Tag: David McKinley

Senate:

• AZ-Sen: So what the heck happened with Trent Franks? The Arizona Guardian is reporting that the Republican Congressman had been promising people jobs on his pending Senate campaign, and that his people had even gone so far as to ensure proper media risers were available at the hotel where Franks was supposed to make his big announcement. Yet it all vanished in a heartbeat when Franks unexpectedly pulled the plug. Says the Guardian: “The good thing is, there’s still another year-and-a-half to get the full story before the 2012 elections.” Also, in case you haven’t seen it yet, Dave Catanese penned a piece explaining the backstory on how he got burned by Franks’ consultant. It just adds to all the weirdness.

• FL-Sen: Tucked inside that Quinnipiac poll which showed tough numbers for Obama was this nugget:

Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, who like Obama is on the 2012 ballot, is in better shape, with a 47-26 percent approval rating, a 43-39 percent lead over an unidentified Republican and voters saying 43-35 percent that he deserves another term in the Senate.

• MI-Sen (PDF): A week or so ago, Republican-affiliated pollster Market Research Group offered some better-than-everyone-else approval ratings for Gov. Rick Snyder. Apparently, they also polled the Senate race at the same time, pitting Dem Debbie Stabenow against Some Dude Randy Hekman. Amusingly, the polling memo says the Senator has a “slim” 11-point lead over Hekman, 45-34. But the real problem is the sample, which is 26 R, 26 D, 43 I – in other words, nothing like reality.

MRG also polled a hypothetical state Supreme Court matchup between incumbent Supreme Court Justice Brian Zahra and former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, which had Zahra up 38-33. (Moving from the statehouse to the high court is not unheard of in Michigan.) Speaking of Granholm, she was supposedly under consideration to head up the Consumer Financial Protection Board but says she withdrew her name (and likes Elizabeth Warren for the job). It sounds like Granholm is keeping pretty busy, and the article notes she’s teaching at UC Berkeley, so perhaps she’s enjoying the weather out in Cali a bit more than back home. But Granholm is a former state AG and was even supposedly a possible Supreme Court pick, so perhaps a judicial run is plausible.

• PA-Sen: Sam Rohrer, the teabaggy ex-state Rep. who got pounded by Tom Corbett in the PA-Gov GOP primary last year, says he’s “50-50” on running against Bob Casey this cycle. Rohrer has the perfect pedigree: He runs the Pennsylvania chapter of the malevolent David Koch front group Americans for Prosperity.

• VA-Sen: Passed along without comment:

NBC 4’s reporter-anchor Craig Melvin is a tall African-American. Which apparently led to this exchange with former Sen. George Allen, according to Melvin’s Twitter account Tuesday night:

“For the 2nd time in 5 months, fmr. gov. and sen candidate George Allen asks me,”what position did you play?” I did not a play a sport.”

Actually, I changed my mind. If you still don’t think George Allen is a racist fuck, read this coda from ThinkProgress writer Lee Feng. And no, Allen didn’t apologize – he offered a classic bullshit “I’m sorry if I offended you” response. That’s bullshit.

Anyhow, Roanoke College released a poll of the race, showing Allen leading Tim Kaine by 45-32 – a rather different picture than what we saw from PPP. However, the WaPo ran an above-the-item update warning readers to be “cautious” about this survey because “[r]esults were adjusted only for gender, and the resulting sample is not representative of Virginia’s racial composition, its age structure or regional population densities.” It also looks like the horserace question was asked after about a bajillion issue-related questions (PDF), some of them kind of weird.

Finally, in Some Dude news… some other Some Dude (an African-American minister named Earl Jackson) decided to get into the GOP primary, a race with a lot of Some Dudes already in it.

Gubernatorial:

• GA-Gov: PPP did a re-do poll in Georgia, too, and found Dem ex-Gov. Roy Barnes would edge actual Gov. Nathan Deal by a single point today, 46-45. Tom says that this isn’t a case of voter disgust with Deal (he has pretty meh ratings, not downright radioactive ones like Scott Walker), but rather a clear sign of last year’s enthusiasm gap that will forever haunt us. There’s also a smorgasbord of other Peach State odds-and-ends at the link.

• KY-Gov: Gov. Steve Beshear (D) is out with his first radio ads of the campaign, touting his small-town roots, a week after his likely Republican opponent, David Williams, also went up on radio. Unlike Beshear, Williams faces a primary on May 17th, so he’s also going up on cable TV with a new ad you can watch here. NWOTSOTB for any of these.

• MS-Gov: Turns out PPP did in fact test the Republican gubernatorial primary in Mississippi. Click through if you really, really care. (Hint: You won’t.)

• UT-Gov: State Rep. Stephen Sandstrom, a teabagger fave to challenge immigration apostate Gary Herbert for the governor’s mansion, says on Facebook that he has “no plans or intentions to run.” (Yes, it would be more awesome if his name were Stephen Sandstorm.)

• WV-Gov: In case you weren’t sure where all the players in the Democratic primary field stand on the ideology spectrum (something we’ll be rectifying with a more in-depth post shortly), this is a helpful guidepost: Acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin was endorsed by the WV Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber also endorsed the only two legit Republicans running, Betty Ireland and Bill Maloney.

House:

• CA-26, CA-06: Assemblyman Anthony Portantino is getting some high-profile fundraising help: Steve Israel is coming out to Pacific Palisades this weekend for a breakfast event. The same piece also notes that Assemblyman Jared Huffman raised $120K for a federal account in Q1; Huffman is interested in 73-year-old Rep. Lynn Woolsey’s seat, if she retires. Woolsey apparently will decide whether to seek another term by June.

• FL-25: Idiot.

• IL-08: I’m not exactly broken up by this news: Ex-Rep. Melissa Bean, whose race was the closest in the nation last year (she lost by 290 votes to a real piece of work), says she won’t run again. She’s now CEO of something called the Executives Club of Chicago, which doesn’t really give off a man-of-the-people vibe, now does it?

• MI-09: If there’s one guy repeatedly written off as a redistricting victim who I’d really love to see find a way to survive, it’s Rep. Gary Peters. Despite what must have been an exhausting last several years raising money, the Michigan Dem wasted no time getting right back into the game, pulling in over $400K in Q1. He has half a mil on hand.

• NM-01: This Roll Call piece (also linked below in a redistricting item) mentions a few Dem names we hadn’t discussed here before: state Rep. Al Park, Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver, and Bernalillo County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham, who lost the 2008 primary for this seat.

• NY-13: Ex-Rep. Mike McMahon will join the “government relations” (i.e., lobbying) group at a mid-sized NYC law firm. He’s apparently being brought on as “counsel” status, rather than as a partner, so this could just be a way-station to allow him to pay the bills as he weighs a re-match… but of course, he risks getting hit with the lobbyist taint.

• PA-17: Activist Sheila Dow-Ford confirms the rumors that she’s considering another run against Rep. Tim Holden, against whom she took 35% in the Democratic primary last year. Holden could get a bluer district when all is said and done, so a challenge from the left is a real possibility – but as Dow-Ford herself notes, others are interested, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some bigger-name candidates got in if the seat became markedly more Dem.

• UT-02: Huh – I can’t exactly accuse the Salt Lake Tribune of burying the lede, since they put this in the second graf, but Rep. Jim Matheson says he’s waiting to see what the new district lines look like before deciding whether to run again, or instead if he’ll seek statewide office. A statewide run doesn’t seem like a particularly appealing escape hatch, but both Gov. Gary Herbert (see item above) and Sen. Orrin Hatch could wind up damaged by teabaggers, so you never know. A couple of other statewide offices Matheson could see (Treasurer, Auditor) are up as well.

Also, Some Dude Chuck Williams, an Air Force vet who lost a couple of GOP primaries for Congress… in California… says he plans to challenge Matheson for his House seat, and that he’ll run regardless of where the lines get drawn.

• VA-11: Via FEC Kenobi, Some Dude Christopher Perkins just filed as a Republican to challenge Gerry Connolly. That’s a pretty un-Google-able name, so I can’t tell you much about him… though I do know his home is worth $743,130!

• WV-01: Freshman Rep. David McKinley (R), who won a close race last year, says he’s raised over half a mil in the first quarter. Note, though, that he still has $670K in campaign debt from last cycle.

Other Races:

• Allegheny Co. Exec.: PoliticsPA, via Municipoll, has a race out on the Allegheny, PA County Executive’s race. I’m gonna admit straight off the bat that I don’t know the players here, but click through for details.

• IN-SoS: So a judge allowed a Dem challenge to SoS Charlie White’s eligibility to serve in office to proceed, but really, you just need to read Bob Bobson’s summary of where things stand – and where things will head now. (Bob’s been doing an awesome job of staying on top of this oftentimes-complicated story, so pay attention to him.)

• Champaign, IL Mayor: Here’s a nice little election result that we otherwise missed: The avowedly teabagging mayor of Champaign, Illinois was narrowly defeated by a political newcomer on Tuesday night, the first time, in fact, that he’d ever been opposed in 12 years in office. I’m a little surprised that the university town of Champaign would have elected such a wingnut in the first place, but this is still good news.

• Specials: Johnny Longtorso:

Democrat Kevin Johnson won a 5-point victory over Republican Sonny Sanders in South Carolina’s HD-64.

[On whether this seat was supposedly a Dem stronghold:]

I took another look at it; it’s almost all of a county that Obama got around 56% in along with one or two precincts of an adjacent county, and it’s about 50/50 white/black, so black turnout may have been low. So he just did a few points worse than Obama’s numbers in 2008.

• Wisconsin Recall: Dems filed over 22,000 signatures to recall state Sen. Randy Hopper yesterday. Republicans claim they are close to filing petitions for Sen. Robert Wirch, one of the more endangered Dems on the list.

Remainders:

• WATN?: Ethan Hastert, son of ex-Speaker Denny the Hutt and victim of a genuinely impressive teabagger-fueled anybody-but-Ethan movement to deny him the GOP nomination in IL-14 last year, has managed to win elective office this year. He earned a council seat in the village of Elburn, IL, which has a population that is actually a few thousand smaller than my census tract. Don’t call it a comeback!

Redistricting Roundup:

• Arkansas: Total impasse: The state House rejected the state Senate’s congressional redistricting plan, complementing the Senate’s recent rejection of the House plan. Some procedural maneuvers may be used to try to get things moving forward again, which lawmakers are probably eager to do, since the legislative session was scheduled to end over a week ago.

• California: Look, it’s basically impossible to find a law firm that knows anything about redistricting which has never had any prior political involvement. So I don’t understand why it’s coming as a surprise that Gibson Dunn, the firm hired by the redistricting commission, has a political fund and has used it to make donations. Oh wait, I think I do – it’s because most (but by no means all) of those donations were made to Democrats, so the GOP is continuing its plan to do everything it can to “discredit” the entire process. It’s especially silly, because the firm specifically tasked one Dem attorney and one Republican attorney to lead the effort… but then again, the GOP is especially silly.

• Louisiana: Nathan Gonzales has a good piece untangling the wreck that is Louisiana redistricting, and offering some insight into the behind-the-scenes process. I strongly encourage you to click through the link for the full flavor. (As an inducement, there’s a bowl full of cat food inside.) Apparently, a compromise plan is in the works, but Nathan says that if an agreement isn’t reached by next week, the lege will have to wait until next year to finish its work. (They can’t call a special session?) Anyhow, like I say, read the whole thing.

• New Mexico: Though legislators won’t hold a special session on redistricting until the fall, apparently a plan is brewing among Democrats to excise GOP-leaning Torrance County from the 1st CD. The problem, though, is that while Dems control the lege, Gov. Susana Martinez is, of course, a Republican – a very similar situation to the last round of map-drawing in 2001, which eventually ended up in court.

• Texas: You can play with various Texas map proposals at the link.

• Virginia: Two Virginia items. First, the House of Delegates approved the Republican gerrymander for that body, though most Democrats were actually stupid enough to vote in favor of the plan. (Hasn’t anyone ever heard of a symbolic protest vote to at least signal to your supporters that you know you’re getting the shaft, even if it’s for the greater good?) Second, a (the?) congressional plan was released, and it’s potentially not as bad as it could be. Have a look-see.

Public Policy Polling (1/20-23, West Virginia voters, no trendlines):

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 50

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 41

Undecided: 10

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 57

David McKinley (R): 28

Undecided: 14

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 60

John Raese (R): 31

Undecided: 9

(MoE: ±2.9%)

I think, if you were to try and set up West Virginians’ feelings about their politicians as a mathematical equation, it would look something like this: Joe Manchin > Shelley Moore Capito > (very large gap) > various other Dems > various other Republicans. This can be seen in PPP’s sample this week, which starts with their look at the 2012 Senate race, with Manchin beating all Republican opponents and having made the jump to federal office with sky-high approvals down somewhat but mostly intact, at 52/32 (with much of the drop in approvals coming from liberals, believe it or not). Capito is in similar very-positive terrain at 54/30, but nevertheless loses to Manchin, probably because of the disparity in Dem vs. GOP registrations in West Virginia and that there’s little Dem defection from Manchin.

Public Policy Polling (1/20-23, West Virginia voters, no trendlines):

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 40

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 48

Undecided: 12

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 54

Clark Barnes (R): 22

Undecided: 24

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 49

Betty Ireland (R): 32

Undecided: 19

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 53

Mike Stuart (R): 20

Undecided: 28

John Perdue (D): 33

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 52

Undecided: 15

John Perdue (D): 41

Clark Barnes (R): 23

Undecided: 36

John Perdue (D): 37

Betty Ireland (R): 37

Undecided: 26

John Perdue (D): 41

Mike Stuart (R): 21

Undecided: 38

Natalie Tennant (D): 37

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 49

Undecided: 13

Natalie Tennant (D): 49

Clark Barnes (R): 23

Undecided: 28

Natalie Tennant (D): 43

Betty Ireland (R): 32

Undecided: 26

Natalie Tennant (D): 48

Mike Stuart (R): 22

Undecided: 31

Rick Thompson (D): 29

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 54

Undecided: 18

Rick Thompson (D): 34

Clark Barnes (R): 24

Undecided: 43

Rick Thompson (D): 31

Betty Ireland (R): 37

Undecided: 32

Rick Thompson (D): 33

Mike Stuart (R): 22

Undecided: 45

(MoE: ±2.9%)

If you have the stamina to wade through all 16 of these gubernatorial permutations, you can see a definite pattern: Dems win big, unless the GOP gets Shelley Moore Capito into the race, in which case she’s favored (or unless Rick Thompson wins the nomination, as he manages to lose to Betty Ireland). The question PPP asks specifically says “If the candidates for governor this year were…” so, however, keep in mind that Capito has basically declined to run in the special election. Nevertheless, she hasn’t ruled out a run in 2012, so assuming these numbers stay valid for another year, there’s a distinct possibility that whichever Dem wins the special election in 2011 could have a very short tenure if Capito does decide to run in 2012. In fact, if Earl Ray Tomblin doesn’t win the Dem primary, we could have two one-year gubernatorial terms in a row. Tomblin starts in a good place, though, with 42/20 approvals; Betty Ireland seems to fare the best of the “other” GOPers, with 33/19 faves.

If you’re wondering, here’s who all these various people are:

Earl Ray Tomblin: Democratic state Senate president and acting Governor until the October 2011 special election

John Perdue: Democratic state Treasurer

Natalie Tennant: Democratic Secretary of State

Rick Thompson: Democratic state House speaker

Shelley Moore Capito: Republican Rep. from WV-02

Clark Barnes: Republican state Senator

Betty Ireland: Republican ex-SoS

Mike Stuart: Republican state party chair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Ads:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• CO-Sen: It looks like the Michael Bennet camp, and his Beltway backers, are taking the recent polling surge by Andrew Romanoff in the Dem Senate primary, very seriously. Barack Obama just did a remote appearance on behalf of Bennet, for five minutes at a Bennet town hall.

• KY-Sen: Well, he finally got around to it. It was buried in the fifth and final paragraph of a press release. Nevertheless, Dan Mongiardo finally endorsed Dem primary victor Jack Conway. Despite previous rumors that he was holding out on his endorsement to get his $77K campaign debt paid off, a Mongiardo spokesperson says he didn’t receive anything in exchange for the nod.

• PA-Sen: Bill Clinton will be in Scranton to campaign for Joe Sestak next Tuesday. Frankly, that’s a really good fit of candidate, backer, and locale. I wonder if Paul Kanjorski will be allowed to tag along, though? Seems like he could use some Clinton love, too. (No, not that kind of Clinton love.) On the GOP side, Pat Toomey got some campaign fundraising help in Philly from moderate Maine GOP Senator Susan “Comrade of the Month” Collins, who seems to have forgiven or conveniently forgotten all those Club for Growth attempts to knife her in the back.

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray seems to be taking a page from the John Hickenlooper campaign in Colorado, dropping a huge amount of money right now on advertising reservations, all the way through November, while they’re still cheap. She spent $3.4 million, nearly half her CoH, on ad buys in July. She can count on her coffers being replenished, though, as Barack Obama will be hosting a fundraiser for her later this month.

• WI-Sen: Dueling ads in Wisconsin. Russ Feingold is out with a sobering ad rattling his saber at Wall Street, while Ron Johnson levels accusations of being a “career politician” at Feingold. Double NWOTSOTB.

• CO-Gov: Is there blood here in the water, or what? Colorado Ethics Watch just filed a complaint with the state bar, which could lead to disciplinary action against Scott McInnis’s license to practice law in Colorado, over his plagiarism scandal. McInnis’s former campaign manager (until last December, so he was out long before the scandal) also just asked McInnis for a refund of all the contributions he’s given him. The DGA is also starting to pour money into this race, striking while the iron is hot; they’ve plowed $100K into a new third-party group airing a new anti-McInnis attack ad. And if you were thinking that Dan Maes might turn out to be a reasonable alternative to McInnis, guess again. He ventured not just into Michele Bachmann territory (about how we’ll all have to live in tenements and take mass transit to work) but clear into UN-black-helicopters-are-fluoridating-my-water territory. And what’s the nerve center of the one-world-government’s scurrilous plot against Coloradan sovereignty? Denver’s program for public bike shares and more showers for bike-riding commuters!!!!1!

“At first, I thought, ‘Gosh, public transportation, what’s wrong with that, and what’s wrong with people parking their cars and riding their bikes? And what’s wrong with incentives for green cars?’ But if you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty.”

• GA-Gov: This seems like a big Deal for Nathan: the third-place finisher in the gubernatorial primary, state Sen. Eric Johnson, is backing ex-Rep. Nathan Deal in the runoff. (Oddly, Johnson hasn’t said anything about it himself, but Rep. Jack Kingston, another Johnson backer-turned-Deal backer, made the announcement.) Johnson’s support should help Deal in the Savannah area, where Johnson seems to have a strong base.

• MD-Gov: I wonder if Sarah Palin is playing three-dimensional chess here, in some sort of strange gambit to help Bob Ehrlich in the general election… or just playing tic-tac-toe, and losing badly at it. At any rate, she endorsed Ehrlich’s barely-registering primary rival, businessman Brian Murphy, in the GOP gubernatorial primary. (Which, if you think about it, doesn’t jibe at all with her endorsement of centrist and likely victor Terry Branstad in Iowa instead of wingnut Bob Vander Plaats… but then, Maryland’s not an early presidential state.) Ehrlich is now publicly doing the happy dance over her endorsement of his rival, saying that it just confirms his moderate credentials for the general, where he has a shot at knocking off incumbent Dem Martin O’Malley.

• AZ-01: Rogue dentist Paul Gosar has a lead in the Republican primary in AZ-01 for the right to take on freshman Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, if his own internal is to be believed. The poll from Moore Info puts him at 30, with ’08 candidate Sydney Hay at 10, Some Dude Bradley Beauchamp at 7, and, surprisingly, former state Sen. majority leader Rusty Bowers back at 6. Gosar seems to have consolidated many big-name movement conservatives behind him, ranging from Sarah Palin to Joe Arpaio. My main question, though, is: Sydney Hay is running again?!? Why weren’t we informed? (You may remember her legacy of fail from her 2008 run.)

• AZ-03: This is at least the second time a childless GOP candidate has gotten busted for playing up his “family man” credentials by romping with children in advertising (the first time was Kevin Yoder in KS-03). At least Yoder was able to claim the kids were his nieces and nephews… Ben Quayle apparently had to borrow some of his aides’ kids for his photo shoot.

• IL-17: After seemingly no one found their internal poll from last week credible (which gave the previously-unheralded, if not unknown, Bobby Schilling a lead over Democratic Rep. Phil Hare), there’s another Republican poll out that seems to at least be on the same temporal plane as reality, in this swing district where the GOP hasn’t competed hard in a while. POS (on behalf of a state party committee… Magellan did the Schilling internal) gives Hare a 33-31 lead over the political novice and pizza restauranteur. The poll also gives 7% support to the Green Party candidate, which somehow doesn’t seem likely to hold.

• WV-01: As heartburn-inducing Mike Oliverio will probably be in terms of his voting record, here’s some confirmation that we at least got an electoral upgrade here from the guy he defeated in the Dem primary, Rep. Alan Mollohan, who had ethical clouds following him and seemed to be phoning in his campaign. Oliverio is out with a new internal from Hamilton Campaigns that gives him a 52-36 lead over GOP opponent David McKinley. With Joe Manchin at the top of the ticket in a November special election, now, too, here’s one Tossup seat where our odds seem to be getting noticeably better. (As a bonus, they find Manchin leading John Raese 62-30 in the district, which is West Virginia’s reddest.)

• DCCC: CQ looks at the DCCC’s attempts to enforce dues-payment this cycle. While their “Frontline” members (the ones in the trickiest races) are exempt from paying dues, they’re winding up giving de facto passes to a number of other vulnerable incumbents, not having had any luck at stopping them from hoarding their own cash in preparation for tough races. 88 House Dems haven’t paid any dues at all this cycle, while many others are in arrears. There’s also, buried in the article, a statement that the DCCC doesn’t plan to further extend its Frontline program, even as the number of potentially vulnerable Dems seems to keep increasing.

• California: For people who just can’t get enough campaign finance reports, the Sacramento Bee has a helpful table of filings for all the candidates for the downballot statewide races. Dems have a cash on hand lead in most races, except for two (Secretary of State and Insurance Commissioner). It’s particularly pronounced in the Lt. Governor race, where Gavin Newsom leads GOP incumbent Abel Maldonado $495K to $91K. In the very tight AG’s race (also the downballot race that’s seen by far the most expenditures), Dem Kamala Harris leads GOPer Steve Cooley $186K to $121K (and Cooley also has $170K in debt).

• Redistricting: Ohio, unfortunately, won’t be having a referendum on a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November, that would limit parties’ ability to gerrymander by requiring bipartisan support for new maps. The problem? The parties in the state legislature couldn’t agree on the exact framework for the plan. At least there’s good news on the better-districts front in New York, where the state Senate just passed legislation that will make sure that incarcerated persons are counted in their home communities, when legislative lines are redrawn next year.

• Rasmussen:

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 31%, Bill McCollum (R) 27%, Bud Chiles (I) 20%

• FL-Gov: Alex Sink (D) 31%, Rick Scott (R) 35%, Bud Chiles (I) 16%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 40%, Rob Portman (R) 44%

The main event last night was Rep. Alan Mollohan‘s slightly surprising loss in the Dem primary in WV-01 to state Sen. Mike Oliverio. Maybe not that surprising, given Mollohan’s seeming lack of preparation (the guy hasn’t had a competitive primary in literally two decades) and weak fundraising and GOTV organizing. Compounding that: increased attention on Mollohan’s ethics woes (although Mollohan had formally been cleared, that didn’t keep the cloud from going away, or Oliverio from exploiting that), as well as, of course, the generalized anti-incumbent anti-Washington sentiment in both parties, a residual of voter anger over the crappy economy.

The DCCC was notably cool to Oliverio in their post-election statement, as there seems to some wait-and-see regarding how Oliverio clarifies his anti-Nancy Pelosi comments as they size him up. Still, even with their apparent distate for Oliverio, that’s probably part of a bigger ambivalence on their part (paralleled by some NRCC disappointment), as it’s quite possible that Oliverio may perform better in November than Mollohan would have, being a “fresh face” free of the taint of incumbency, and free of Mollohan’s ethical baggage and his tough pro-HCR vote (I don’t think HCR in itself is as much of anchor in this district as the Beltway media might have you believe, but the abortion angle on HCR seemed to be a liability, compounded by the Susan B. Anthony List’s involvement in the race).

And while conservative Dem Mollohan was no prize overall, it’s worth noting that he was about as liberal a guy as we were going to get in this R+9 district; the PVI/Vote Index has him as 2008’s 11th most overperforming Democrat according to National Journal scores (consistent with Nate Silver‘s math, who finds him 8th most valuable Democrat). Of course, if Oliverio goes on to win in November and moves the ball a few paces to the right, even he’ll probably still be overperforming the district’s lean; while most of what came out of Oliverio’s mouth during the campaign was pretty alarming, he at least has a solid pro-labor record, in the form of strong AFL-CIO ratings.

In the GOP primary, ex-state Rep. and former state GOP chair David McKinley pulled out a decent victory, with 35% of the vote (to 27% for Mac Warner and 21% for Sarah Minear); he’ll face Oliverio. Anti-incumbent sentiments were on display in the WV-03 and NE-02 primaries, where Dem Nick Rahall and GOPer Lee Terry pulled in only 67% and 63% respectively against small-time opponents. Rahall will face off in November against ex-Dem ex-state Supreme Court Justice (and BFF of Massey Energy head Don Blankenship) Spike Maynard, who prevailed over a fractured GOP field with only 30%. Finally a couple state legislative results: the GOP held Scott Brown’s former Massachusetts state Senate seat in the outer reaches of Boston’s suburbs, with state Rep. Dennis Richard Ross winning, while in Georgia, Jason Carter, the grandson of Jimmy Carter, is the newest member of the state Senate after holding a safely-Dem district in DeKalb County.

• Tonight’s Preview: Tonight’s something of a small palate-cleanser in between the meaty primaries of last Tuesday and next Tuesday. The main event is WV-01, where there are competitive primaries on both sides of the aisle. Most of the attention is focused on the Democratic side, though, where Rep. Alan Mollohan could be the first House incumbent to get bounced out this cycle. Despite already being rather conservative, he’s been challenged from the right by state Sen. Mike Oliverio, who’s attacking Mollohan over not fighting hard enough against cap and trade, and for his earmarking. Both camps have released internal polls giving them the lead. On the GOP side, there’s a three-way fight between the establishment fave, former state Rep. and state GOP chair David McKinley, former state Sen. Sarah Minear, and businessman Mac Warner. Warner has gotten nailed for tax liens on his businesses, but may benefit from the infighting between the two others. Polls in WV close at 7:30 pm ET.

The special election to replace Nathan Deal in GA-09 is also tonight. With Democrats a non-factor in this R+28 district, but a crowded field of various Republicans, the likeliest outcome is a June 8 runoff between the top two conservative Republicans, most likely former state Rep. Tom Graves (the Club for Growth and FreedomWorks pick) and former state Sen. Lee Hawkins (who seems to generate less enthusiasm on the ground but who has some geographical advantages). TheUnknown285 also points out a handful of other legislative special elections in Georgia today, all of which are very unlikely to change hands; the most interesting may be in SD-42, where Jimmy Carter’s grandson may be able to take over a blue seat in Atlanta’s suburbs.

Finally, two other things you might watch, if you want to get way down in the weeds: Nebraska is the only other state with regularly scheduled primaries for today, although the only one worth a look is the GOP side in NE-02, where Rep. Lee Terry faces a teabagger with some money, Matt Sakalosky. Terry is likely to win, but the margin will be worth watching, as he’s one of the Dems’ few offense targets this year. And New Jersey has a host of mayoral elections today. The big name here is Newark’s Cory Booker, expected to face no trouble with re-election; an open seat in Trenton may provide some interest, though.

UPDATE: Marcus in comments points out a big miss on my part: the state Senate seat in Massachusetts left vacant by Scott Brown is up for special election tonight, too. (Rather than a boring number, it has a name: “Norfolk, Bristol, and Middlesex.” Still not quite as mellifluous as a lot of the British constituencies that we all got a crash course in last week though… especially “Vale of Glamorgan.”) Democratic physician Peter Smulowitz (a netroots fave who won an upset in the primary) faces off against GOP state Rep. Richard Ross. There’s also a safe blue seat up tonight that will shortly belong to Dem Sal DiDomenico.

• NH-Sen: It looks like those missing Kelly Ayotte e-mails, which are at the center of the growing questions surrounding the collapse of Financial Resources Mortgage and what the AG’s office did (or didn’t) do, may be retrievable after all via backup systems. State legislative hearings into the matter are beginning on Friday, so this issue could get bigger in coming weeks.

• NY-Sen, NY-Gov (pdf): Marist has a slew of data out of New York, all of it good for the Dems. Kirsten Gillibrand breaks 50% against all of her GOP contenders, leading Joe DioGuardi 50-30, Bruce Blakeman 52-28, and David Malpass 52-28. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary at 31, to 13 for Blakeman and 12 for Malpass. Chuck Schumer also has little trouble with his one announced opponent, Jay Townsend; he leads 66-27. On the gubernatorial side, Andrew Cuomo wins just as convincingly. He leads Rick Lazio 65-25, Steve Levy 63-25, and Carl Paladino 67-22.

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): Today’s Muhlenberg tracker sustains the Joe Sestak lead over Arlen Specter, at 47-43. In the gubernatorial race, Anthony Williams seems to be emerging as the closest rival to Dan Onorato; Onorato still has a big edge, though, leading Williams 33-15 with Joe Hoeffel at 10 and Jack Wagner at 9. Word is that Franklin & Marshall will also have a poll out tomorrow giving Sestak the edge. Barack Obama appears in the newest TV ad on Specter’s behalf, but it sounds less likely that Obama, always careful about overextending his political capital, will be actually showing up to campaign for Specter. Finally, if you haven’t already, it’s worth a look at Chris Bowers‘ analysis of Specter vs. Sestak on general election electability (as you might expect, it boils down to Specter being universally-known and Sestak having the upside).

• UT-Sen: Bob Bennett still isn’t ruling out a write-in candidacy in November, and will continue to weigh his options. Bob, for what it’s worth, everyone here at SSP agrees that a write-in candidacy would be pure awesome.

• WA-Sen: Some more investment sleaze-by-association for Dino Rossi. He was one of the initial investors who established the Eastside Commercial Bank in 2001, a bank that’s currently teetering on the edge after the FDIC required it to raise another $3 million in the wake unsound lending practices. He didn’t have any managerial control over the bank, but it’s one more paper cut for Rossi.

• CT-Gov: Former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy announced his running mate choice today: state Comptroller Nancy Wyman. Rival Ned Lamont chose Simsbury First Selectwoman Mary Glassman (Malloy’s 2006 running mate) last week.

• OR-Gov, OR-Sen: SurveyUSA is out with a whole new gubernatorial primary poll (the one that got released last week was taken nearly a month ago; I’m not sure what the delay was about). Although the number of undecideds is dropping, the margins between the candidates is staying pretty much the same. For the Dems, John Kitzhaber is leading Bill Bradbury 59-25. On the GOP side, Chris Dudley leads Allen Alley 42-24 (while hopeless third and fourth wheels John Lim and Bill Sizemore are at 8 each). They also threw in Senate primary numbers, finding that Ron Wyden is pulling in 80% against some nobodies on the Dem side while the GOP side is a big question mark. Law professor Jim Huffman (the establishment’s choice to be sacrificial lamb) is at 20, while some dude Tom Stutzman isn’t that far behind at 13.

• FL-02: Here’s a race that wasn’t on anyone’s competitive list that’s suddenly bursting into view. An NRCC internal poll (by the Tarrance Group) that’s from mid-April but just got leaked to Chris Cillizza has no-name funeral home director Steve Southerland leading Rep. Allen Boyd, and not just squeaking it out, but up by a 52-37 margin. Boyd has a huge cash edge ($1.5 mil to Southerland’s $157K), although he’ll need to spend some first fighting a primary challenge against Al Lawson.

• HI-01: With news that the DCCC is pulling out, and polls giving a small but consistent edge to Charles Djou in the f’d-up jungle-style special election, SSP is moving our rating of this race to “Leans Republican” from “Tossup.”

• MI-01: Amidst all the hullaballoo over Connie Saltonstall’s dropout yesterday (wait, what’s the opposite of “hullaballoo?” how about “yawning?”), we missed another detail in the Democratic primary to succeed Bart Stupak: so too did Matt Gillard. That leaves state Rep. Gary McDowell as the only candidate left in the field, on this the last day of Michigan filings. That was easy.

• MN-06: We at SSP love us some taxes, but we’re also big fans of a certain something called “optics,” and state Senate DFLers created a mammoth screwup that, appearance-wise, really harms Taryl Clark’s chances against Michele Bachmann. Clark got stuck holding the Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky bag after she wound up casting the deciding vote in favor of a deficit-closing package that includes an income tax increase, after the vote was held open for her for 20 minutes deadlocked at 33-33. It may be a moot point as Tim Pawlenty has promised to veto, but still… (In her defense, Clark says she was delayed by a phone call with her son’s doctor.)

• NJ-03: Jon Runyan is getting accused of a “Rose Garden” strategy of campaigning in the GOP primary, sitting still and trading on his inevitability instead of, y’know, actually going out and debating with conservative opponent Justin Murphy. The John Adler camp is noticing too, and is out with their own “Where’s Jon?” video.

• RI-01: There’s a third contender in the Democratic primary to take over the 1st from retiring Rep. Patrick Kennedy. State Rep. David Segal is getting into the race, joining Providence mayor David Cicilline and former state Dem party chair William Lynch.

• WA-03: You keep hearing from Beltway media that state Rep. Jaime Herrera is the person to beat in the GOP primary for this open seat, but other than ex-Sen. Slade Gorton and her ex-boss, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers, I’m hard-pressed to think of any endorsements of consequence for her. David Castillo has lined up most of the local support within the 3rd, and now he got endorsements from a variety of local leaders in the evangelical community, including Joe Fuiten (probably the most prominent Christian right leader in Washington) and ex-Rep. Randy Tate (who briefly led the national Christian Coalition after getting bounced out of office).

• WI-07: Here’s another primary in the north woods where the Dems seem to have coalesced and it’s all over but the shouting. At the same time as state Sen. Julie Lassa was officially announcing that she’d run to succeed retiring Rep. David Obey, fellow state Sens. Russ Decker and Pat Kreitlow announced they wouldn’t run. Perhaps making the difference: Lassa’s seat isn’t up for re-election this year, so it’s a freebie for her, while Decker and Kreitlow’s seats are up. With Dems holding an 18-15 margin in the Senate and the GOP on the offensive, it’s the safe choice not to open up seats in the Senate too.

• NRSC: Hmmm, speaking of optics, the NRSC is hosting an “intimate” (Hotline’s words; I don’t know if that’s how the NRSC billed it) fundraiser with the under-investigation John Ensign as host. No word yet on whether anyone plans to show up.

• DE-AG: Best wishes for a quick recovery to Beau Biden, who’s currently hospitalized today after a minor stroke. The 41-year-old Biden, who passed on a Senate race this year, is expected to fully recover.

AR-Sen: While offering a commencement address at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Michelle Obama gave a shout-out to all the Democratic bigwigs sharing the dais with her: Gov. Mike Beebe, his wife Ginger, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Sen. Mark Pryor and even state AG Bobby Dustin McDaniel. Everyone, that is, except for Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who was also on stage. Stay classy, Michelle.

KS-Sen: The not-particularly pleasant GOP race to succeed Sam Brownback has gotten even uglier, with Rep. Todd Tiahrt accusing frontrunner Rep. Jerry Moran of pulling “a John Kerry” flip-flop on tax cuts. Moran, leading in the polls, has largely been sticking to a Rose Garden strategy and refusing to respond to Tiahrt’s provocations.

NV-Sen: Sue Lowden’s mom must have taught her as a child that if you pick at a scab repeatedly, it will heal faster. That can be the only explanation for Lowden’s newest TV ad, in which she brings up the damn chicken business yet again!

PA-Sen: Joe Sestak now has a four-point lead over Arlen Specter in Muhlenberg’s tracking poll, 46-42. A day earlier, Sestak took his first-ever lead in public polling in the tracker. Also, here’s a good observation: Specter voted against Elana Kagan when she was nominated to be Solicitor General. Now that it looks like she’s going to be tapped for the Supreme Court, he’ll have to very publicly flip-flop on this one barely a week before the primary.

UT-Sen: As you probably saw by now, longtime Utah Sen. Bob Bennett was denied renomination at the GOP convention this past Saturday. Instead, businessman Tim Bridgewater and attorney Mike Lee will duke it out in a June 22nd primary. Lee seems to be the teabagger fave, as he immediately garnered Jim DeMint’s endorsement once he made it past the third and final round of voting.

Meanwhile, Bennett is still holding out the possibility of waging a write-in campaign – which is not out of the question given that Utahns in general like him a lot more than Republican convention delegates. My understanding, though, is that he could only run as a write-in in the general election, not the primary.

Anyhow, while Bennett’s never self-funded before (so far as I know), he is actually extremely wealthy, with assets potentially in excess of $30 million. If turnout is about 600K voters and a Dem can get a third of that, then Bennett only needs 200K to win a squeaker. On the flipside, John Cornyn is pledging to support the GOP nominee, and in modern times, I think only Strom Thurmond has gotten elected to the Senate via write-in. But nevermind all that – do it, Bob… for America!

FL-Gov: Surely by now you’ve heard about anti-gay activist George Rekers’ European escapades with a young man he hired from a site called Rentboy. If not, read this now. The story just got a lot better, though, with word that Florida AG Bill McCollum once paid Rekers at least $60,000 to serve as an expert witness for the state’s attempt to ban gay adoptions. Rekers’ testimony was rejected by the judge as not credible, and the ban was found unconstitutional. All in a day’s work!

KY-Gov: Kentucky’s gubernatorial seat isn’t up until 2011, but a trio of media outlets commissioned a poll from Research 2000 nonetheless. It finds Gov. Steve Beshear leading House Speaker Greg Stumbo in a hypothetical primary, 55-28. In the general election, it shows Beshear up 44-37 over GOP Ag. Comm’r Richie Farmer. Beshear’s job approval is 46-43 and he has $1.9 million in the bank.

NY-Gov: Ordinarily, you need 25% of the weighted delegate vote at a state convention to qualify for the ballot in New York. But because Steve Levy is not yet a registered Republican, GOP rules require him to get 50%. It sounds, though, like there may be some movement afoot to more or less knock that requirement back down to 25%.

CT-05: Some Dude Kie Westby is dropping out of the crowded GOP race to take on Rep. Chris Murphy. Westby endorsed state Sen. Sam Caligiuri on his way out. Quite a few Republicans remain in this primary.

MD-04: State Del. Herman Taylor says he’s challenging Rep. Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary. It sounds like Taylor might be taking Edwards on from the right, saying she’s “out of touch with the business community” (those are the Maryland Gazette’s words, not necessarily his). Meanwhile, it sure sounds like Edwards herself has gone native: Despite the fact that she owes her seat to a primary challenge, she now says “it would be ‘very hard’ for her to support a primary challenger like herself,” according to The Nation. It never changes.

MI-09: Former state Rep. Rocky Raczkowski put out an internal poll showing him up 26-15 over businessman Paul Welday, with a whole lotta people undecided.

NY-23: Like some kind of Archie Comics love triangle involving Betty, Veronica, and Jughead, newcomer Matt Doheny is wooing the Club for Growth away from their former not-so-golden boy, Doug Hoffman. (The Club now says it’s “hard to say” whom they will endorse, if anyone.) Maybe toss in Moose, too, since the Conservative Party is making it extra-interesting by sticking with Hoffman.

PA-12: This ain’t good news for Team Blue: Dem Mark Critz reported having just $73K in the bank in his pre-election FEC report, while GOPer Tim Burns has $308K. I don’t feel too good about this one.

UT-02: In case you missed it, Dem Rep. Jim Matheson is being forced into his first-ever primary come June 22nd, thanks to the vote taken at the state’s Democratic convention this past weekend. Retired teacher Claudia Wright nabbed 45% of the delegates on Saturday, clearing the 40% hurdle to get her name on the primary ballot. The winner will take on ex-state Rep. Morgan Philpot, who has raised just $27K so far. Wright has raised $9K, while Matheson has taken in a million bucks and has $1.4 mil on hand.

WV-01: I was wondering when this was going to happen: The DCCC has finally sent some help to Rep. Alan Mollohan, who faces a stiff primary challenge from the right in the form of state Sen. Mike Oliverio. The election is tomorrow, though, so I wonder if, Coakley-style, this assistance is going to be too little, too late. While I carry no brief for Mollohan, he is almost certainly better than Oliverio, who is buddy-buddy with the state GOP.

Meanwhile, on the GOP side, the cat fud is flying fast and furious. Attorney Mac Warner says he won’t support ex-state Rep. David McKinley if he wins the nomination, claiming McKinley’s “gone way over the line in personal attacks and distortions of the truth.” (Welcome to politics, bub.) In general, the primary has been very negative, with much of the fire aimed at McKinley.

New Jersey: A New Jersey appellate court dinged Chris Christie’s attempt to unilaterally restrict campaign contributions by unions, saying that legislation would instead be required.

Polling: Tom Jensen, who has penned many dour but accurate notes about the rough shape Dems find themselves in this cycle, draws together some surprising threads and finds recent good polling news for Team Blue in five senate races.

• AR-Sen: Maybe it was yesterday’s performance in front of Carl Levin by all those Goldman Sachs execs, but Blanche Lincoln saw the handwriting on the wall and reversed course on her Goldman contributions, which she’d previously said she was keeping. She’s giving all that money to the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance.

• LA-Sen: Having tried to hammer David Vitter on all sorts of approaches (most of which seem to relate back to formaldehyde somehow — FEMA trailers, the dry cleaners’ lobby, and so on) and not gotten much traction, the Louisiana Democratic Party is going back to the well, to focus on the really easy-to-understand, obvious stuff: his patronizing of prostitutes. They have a new site up called “Forgotten Crimes” that revisits that sordid business.

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall is about to go on the TV airwaves starting Thursday, her first spot with less than a week to go before the primary. One of her advisors, Thomas Mills, also seems to have had a bit of a Homer Simpson moment of not saying the say-out-loud part and shouting the keep-it-in-your-head part; he said that opponent Cal Cunningham doesn’t have a chance in the general “because he’s a white male.”

• PA-Sen: An ill-timed Arlen Specter quote today is raising a few eyebrows; he told Allentown’s newspaper that “I might have helped the country more if I’d stayed a Republican.” Of course, all the selective quoting misses the meat of his statement, which is that he says he would have voted for HCR regardless, and was musing whether he would have been in a better position to bring aboard Republican moderates from within that camp. Meanwhile, it seems like people are only just now waking up to the fact that Pat Toomey isn’t unopposed on the GOP side; he still faces off against underfunded pro-life activist Peg Luksik. Luksik is finally getting in the news today, calling attention to Toomey’s pro-choice statements in the past.

• WI-Sen: When Tommy Thompson decided not to run for Senate, many eyes wandered over to conservative state Senator Ted Kanavas as a possible Republican candidate against Russ Feingold. Kanavas declined a bid today; the only potential candidate that the GOP seems to be waiting on is wealthy businessman Ron Johnson, who still seems to be making up his mind.

• MA-Gov: The RGA is taking a page from its successful race in New Jersey, where they spent a ton of money neutralizing independent candidate Chris Daggett. They’re facing an even bigger problem in Massachusetts in the form of Dem-turned-indie state Treasurer Tim Cahill, who’s not only spoiling the race for Charlie Baker, but in 2nd place ahead of Baker. With that in mind, the RGA is launching the first big ad buy of the race, and it’s an anti-Cahill, rather than anti-Deval Patrick, salvo.

• ME-Gov: The winner of the money chase in the Maine governor’s race is Republican businessman Les Otten; he says he’s raised $106K for his campaign, but also loaned himself $1.2 million. Republican Bruce Poliquin seems to have raised the most from others, among all the candidates; he’s raised $600K. The money issue may be less relevant in Maine than most states, though; the more-or-less frontrunners on each side of the aisle, Democratic state Sen. Libby Mitchell and Republican state Sen. Peter Mills, are both relying on public funding through the Maine Clean Election Act.

• WI-Gov: In the jostling to be Democrat Tom Barrett’s running mate in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, there was a lot of action yesterday. Milwaukee alderman Tony Zielinski got out of the race and at the same time, state Assembly majority leader Thomas Nelson got in. Nelson is from Kaukauna (near Appleton); there may have been a push by Barrett (the Milwaukee mayor) to get some geographic diversity on the ticket.

• IN-05: Republican Dan Burton is one of Big Pharma’s least favorite Republicans; no surprise, as he’s one of the leading voices in the House for autism/vaccination crackpottery. Money from health and drug executives and PACs has been flowing into the campaigns of his primary opponents (especially state Rep. Mike Murphy and former state GOP chair Luke Messer). Unfortunately for Big Pharma, the badly-fractured opposition means that Burton looks poised to survive the May 4 primary even with a small plurality (as Indiana doesn’t have runoffs).

• WV-01: Rep. Alan Mollohan, who tends to keep less money in his campaign warchest than most people keep in their checking accounts, has suddenly turned into a fundraising beast in recent weeks (now that he suddenly has some motivation to do so, facing both a tough primary and some credible GOP opposition). He’s raised $32K in just the last two days after holding a fundraiser. Meanwhile, there’s no clear front-runner as to who his GOP opponent will be, although former state Rep. David McKinley and former state Sen. Sarah Minear are trading punches over their legislative track records.

• CA-LG: Abel Maldonado was sworn in as California’s new Lt. Governor today, finally filling the long-vacant position. On the downside, the Republican can now run for re-election as an incumbent, but on the plus side, his Democratic-leaning Senate seat (not just in terms of registration, but a 59/39 vote for Obama), SD-15, is up for grabs. Der Governator just set the special election date for the summertime (6/22 primary, 8/17 general), though, rather than to coincide with the November election, which may work to Republicans’ advantage in terms of lower turnout.

• Illinois: Hoping to avoid a repeat of the short-lived Pat Quinn/Scott Lee Cohen ticket (and various terrible pairings from the past as well), Illinois Democrats are changing the system so that a Governor and Lt. Governor candidate run together as a ticket even in the primary, rather than getting a post-primary shotgun wedding. The state Senate passed the bill 56-0 (as Republicans seem none too enthused about their 27-year-old dilettante running mate either) and heads to Pat Quinn for his signature. (Gee, I wonder how he feels about the issue?)

FL-Sen: It’s official: Charlie Crist wants to lose. He definitively says he won’t run as an independent, “once and for all.” Given the way his statement is worded, though, he could still run as a Democrat.

KY-Sen: Is the Rand Paul money train slowing down? Trey Grayson raised $733K in Q1, topping Paul’s $630K. Given that Paul is the only Paulist running much of a campaign this cycle, I’m wondering why his freakazoid coterie hasn’t raised more for him. What’s more, Grayson is touting an internal poll from Jan van Lohuizen showing him with a narrow 39-37 primary lead – the first time we’ve seen a good poll for Grayson in some time. This is a case when I’d expect Paul to produce a dueling internal – if he has a decent one.

NV-Sen: I got awful tired of this kind of story after Mark Sanford managed not to resign despite multiple stories, week after week, of people “pressuring” him to quit. So the fact that a couple of Republican semi-bigs in NV want John Ensign to go don’t impress-a me much. You want to get someone to drop out, you need to threaten to support a credible primary challenger and cut off their fundraising. And hell, even that doesn’t always work. (Just look at Gov. Jim Gibbons!)

UT-Sen: Looks like Sen. Bob Bennett is ignoring his job in order to try and save it. Congress is on a recess right now and will reconvene next week, but Bennett is going to stay behind in Utah to campaign until the May 8th GOP caucus. While Bennett probably can’t get the 60% of convention votes he would need to secure the Republican nomination, he can try to block someone else from doing so, thus forcing a primary in June.

FL-Gov: Alex Sink has parted ways with her campaign manager, Paul Dunn, who came on board last year after managing Rep. Suzanne Kosmas’s 2008 campaign. “Longtime Sink confidante” Jim Cassady will take over the helm.

CA-36: Marcy Winograd, challenging Rep. Jane Harman in the primary, succeeded in denying Harman the “pre-endorsement” of the California Democratic Party by collecting 300 delegate signatures. Now the fight for the party’s endorsement goes to the floor of the state convention, which meets in L.A. next week. Winograd can still fight on to the June primary regardless of what happens with the endorsement, though.

GA-08: Some Paulist is dropping out of the GOP primary to spend more time with her gold bullion. Valerie Meyers says she won’t continue in the race to challenge Dem Rep. Jim Marshall. WMAZ (click the link) has a good primer on who else is still in the running.

HI-01: The Asian American Action Fund, a pro-Dem group, is slamming the DCCC for getting involved in the race, and particularly for siding with the white guy. The organization isn’t hesitating to point out that Hawaii’s 1st CD is 58% Asian and Pacific Islander. Meanwhile, Republican Charles Djou is – as James Hell envisaged – attacking the DCCC as a “mainland group” and criticizing its “outside interference.” If Djou’s framing takes hold, it’s possible that both Colleen Hanabusa and Ed Case will get tainted as a result. That would be just great – and eminently predictable. (BTW, Hanabusa says she raised $450K in Q1.)

PA-04: Labor leader Jack Shea, who had been considering a write-in or independent challenge to Dem Rep. Jason Altmire on account of his vote against healthcare reform, has decided against a run.

PA-08: Zoiks! Republican Mike Fitzpatrick’s campaign tells PoliticsPA that they raised $500K in just two months. Fitzpatrick is trying to win his seat back from Rep. Patrick Murphy.

PA-12: A source tells the Hill that the NRCC plans to go up with some TV ads in the special election to fill Jack Murtha’s seat. Aaron Blake recites my favorite line, though: “There is no indication as to the size of the NRCC buy.” They’ll have to file an independent expenditure report soon enough, though (if this buy is for real).

TN-08: Somewhere in the Sonoran Desert, John McCain’s head just exploded. That’s because one Robert Kirkland just filed an independent expenditure report… on behalf of his brother, Ronald. What hath McCain-Feingold wrought? Now these two can’t even speak to one another at the family Fourth of July barbecue!

WV-01: Some fundraising numbers from Republican candidates in West Virginia. David McKinley says he’s raised $300K, while Sarah Minear has raised $272K (but a quarter mil of that was a self-loan). Mac Warner, a third candidate, hasn’t released any nums yet.

North Carolina: SEIU says it’s trying to form a new third party in NC, called North Carolina First, with the goal of running candidates in this fall’s elections. The Tarheel State is home to three Dems who voted “no” on healthcare reform: Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell. SSP rates Shuler and Kissell as Likely Dem and McIntyre as Safe Dem, but a third-party challenge from the left could of course alter that calculus.

Data: A new site called Transparency Data is offering contributor data for the last twenty years… for federal and state races. Looks like a good one to bookmark.

• IN-Sen: The Dan Coats rollout is turning into more of a field day for Democratic opposition researchers than the strike-fear-in-the-hearts-of-Democrats moment that Republicans may have hoped for. I’m not even sure what to lead off with… that Coats dissed his own state, saying that North Carolina, where he intended to retire, was a “better place” than Indiana (although Coats’ spokesperson is now saying that Coats intends to “do his part” and sell his $1.8 million waterfront house in Wilmington, NC)… or that Coats has been active in lobbying on behalf of foreign powers, representing India himself, while his firm was lobbying on behalf of extremist hotbed Yemen. I’m starting to wonder if the GOP would actually be better off sticking with the somewhat nuttier and flakier John Hostettler, who isn’t stepping aside for Coats. While Hostettler won’t have Coats’ Beltway money, he at least has the profile to keep the various right-wing weirdo elements (teabaggers, Paulists, the religious right) at fever pitch.

• NV-Sen: I’m not sure which is more of an overstuffed clown car: the Republican Senate field in Arkansas, or Nevada. It looks like one more GOPer may join the fun in Nevada: retired Navy commander Kirk Lippold, whose main claim to fame is commanding the USS Cole when it was attacked (in Yemen).

• NY-Sen: TV talking head and economic conservative Larry Kudlow is “80 or 90%” likely to run against Charles Schumer, according to Kudlow ally John Lakian. Even if he runs, though, it sounds like Kudlow is in no hurry to decide (he wants to keep his TV show as long as possible, which he’d have to give up if he became a candidate). This isn’t the first time Kudlow, a veteran of the Reagan White House, has been the subject of Senate speculation; he was considered a Senate contender way back in the early 90s, before getting derailed by drug and alcohol problems.

• NY-Sen-B: Kirsten Gillibrand is taking aim at Harold Ford Jr.’s associations with Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America. Ford’s camp has had little to say after Gillibrand called for Ford to disclose details of his Merrill Lynch bonuses. Ford, in the meantime, is busy comparing himself to Robert F. Kennedy. How? Well, the liberal establishment opposed him too… or at least Eleanor Roosevelt did… or at least she would have, if she hadn’t in fact died several years before he ran for Senate.

• PA-Sen: Arlen Specter got the endorsement of the statewide Democratic party committee over the weekend, winning a solid majority of the votes, underscoring his establishment support. (Of course, one of his biggest establishment supporters, Ed Rendell, lost the state party’s 2002 endorsement in the gubernatorial race to Bob Casey and went on to win the primary anyway.) Part of the proceedings was a feisty debate between Specter and Joe Sestak, with Specter going hard after Sestak’s number of missed votes in the House recently.

• WA-Sen: Republicans got at least something of an upgrade in the Senate race against Patty Murray: long-time state Sen. Don Benton decided to get into the race. (The best they had so far was ex-NFL player and current teabagger Clint Didier.) Benton has represented the Vancouver suburbs for many years; in fact, his biggest claim to fame is narrowly losing the WA-03 open seat race to Brian Baird way back in 1998. In fact, I’m a little surprised he isn’t looking to the again-open 3rd if he’s going for an upgrade, where he would have a good chance at shoving aside the other less-known GOPers in the field, whereas he faces long odds against Murray unless things go completely kerflooey for the Democrats. Unfortunately, the race is a freebie for Benton; he isn’t up for re-election in 2010, so Dems won’t get a shot at his swingy Senate seat in LD 17. It remains to be seen whether Benton got an official behind-the-scenes green light after nobody better (Dino Rossi, Dave Reichert) was interested in the race, or just that Benton decided to roll the dice regardless.

• RI-Gov: A poll by Fleming & Associates on behalf of WPRI finds that a race between independent ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee and Democratic state treasurer Frank Caprio is a dead heat: Chafee pulls in 31 and Caprio is at 30, with Republican candidate John Robitaille flailing at 13. AG Patrick Lynch, the other possible Dem nominee, doesn’t fare as well; he loses to Chafee 34-23, with Robitaille at 18.

• HI-01: Hawaii Democrats have avoided a potential problem with the decision of state Sen. Will Espero not to get involved in the still-not-scheduled special election in the 1st. Under Hawaii law, the special election is an all-party, winner-take-all affair, so the worries have been that with two prominent Dems already in the race, a fractured field could allow Republican Charles Djou to sneak through (although the one poll of the race seems to disabuse us of that notion). Neil Abercrombie’s resignation is now scheduled for Feb. 28.

• KS-03: Democrats are pretty much at square one in trying to find a nominee to replace retiring Rep. Dennis Moore. Joe Reardon had been pretty much everyone’s top pick, but Reardon, whose official title is “Mayor/CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas,” won’t run. With his mayoral predecessor, Carol Marinovich, also taking a pass, this R+3 seat seems on track to be one of the Dems’ likeliest losses – although Reardon’s demurral may open the door to a candidate from suburban Johnson County instead, which may still work out better since that’s where most of the district’s votes are.

• LA-03: “Entrepreneur” Chris Leopold filed to get into the GOP field in the open seat race in the 3rd, but what may be most noteworthy here is who all hasn’t filed. Attorney Ravi Sangisetty is the only Dem, and while Leopold’s entry brings the GOP field up to 4, the only elected official is state Rep. Nickie Monica. The GOP establishment still seems to be waiting on Hunt Downer, the former state House speaker and current assistant adjutant general of the state’s National Guard. The problem is that few people seem interested in a two-year stint in the House, only to see the 3rd get vaporized due to Louisiana losing a seat for 2012.

• MS-01: Here’s a strange development, considering how much effort the NRCC spent to clear the path for state Sen. Alan Nunnelee: Fox News commentator Angela McGlowan will be running in the GOP primary too. McGlowan kicked off her bid with an appearance at Teabag-o-rama in Nashville this weekend. It looks like the Republican establishment will be trying to prevent McGlowan from getting any traction, as they privately point to her various negatives: having lobbied for Steve Wynn’s gambling empire (not a popular issue in this heavily evangelical area), and claiming an opposition research treasure trove from her past interviews. There’s also a geographical problem: her base (not that a base really matters, as she’s spent little time in the state in years) is the college town of Oxford, which puts her in neither bloc in terms of the Memphis suburbs/Tupelo split in the district.

• NH-01: Former NRC committee member Sean Mahoney, who had earlier thought about and then ruled out a run in the GOP field, is starting to sound interested again. Mahoney (who lost the NH-01 GOP primary in 2002 to Jeb Bradley) dropped out when the NRCC seemed content with Manchester mayor Frank Guinta, but with Guinta’s star fading the wake of mediocre fundraising, he may sense an opening. Compounding that is the recent entry into the primary by businessman Rich Ashooh; Guinta and Ashooh are both from Manchester, so the Portsmouth-based Mahoney may think he can ride the geographical split to victory.

• PA-03: Democratic freshman Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper keeps attracting random money bags challengers, even as none of the district’s elected Republicans seem interested in a promotion. Today it’s yet another one of those freakin’ ophthalmologists: Tom Trevorrow, who kicked off his campaign with $150K out of his own pocket and hired some expensive-sounding consultants.

• SC-01: A swap in races in South Carolina means that there’s the plausible possibility of the Republicans having their first African-American House member since J.C. Watts retired. State Rep. Tim Scott dropped his bid to become the next Lt. Governor, and instead switched over to the open seat race in the 1st, where he’ll face the scions of two prominent political families: Paul Thurmond, and Carroll “Tumpy” Campbell III.

• Minnesota: Minnesota lawmakers are moving up the primary date this fall, in order to better comply with federal law that requires overseas voters get at least 45 days to return their absentee ballots. They’re planning to move the election from September, up to Aug. 10. (This is probably good, in terms of giving the winner of the DFL gubernatorial primary more time to recover from what’s likely to be a giant clusterf@ck.)

• NRCC: The NRCC will unveil more changes to its “Young Guns” program this week, with 14 new entrants to its lowest tier (“On the Radar”) and some promotions to higher tiers as well. They aren’t releasing the full list yet, but some leaked names moving onto the list include state Rep. Scott Bruun in OR-05, former state Rep. David McKinley in WV-01, and ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in PA-08. We’ll discuss this in more detail once the full list is available.