim-diana Jones. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here stat.

RI-01: Scott Brown is coming to Rhode Island for a fundraiser with state Rep. John Loughlin, the GOP’s candidate in this open seat. To date, Loughlin’s raised about $344K, which might not seem too bad, but in fact he’s been running for a long time, since well before Rep. Patrick Kennedy announced his retirement.

VA-11: Businessman Keith Fimian has a new poll from McLaughlin & Associates showing him with a 36-23 lead over Fairfax Co. Supervisor Pat Herrity in the GOP primary. A March poll had Fimian up 29-17. Herrity had his own poll out last month, though, showing him with a 42-21 lead – and pointed out that Fimian claimed his internals had him just three points behind Gerry Connolly before election day 2008, but lost by twelve.

DSCC: Uh, good, I guess. The DSCC has cancelled plans to have EPA chief Lisa Jackson headline an NYC fundraiser next week – but what a retarded idea in the first place. It seems pretty inappropriate to me to have cabinet members doing hackwork like this (can you imagine Hillary Clinton or Eric Holder shilling for dollars?), but it’s even worse when you’re talking about the head of the EPA in the midst of the oil spill crisis in the Gulf. I also find it unctuous that the original invitation promised that the event would be “intimate, so each of you will have a real opportunity to get to know and to speak to Lisa about issues of concern to you and our nation.” Pretty gross when it’s our team selling access to the ultra-wealthy. Barf.

Ideology: Alan Abramowitz has a great piece up at the Democratic Strategist, looking at the correlation between ideology (as measured by DW-NOMINATE) and election performance by Republican senators. Using a modified eight-point DW-N scale, Abramowitz finds: “For every additional one point increase in conservatism, Republican incumbents lost an additional three percentage points in support relative to their party’s presidential candidate.” But shhh… don’t tell the Republicans!

Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money. Here are the April fundraising numbers for the six major party committees (March numbers are here):

Our House & Senate committees got crushed last month, and now the NRSC is at parity with the DSCC. While the DNC numbers look good at first blush, they spent as much as they took in. I’m not really sure why the DNC has been burning so much lately – they spent over $9 million in March, too. I’m posting a little table of all their expense categories over $100K (which acounts for almost all of their April spending):

• CO-Sen: Colorado’s state party conventions are this weekend. Most of the drama is on the Democratic side in the Senate race — actually, even there, it’s not that dramatic, as underdog Andrew Romanoff is expected to prevail at the convention because of his connections to party insiders and his former fellow legislators (and also based on his performance at precinct-level caucuses). Michael Bennet is still expected to meet the 30% threshold that gets him on the ballot without signatures, though, and victory here for Romanoff may be pyrrhic anyway, as the Dem convention winners have fared poorly in the actual primary (ex-Sen. Ken Salazar, for instance, lost the 2004 convention to Mike Miles). The GOP convention should be less interesting because, realizing they have little hope among the revved-up base, establishment-flavored Jane Norton and Tom Wiens aren’t bothering, simply opting to qualify for the primary by petition, so Weld Co. DA and Tea Party fave Ken Buck is expected to romp.

• CT-Sen, CT-Gov: Likewise, the state conventions are scheduled for this weekend in Connecticut as well. Although there’s a competitive battle in the Dem convention on the gubernatorial side between Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy, it seems like all eyes will be on Richard Blumenthal instead, to see if there’s any sort of challenge to him that pops up (other than the minor candidacy of Merrick Alpert). If someone is going to get drafted as a last-minute Blumenthal replacement, it doesn’t look like it’s going to be the newly-freed-up Susan Bysiewicz, who, seemingly caught off-guard by this week’s Supreme Court ruling about her AG eligibility, is now saying she won’t run for anything in 2010. There’s also the Senate face-off in the GOP convention, where ex-Rep. Rob Simmons’ connections and institutional support will be measured up against Linda McMahon’s gigantic wealth; McMahon, for her part, is back to touting her camp’s leak of the Blumenthal story to the NYT after hiding it yesterday.

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist couldn’t square his support for Elena Kagan today with his opposition to Sonia Sotomayor, telling the Miami Herald that he really couldn’t recall why he opposed Sotomayor. (Um, maybe because he was a Republican back then?) On the plus side, Crist is coming out in favor of the Fair Districts initiatives on the ballot this November, which would smooth out the most pernicious tendencies toward gerrymandering and thus is strongly opposed by the state’s large Republican legislative majorities.

• IL-Sen: Hmmm, I wonder where this ranks on the hierarchy of misstating your military credentials? Rep. Mark Kirk told a gathering last May that “I command the war room in the Pentagon.” Kirk does have a high-profile role in the National Military Command Center, but the war room is run by one-star general, and that’s something that Kirk most definitely is not. Let’s see what the NYT does with this one.

• KY-Sen: After a bad news day yesterday, Rand Paul is continuing to run his mouth, whining about how he was supposed to get a media honeymoon after Tuesday’s Randslide, and also going the full Bachmann against Barack Obama, saying it “sounds Unamerican” for him to be criticizing BP over its massive oil spill because “accidents sometimes happen.” (So that “B” in BP stands for American Petroleum now?) Paul is scheduled for this weekend’s Meet the Press, for what his handlers hope is damage control but may turn into extended hole-digging.

Paul also expounded yesterday on the Americans with Disabilities Act, and he should be lucky the media were too fixated yesterday on his Civil Rights Act statements to provide any fact-checking about his bizarre ignorance of the ADA. Paul’s example of the ADA’s suckage is that it would be reasonable, if an employee used a wheelchair at a two-story business, to just give that person a first-floor office instead of forcing the employer to install an elevator at terrible cost. That’s true; it would be “reasonable” — which is exactly why the ADA asks employers to provide “reasonable accommodation” to disabled employees, a prime example of which might be letting someone work on a lower floor. Removal of architectural barriers is not required if it isn’t “readily achievable” (in other words, easily accomplished, without much difficulty or expense) — which means, grab bars in the bathroom stall or a curb cut, yes, an elevator in an old two-story building, no. Paul’s attack on the ADA seems entirely based on having failed to, as the teabaggers have often urged us to do, “read the bill.”

• NC-Sen: There’s a late-in-the-game shakeup at the Cal Cunningham camp, as his campaign manager and communications director are out the door. Cunningham’s spokesperson says it’s a necessary retooling for the different nature of the runoff, with less focus on the air war and more on grassroots and shoe-leather.

• PA-Sen: Sigh. The DSCC, which isn’t exactly rolling in money these days, spent $540K in coordinated expenditures trying to prop up one-year Democrat Arlen Specter in his 54-46 loss to Joe Sestak in the primary.

• MN-Gov: Margaret Anderson Kelliher reached across the aisle, or at least in the pool of bipartisan budget wonkery, for a running mate, picking John Gunyou. Gunyou was the finance commissioner for Republican Gov. Arne Carlson; he also worked as finance director for Minneapolis mayor Don Fraser and is currently city manager of the suburb of Minnetonka.

• CO-07: The GOP already had its district-level convention in the 7th, as a prelude to the statewide convo. The two main rivals, Lang Sias and Ryan Frazier, both cleared the 30% mark to get on the ballot; the minor candidates didn’t clear the mark and won’t try to get on by petition. Frazier got 49%, while Sias got 43%. Sias’s nomination was seconded by ex-Rep. Tom Tancredo, as well as the 7th’s former Rep. Bob Beauprez.

• CT-04: Thom Hermann, the First Selectman of Easton and a guy with a lot of wealth at his disposal, is making his presence known in the GOP primary field in the 4th, heading into the weekend’s convention. He’s out with an internal poll, via Wilson Research, giving him a large lead over presumed frontrunner state Sen. Dan Debicella among those primary voters who’ve decided. It’s reported in a strange, slightly deceptive way, though: he has a 44-25 lead over Debicella among those who’ve decided, but only 36% have decided! (So by my calculations, it’s more like a 16-9 lead in reality?)

• FL-02: Dem Rep. Allen Boyd seems to be taking nothing for granted this year. He’s already up with his second TV ad against his underfunded primary opponent, state Sen. Al Lawson, this time hitting Lawson for votes to cut back funding for healthcare and construction jobs. (J)

• HI-01: We’re up to 48% of all ballots having been returned in the 1st, with tomorrow being the deadline in the all-mail-in special election to replace Neil Abercrombie (152K out of 317K).

• ID-02: I have no idea what this is about, but I thought I’d put it out there, as it’s one of the weirdest IEs we’ve seen in a while. Not only did someone plunk down $8K for polling in the 2nd, one of the most reliably Republican top-to-bottom districts anywhere where Rep. Mike Simpson only ever faces token opposition, but the money’s from the American Dental Association. Making sure Idahoans are brushing properly?

• IN-03: State Sen. Marlin Stutzman made it official today: he’s running in the special election for the seat just vacated by Rep. Mark Souder. Having performed well in the Senate primary (and having had a path cleared for him by Mike Pence’s lowering of the boom on Souder), he looks like the one to beat here.

• PA-07: Former local TV news anchor Dawn Stensland has decided to forego a vaguely-threatened independent run in the 7th. That leaves it a one-on-one battle between Dem Bryan Lentz and GOPer Pat Meehan.

• PA-12: The GOP seems to have settled on its preferred explanation for trying to spin away its underwhelming performance in the special election in the 12th, via their polling guru Gene Ulm. It’s all Ed Rendell’s fault, for scheduling it on the same day as the Senate primary, causing all those Joe Sestak supporters (of which there were many in that corner in Pennsylvania) to come out of the woodwork and vote in the 12th while they were at it.

• Unions: Now that’s a lot of lettuce. Two major unions are promising to spend almost $100 million together to preserve Democratic majorities this fall. The AFSCME is promising $50 million and the SEIU is planning $44 million.

• Enthusiasm Gap: This is something I’ve often suspected, but never felt like bringing up because the numbers weren’t there to prove the point (and also perhaps because saying so would put me at odds with the general netroots orthodoxy): the Democratic “enthusiasm gap” isn’t so much borne out of dissatisfaction with the insufficient aggressiveness of the Obama administration or the slow pace of getting watered-down legislation out of Congress as much as it’s borne out of complacency. In other words, there’s the sense by casual/irregular/low-information Dem voters that they did their job in 2008, got the country back on track, things are slowly improving, and because they aren’t angry anymore they don’t need to keep following up. PPP backs this up: among those “somewhat excited ” or “not very excited” about voting in November, Obama’s approval is a higher-than-average 58/35, and their supports for the health care bill is also a higher-than-average 50/38.

• NH-Sen: I’m still hazy on the backstory here, but it’s never a good sign when Politico is running big headlines titled “Fraud case complicates Ayotte bid.” New Hampshire’s Bureau of Securities Regulation director, Mark Connelly, just resigned his job to become a whistleblower, alleging a cover-up by the AG’s office and state banking commission in a fraud case where Financial Resources Mortgage Inc. defrauded New Hampshire investors out of at least $80 million. Connelly was pushing for charges against FRM as early as 2006; the AG in question, of course, was Kelly Ayotte, who resigned her post in mid-2009. Discovery in the matter may be complicated because all of Ayotte’s e-mail and calendars were wiped from her computer after she left the AG’s office.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): It looks like Muhlenberg College (on behalf of the Morning Call) is actually going to be doing a daily tracker on the Democratic primary races in the next two weeks as we count down to May 18. Today they find an even narrower gap in the suddenly-closer Arlen Specter/Joe Sestak race: Specter leads Sestak 46-42. Dan Onorato’s numbers in the gubernatorial race aren’t quite as showy, but still dominant: he’s at 36, with Anthony Williams at 9, Joe Hoeffel at 8, and Jack Wagner at 8. Quinnipiac also has similar numbers out today: they also have Specter leading Sestak by only single digits, at 47-39 (down from 53-32 a month ago). In the governor’s race, Qpac finds Onorato at 36, Hoeffel at 9, Wagner at 8, and Williams at 8. The DSCC seems to be sensing some trouble here for their preferred candidate, and they’re dipping into their treasury to help Specter out: the DSCC chipped in for $300K in Specter’s last $407K TV ad buy. Sestak just kicked off TV advertising two weeks ago but is going all in, outspending Specter in the last two weeks, which obviously coincides with his late surge.

• AZ-Gov: That Behavior Research Center poll of AZ-Sen from a few weeks ago contained a Republican gubernatorial primary question as well. Their findings mirror the other most recent polls of the primary: vulnerable incumbent Jan Brewer strengthened her hand among GOP primary voters by signing Arizona’s immigration law into effect. She’s at 22, not a lock but well ahead of any opposition: Owen Buz Mills is at 13, Dean Martin is at 10, and John Munger is at 4. (If your calculator isn’t handy, that leaves 51% undecided.)

• NH-Gov (pdf): Univ. of New Hampshire is out with another look at New Hampshire’s gubernatorial race, where Democratic incumbent John Lynch is well in control but still facing a tougher race than the last few times. They find Lynch leads GOP challenger John Stephen 49-32, little changed from the February poll where Lynch led 50-30.

• WI-Gov: Ex-Rep. Mark Neumann is very much the underdog in the Republican primary in the gubernatorial race (as the DC and local establishments have both embraced Milwaukee Co. Executive Scott Walker instead). But he added a hard-right endorsement to his trophy cabinet today; he got the nod from Tom Coburn.

• GA-08: In a clear sign that state Rep. Austin Scott (who recently bailed out of a long-shot gubernatorial campaign) is the man to beat in the GOP primary in the 8th, Angela Hicks got out of the race, saying she didn’t want to hurt Scott’s chances. Local businesswoman Hicks seemed to be considered the frontrunner among the GOPers prior to Scott’s entry, more by virtue of being the least weak rather than the strongest.

• HI-01: Barack Obama recorded a robocall for Democratic voters in his hometown district. Despite reports that the White House is joining the DCCC is putting a finger on the scale in favor of Ed Case rather than Colleen Hanabusa in the screwy special election, Obama didn’t name names; he simply urged a vote for “a Democrat.”

• NH-02: The largely forgotten state Rep. John DeJoie, the third wheel in the Democratic primary to replace Paul Hodes, cut short his bid today. Despite generally being regarded as from the progressive side of the ledger, DeJoie threw his support to Katrina Swett. DeJoie’s departure, on the balance, may help Ann McLane Kuster, though, by not splitting the progressive vote.

• PA-12: I have no idea whether this is good strategy or not, but Mark Critz, hoping to replace former boss John Murtha, is clinging hard to Murtha’s legacy in his new TV ad, seeming to put a lot of faith in polling data showing Murtha still a very popular figure in the district. Critz blasts back at Tim Burns for his own TV spots focusing on Murtha’s ethical woes, telling Burns ungrammatically to stop attacking “someone not there to defend themselves.” Meanwhile, the fight’s on for Murtha’s money: $7K from Murtha’s PAC found its way into Democratic pockets (including $5K for Critz), but the bulk of Murtha’s leftover money is headed for a charitable foundation established by his widow.

• CA-St. Sen.: For fans of legislative special elections, it looks like the marquee event between now and November will be the fight for California’s SD-15, a Dem-leaning central coast district vacated by Republican now-Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado. Republican Assemblyman Sam Blakeslee just got in the race, giving the GOP a solid contender to try and hold the seat as Dems try to push closer to the 2/3s mark in the Senate; he’ll face off against Democratic ex-Assemblyman John Laird in the June 22 election. (If neither candidate breaks 50%, there’ll be an Aug. 17 runoff.)

• Redistricting: Lots of redistricting-related action this week, going in two different directions. In Florida, the GOP-held legislature placed a redistricting measure on the November ballot that partially contradicts two citizen initiatives on the ballot that would prevent the legislature from drawing maps that favor one political party. The new proposal would still allow the legislature to take “communities of interest” into consideration when drawing maps. In Illinois, though, two attempts to change redistricting both failed, when the legislature couldn’t muster the votes to put it on the November ballot. Illinois’s arcane methods (which involve breaking ties by pulling a name out of a hat) will apparently still apply for the 2012 redistricting round.

• Deutschland: Our man in Cologne, SSPer micha.1976 has a hilarious and remarkable find from the streets of Germany. Remember the impeach-Obama Larouchie, Kesha Rogers, who won the Democratic nomination in TX-22? Her image is now being used on posters for a like-minded LaRouchie candidate in Germany! (J)

KY-Sen: Obnoxious theocrat James Dobson is endorsing establishment dude Trey Grayson over weirdo Rand Paul. It feels like it’s gotten late early around here, with Grayson badly trailing in the last few polls, so you gotta wonder whether this or anything else can make much of a difference.

NV-Sen: According to Reid Wilson, the Tea Party Express (the political action wing, such as it is, of the teabaggers) says they’ll spend $100 to $150K on behalf of wingnut favorite Sharron Angle. Angle’s trailed pretty badly in most polling, though.

OH-Sen: With Ohio’s primary around the corner, the Hotline is reporting that the DSCC will apparently step into the race on Lee Fisher’s behalf. The not-terribly-well-funded Fisher is facing off against the almost-penniless Jennifer Brunner, but apparently Bob Menendez doesn’t want to take any chances.

WI-Sen: One-time beer baron Dick Leinenkugel officially decided to join the now-crowded GOP field hoping to take on Sen. Russ Feingold. Leinenkugel’s chief problem appears to be the fact that he just resigned as the governor’s Commerce Secretary… and the governor of Wisconsin is Jim Doyle, a Democrat. The Kugel’s new opponents were, needless to say, quick to point this out.

AZ-Gov: A couple of tidbits from a PPP poll that is slated to be released later today:

• Brewer has seen a significant improvement in her job approval numbers with Republicans. When we looked at the state in September she was under water even with voters of her own party, as 37% of them expressed disapproval of her job performance while only 28% felt she was doing a good job. Now 54% of Republicans approve of her and only 27% disapprove, so she’s seen a good deal of improvement on that front, which should be particularly helpful for her prospects of winning nomination for a full term against a crowded field of primary opponents.

• At the same time Democratic candidate Terry Goddard leads Brewer 71-25 with Hispanics. That may seem ho hum, but consider this: Barack Obama only won Hispanic voters in the state by a 56-41 margin. So Goddard’s outperforming him by more than 30 points there. And on our September poll Goddard was up just 53-33 with Hispanics so it’s a 26 point improvement on the margin even relative to that.

FL-22: Combustible Republican Allen West is flashing an internal poll (from Wilson Research Strategies) which allegedly has him up 44-42 over incumbent Dem Ron Klein.

IN-09: Todd Young, seeking the GOP nod against ultra-retread Mike Sodrel, has a new ad up on TV, trying to paint himself as the “true conservative” choice. To CQ’s credit, they asked how much is being spent on the ad. To the Young campaign’s discredit, they declined to say.

MI-01: The Republican field in this race is getting’ mighty crowded here, too. GOP state Sen. Jason Allen, who is term-limited, is the latest to seek the Republican nod to replace Bart Stupak.

Fundraising: CQ has a handy chart of pre-primary fundraising filings in the three states which have primaries next week: Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio.

Immigration: The Hill surveys the races out West where Arizona’s new immigration law may bolster Latino turnout – and help Dems. Jon Ralston notes that Brian Sandoval, the GOP’s would-be savior in the NV-Gov race, has come out in favor of the law. This could all get very ugly – well, even uglier than it already is.

Money makes the world go ’round. Here are the March fundraising numbers for the six major party committees (February numbers are here):

Unfortunately I can’t find the link at the moment, but I earlier today I saw an analysis which indicated that the DNC raked in a huge proportion of its monthly haul in the last ten days of March – that is to say, after healthcare passed. I’d like to see if the RNC was similarly affected.