Tag: Bill Binnie

…and that’s good enough for me; I hope that’s good enough for you, too!

Two quick ones today, one of New Hampshire and one of DC.

First, New Hampshire:

Green for Ayotte, red for Ovide. Binnie and Bender each won exactly one town, Binnie’s down on the Massachusetts line (blue) and Bender’s way up in Coos County (purple). As you can tell, Lamontagne did very well in the cluster around Manchester.

Second, DC, but let’s play a game.

Pop quiz for all you hotshots – what are the following maps?

Hard to tell, right? Answer over the flip.

Stephen Colbert’s not far off when he described DC as the “Chocolate City with Marshmallow Center”, though it might more accurately be termed, the Chocolate East half and the Marshmallow West half…but that, of course, isn’t as catchy.

The map on the left is the percentage of the population that was Black at the 2000 census by block group (blue being a lower%); the map on the right is the margin between Fenty and Gray by precinct (blue for Fenty, red for Gray). Two larger versions below, with the color scale modified (darker green indicating a higher percentage of African-Americans)…the correlation is quite stunning.

• AK-Sen: Lisa Murkowski is still mum on the prospects of a write-in run, but this looks like a potentially important tea leaf: she isn’t returning to the Beltway as the Senate goes back into session, but is remaining in Alaska attending to… something. Maybe it’s the grieving process, but it’s also shades of how Bob Bennett behaved while he weighed his post-primary recourse. And while this hadn’t looked likely in a week, Libertarian candidate David Haase confirmed he won’t step down to make way for Murkowski on the Libertarian line… so it’s write-in or bust for her.

• DE-Sen: With everyone abuzz over last night’s PPP poll giving Christine O’Donnell an improbable lead in the GOP primary, there’s word today of a Mike Castle internal giving him a 7-point lead (it’s buried deep in this Politico article, with no further details). PPP has some further thoughts on their poll, pointing out that in some ways Castle might be in worse shape than Lisa Murkowski going into the primary: his faves among GOP voters were 43/47, compared with Murk’s 48/46, and 55% thought he was too liberal, compared to 47% in Alaska. At any rate, the right wing is still engaged in full court press on O’Donnell’s behalf, though, with Sarah Palin cutting a radio ad for her. And if you’re like me, you were spending a lot of time last night trying to mentally ballpark how big an impact on an O’Donnell win would have on overall odds of retaining the Senate… well, don’t worry, because Nate Silver has already figured it out for you.

• ME-Sen: So after Murkowski and Castle, which GOPer is next on the chopping block? Looks like it’s Olympia Snowe, looking ahead to 2012. PPP finds that only 29% of Republicans are committed to backing Snowe in that year’s primary, with 63% saying they’ll back a more conservative alternative. Snowe loses a hypothetical primary matchup with 2006 gubernatorial nominee Chandler Woodcock, 38-33.

• NH-Sen: GOP pollster Magellan is out with a last-minute pre-primary look at the GOP Senate field, and they find the closest result yet for late-surging Ovide Lamontagne. It still doesn’t look likely he can pull out the upset unless somehow an extra week or two of stoppage time got added to the election’s clock (based on the rate at which he’s closing), but he’s within 4. The poll puts it at Kelly Ayotte 35, Lamontagne 31, Bill Binnie 14, Jim Bender 10.

• CO-Gov: Could the Colorado GOP find itself a “minor party” in 2012, mostly just an embarrassment but also something that affects where they’re positioned on the ballot? That’s what would happen if Dan Maes somehow finds himself gaining less than 10% of the vote in November’s gubernatorial race.

• MN-Gov: In a convoluted way, this is likely to help Dem nominee Mark Dayton. The former moderate Republican governor, Arne Carlson, announced that he’s backing the IP nominee, Tom Horner, and will be stumping on his behalf today. That may give some a nice outlet to moderate Republican rank-and-file loath to the too-far-right-for-Minnesota Tom Emmer but who can’t bring themselves to vote DFL.

• OR-Gov: Chris Dudley’s attempts to game the system vis-à-vis the clashing tax structures of Washington and Oregon get dicier the more the media look into it, maybe to the extent of actual tax avoision. (It’s a word. Look it up.) Long story short: he moved his primary residence from Oregon to Washington because Washington doesn’t have income tax (he still had to pay tax on his Trail Blazers salary, but not on capital gains and dividends). However, it’s come to light that not only did he not sell his Portland home, but he just kept on using it at least part-time for years after switching his domicile.

• TX-Gov (pdf): The Texas Tribune is out with another poll of the Texas gubernatorial race via the University of Texas, and they find that while Rick Perry has a decent lead, he’s far from putting the race away yet. Perry leads Dem Bill White 39-33, with 5 for Libertarian Kathie Glass, and 1 for “Green Party” plant Deb Shafto. Dems are losing all the statewide downballot races as well, although Hank Gilbert’s in striking distance in the Agriculture Commissioner race (down 33-26 to Todd Staples).

• LA-02: Despite the warm relations between Barack Obama and GOP Rep. Joe Cao, Obama isn’t going easy on Cao. Obama just gave his endorsement to Dem primary winner Cedric Richmond in a statement last night.

• MD-01: Wow, still no love lost between Wayne Gilchrest and the man who teabagged him to death in the 2008 GOP primary before teabagging was fashionable, Andy Harris. Gilchrest jumped into the fray with an endorsement for Harris’s self-funding primary opponent, Rob Fisher.

• NY-15: Clinton alert, times 4! Hot on the heels of support from Michael Bloomberg for Charlie Rangel ahead of tomorrow’s primary, Bill Clinton (maybe the 15th’s most famous commercial tenant) just cut a robocall on Rangel’s behalf too. The Big Dog is also making campaign appearances in three different gubernatorial races: stumping with Dan Onorato in Pennsylvania today, Mark Dayton in Minnesota tomorrow, and Rory Reid in Nevada on Wednesday.

• DCCC: At SSP, we’re all about The Size Of The Buy, and National Journal has sussed out which of the DCCC’s round of 60 reservations are the biggest ones. There are at least a dozen districts where they’ve reserved $1 million or more: MO-04, NV-03, NH-01, AZ-01, CA-11, AL-02, AZ-05, IN-09, ND-AL, PA-03, and (no surprise here, giving Larry Kissell’s fundraising fail) NC-08. Interestingly, they’re also putting $1.8 million in to FL-25, where they’re on the offensive, a sign of a lot of confidence in Joe Garcia’s chances. (The story also details some investments in big markets where there are multiple races and it’s unclear which races will get the money.)

• AFL-CIO: The AFL-CIO is spending big on a gigantic direct mail binge, hitting 2 million households of members. (They’ll also be making 4 million follow-up phone calls.) The six Senate races involved are NV-Sen, MO-Sen, WI-Sen, IL-Sen, FL-Sen, and PA-Sen; the four gubernatorial races are OR-Gov, OH-Gov, IL-Gov, and MI-Gov. There are also 24 House districts (see the link for more).

• SSP TV:

• NV-Sen: Harry Reid’s newest ad targets Sharron Angle’s “extreme and dangerous” legislative record, focusing on voting against allowing out-of-state restraining orders to be enforced in Nevada

• FL-12: Dennis Ross goes after Dem Lori Edwards, tying her to Obama

• FL-22: Ron Klein moves past the who-cares lien stuff and gets on to the juicy stuff regarding Allen West’s statements about Social Security and Medicare

• MS-01: Another Travis Childers spot goes negative on Alan Nunnelee, hitting him on the regressive “Fair Tax”

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy (D) 46%, Tom Foley (R) 39%

• IL-Gov: Pat Quinn (D-inc) 37%, Bill Brady (R) 50%, Rich Whitney (G) 4%

• SD-Gov: Scott Heidepriem (D) 28%, Dennis Daugaard (R) 57%

Public Policy Polling (9/11-12, likely voters, 4/17-18 in parens):

Kelly Ayotte (R): 37 (43)

Ovide Lamontagne (R): 30 (5)

Bill Binnie (R): 13 (19)

Jim Bender (R): 12 (11)

Tom Alciere (R): 1 (1)

Dennis Lamare (R): 1 (-)

Gerard Beloin (R): 1 (-)

Undecided: 5 (21)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

“Sen. Lamontagne” may be a fridge too far, but there’s no doubt that he’s made a dramatic late run against front-runner Kelly Ayotte. Do you think the Tea Party Express is kicking itself for not making an investment here?

Meanwhile, in the gube race, ex-state HHS director John Stephen leads Jack Kimball by 45-24. No drama there.

• AK-Sen: Wasn’t that Lisa Murkowski announcement about whether she was going to pursue a write-in bid supposed to be yesterday? It never materialized, but we did get some statements from local gadfly and Murkowski ally Andrew Halcro that make it sound pretty likely.

“It’s going to be the kind of campaign you should have seen in the primary,” said Andrew Halcro, an Alaska political consultant who is a longtime friend of the senator. “It’s going to be no-holds-barred, pedal-to-the-metal stuff.”

• DE-Sen: After putting out a public wish for real Sarah Palin backing instead of just a cryptic retweet, Christine O’Donnell finally got her wish yesterday. O’Donnell got added to the gigantic list of Mama Grizzlies yesterday during a Palin appearance on Sean Hannity’s show. The real question, though, is it too little too late? It might help raise some funds this weekend, but it smells a little like Palin’s 5 pm-on-Tuesday endorsement of “Angela McGowen.” Meanwhile, O’Donnell seems to be doing everything she can to dance right up to the edge of calling Castle gay without going over it: she just blasted his campaign tactics as “unmanly” and also telling him “get your man-pants on.”

• ME-Sen: PPP’s poll of Maine has some buried details that should lead to some soul-searching for Olympia Snowe, who could be headed down Arlen Specter Boulevard if the right-wing decides to wade into her 2012 GOP primary. (Or she might take the opportunity to retire.) Overall, she’s fairly popular at 50/40, but that’s based on 59/29 among Democrats. She’s only at 40/51 among Republicans, and by a 50-37 margin, Republicans say she really should be a Democrat. Susan Collins sports similar numbers, although she has until 2014 to deal with that, by which point the Tea Party thing may be a footnote in AP US History textbooks. PPP says they’ll have 2012 hypothetical Senate matchups out on Monday. (One other note: they find opinions on gay marriage basically unchanged since last November’s referendum: 43 in favor, 49 against.)

• NH-Sen: Once he got the Manchester Union-Leader’s backing, that led to a lot of speculation that Ovide Lamontagne (as he did in the 1996 GOP gubernatorial primary) would close fast. It looks like that’s happening: he’s out with an internal poll showing himself only 10 points behind Kelly Ayotte. He trails Ayotte 34-24, with Bill Binnie (considered the real threat to Ayotte until the last couple weeks) tied at 12 with Jim Bender. It’s very close to the Magellan poll that came out last week giving Ayotte a 13-point lead. I wonder if Lamontagne would actually be able to pull out the upset if the Tea Party Express had decided to weigh in here for Lamontagne, instead of in their likely-futile efforts in Delaware?

• NV-Sen: Ralston smash! The intrepid political reporter is on a rampage across the twittersphere today, after Sharron Angle previously said on Jon Ralston’s TV program “Face to Face” that she wanted to debate Harry Reid there, then arranged the debate, and then yesterday abruptly canceled the Oct. 21 shindig. The two will still meet in an Oct. 14 debate, which should be one of the most popcorn-worthy events of the year.

• OH-Sen: Who let the Big Dog out? Bill Clinton, who’ll be in Ohio soon shoring up Ted Strickland’s gubernatorial bid, will also hold a fundraiser on behalf of another long-time ally, Lee Fisher.

• MI-Gov: Another day, another poll showing the Michigan gubernatorial race looking DOA. The newest poll by the Glengariff Group for the Detroit News gives Republican Rick Snyder a 56-36 lead over Virg Bernero.

• VT-Gov: With the numbers having barely budged after the recount in the Democratic primary (the gap between Peter Shumlin and runner-up Doug Racine widened by 6 votes, all the way up to a whopping 203-vote margin), Racine conceded today. Shumlin, the state Senate president pro tem, will face GOP Lt. Governor Brian Dubie in the general.

• CO-04: I’m tempted to put this in the “good news” file, inasmuch as she isn’t getting blown out as conventional wisdom would assume: the Betsy Markey campaign rolled out an internal poll, from Bennett, Petts, and Normington, that shows her in a 38-38 tie with Republican Cory Gardner (with 7% going to assorted third-party candidates). However, feeling like you need to release your own internal that’s a tie doesn’t exactly seem like a big sign of confidence…

• IA-01, IA-02, IA-03: On the other hand, here’s a poll, considering the source, that’s pretty clear “good news” for Leonard Boswell. A poll for the conservative American Future Fund (who commissioned that avalanche of Whit Ayers polls), this time by Voter/Consumer Research, found Boswell leading Brad Zaun 48-39. That’s a complete reversal from Zaun’s couple of internals. Still, they have numbers from the 1st and 2nd that show that we need to keep at least one wary eye on these sleepy races: Bruce Braley leads Ben Lange 50-39 in the 1st, while David Loebsack leads Mariannette Miller-Meeks 47-39 in the 2nd (not far off from the one internal that MMM leaked).

• NH-01: This is interesting: the state Democratic party is out with two different mailers in the 1st, attacking Sean Mahoney. There’s just one catch… Mahoney isn’t the GOP nominee yet, and we won’t know if he is or not until Tuesday, when he faces off with ex-Manchester mayor Frank Guinta. It’s unclear whether they have info leading them to believe Mahoney has the nomination locked down, or if they’d trying to sandbag Mahoney pre-primary so that the heavily-baggage-laden Guinta (about whom the ads write themselves) wins.

• NY-13: With a lot of people in local GOP circles still holding ex-Rep. Vito Fossella in high esteem (despite his boo-hoo-funny fall from grace), this is one endorsement that may carry a lot of weight as we race toward the conclusion of the GOP primary in the 13th. Fossella gave his backing to Michael Allegretti. That sets up a showdown with the other big power behind the throne in this district: Staten Island borough president Guy Molinari is backing Michael Grimm.

• OK-02: If we have to worry about this race, geez, better start making camel reservations for our 40 years in the desert. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear that we don’t have to worry about this race. Dan Boren is out with an internal poll, via Myers Research, that gives a jumbo-sized 34-point lead over little-known GOPer Charles Thompson: 65-31.

• Mayors: In sharp contrast to yesterday’s We Ask America poll of the Chicago mayoral race, today’s Sun-Times poll finds Rahm Emanuel just one of the crowd, in high single digits. This poll finds Cook Co. Sheriff Tom Dart leading at 12, with state Sen. James Meeks at 10. Luis Gutierrez is at 9, Jesse Jackson Jr. is at 8, and Emanuel is at 7. “Don’t know” led the way at 35.

• DSCC: Jeremy Jacobs, the man who always seems to know the Size Of The Buy, is out with a helpful breakdown of where the DSCC has made its $18 million worth of reservations so far. Right now, it’s $1.6 million in Kentucky, $5.1 million in Missouri, $5.2 million in Pennsylvania, $4 million in Colorado, and $2 million in Washington.

• NRCC: The NRCC, currently only running independent expenditures ads in one district (IN-02), rolled out a list of ten more districts where it’ll start paying for ads. They’re staying on the air there, plus adding AL-02, AZ-01, CA-11, FL-02, KY-06, MS-01, TN-08, TX-17, VA-05, and WI-07. (The only “surprise,” inasmuch as it wasn’t on the NRCC’s big list of 40 districts from last month, is AZ-01.)

• SSP TV:

• IL-Sen: Not one but two ads from Mark Kirk, one touting his independence and the other attacking Alexi Giannoulias on taxes, but maybe more importantly, trying to lash him to the increasingly-anchor-like Pat Quinn

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman’s new anti-Jerry Brown ad cleverly lets Bill Clinton do most of the talking, with highlights from the 1992 Democratic presidential primary campaign

• WI-Gov: Tom Barrett, who’s been fairly modest so far about having gotten badly beaten while intervening in a domestic dispute last year, is finally playing the “hero card” with his new ad

• NM-01: Anti-Martin Heinrich ad from American Future Fund, focusing on the Pelosi boogeyman; it’s the first IE in the district and a $250K buy for four weeks

• TN-08: Dueling ads in the 8th, with two Roy Herron ads out (one a positive bio spot, the other an anti-Stephen Fincher spot aimed at his campaign finance disclosure foibles… together they’re a “six-figure” buy for the next week), and an anti-Herron ad from the 60 Plus Association (the AARP’s anti-HCR doppelganger), who’re spending $500K on the buy.

• IE tracker:

• DE-Sen: Tea Party Express spending $72K on media buys, direct mail, and e-mail blast for Christine O’Donnell

• MO-Sen: AFSCME spending $43K on anti-Roy Blunt mailer

• NV-Sen: Patriot Majority spending $309K on new ad against Sharron Angle

• NV-Sen: Patriot Majority spending another $49K on another anti-Sharron Angle ad titled “Oye, Sharron” (a Spanish-language market ad, maybe?)

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 53%, Linda McMahon (R) 44%

• NC-Sen: Elaine Marshall (D) 38%, Richard Burr (R-inc) 54%

• OR-Gov: John Kitzhaber (D) 44%, Chris Dudley (R) 49%

• SD-AL: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc) 47%, Kristi Noem (R) 45%

AK-Sen: On the topic of Lisa Murkowski’s declaration that she’s “still in this game” and her outreach efforts to a polite but seemingly unenthused Alaska Libertarian Party, The Mudflats sums up the situation pretty well:

   * She’s not technically in the race right now

   * She’s not out of the race

   * She’s not a quitter

   * She is who she is

   * She will likely not run as a Libertarian

   * She will likely not run as a write-in

   * She doesn’t know what she’s doing

NH-Sen: Businessman Bill Binnie is throwing down another $500K of his own money, with the GOP primary just a week in the way. Though ex-AG Kelly Ayotte leads in what little polling there’s been, I think this race is still up for grabs.

NV-Sen: The LVRJ has a detailed profile on Sharron Angle’s tumultuous years in the state Assembly, where votes in the 42-member body were often “41 to Angle.”

CO-Gov: Some Colorado Republicans are suing to try to knock Tom Tancredo off the ballot, saying his candidacy violates the American Constitution Party’s bylaws. Even if they’re right, I wonder if they have standing.

FL-08: Alan Grayson claims he raised half a million bucks in August, and says he has more than a million on hand, despite prepaying for a bunch of television advertising.

FL-24: GOPer Sandy Adams (and the NRCC, apparently) are touting a Public Opinion Strategies internal which has her leading Rep. Suzanne Kosmas 49-37.

HI-01: Colleen Hanabusa outraised Rep. Charles Djou in the pre-primary fundraising period, $330K to $206K. But Djou has slightly more cash on hand, $428K to $404K.

NY-14: Some Democrat she is. When asked by a reporter if she would vote for her opponent – not even endorse, just vote – in the general if she lost the primary, Reshma Saujani said she “didn’t know” whether she would pull the lever for Rep. Carolyn Maloney. I’ve been adamantly opposed to Saujani’s candidacy since I first learned about her, and with good reason. But this may be the most disgusting thing she’s said so far. How can I possibly trust the Democratic bona fides of someone who can’t even say if she’ll vote Democrat in her own district? And no, her campaign’s belated attempt to claim she’ll “vote a straight ticket” does not assuage me in the least. When the cameras were rolling and the pressure was on, Saujani admitted she wasn’t a team player. We don’t need people like her in Congress.

Turnout (PDF): According to data compiled by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, the “average percentage of eligible citizens who voted in the primaries of each major political party” shows more a greater share of Republicans voting in primaries this year than Dems for the first time since 1930. Of course, 1930 was a pretty good year for Dems… but the trendlines are not inspiring.

SSP TV:

GA-Sen: GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson, not a guy you traditionally think of as being endangered (if you’ve ever even heard of him) touts his conservative record

NH-Sen: Paul Hodes compares Washington to… a hot dog eating contest

NV-Sen: Harry Reid continues to produce some of the best negative ads of the cycle

OH-Sen: We mentioned this ad in yesterday’s digest, wherein Lee Fisher sez: “Congressman Rob Portman knows how to grow the economy… in China!” Our update is that a GOPer says the buy is for $1.4 million and that the ad is running in Columbus and northern OH

FL-Gov: Alex Sink responds to Rick Scott’s attack ads, which she says are all about Obama, not Florida

CA-11: Jerry McNerney’s first ad, touting his support for veterans’ causes (I like that he has an actual veteran do the talking – much better than the usual candidate bragging or hackneyed voiceover)

CA-45: Dem Steve Pougnet is on the air with his first ad, kicking off a reported $100K/week TV & radio ad blitz from now through election day

CO-04: Betsy Markey has an anti-spending spot

NM-01: Republican Jon Barela has an ad complaining about the debt

NM-02: Harry Teague is up with his first ad of the cycle, a surprisingly authentic 60-second spot that’s worth watching

NM-02: Meanwhile, Americans for Job Security hits Teague over his vote for cap-and-trade (a “one-week” buy)

NY-02: If Steve Israel is worried enough to go up on the air….

VA-02: Glenn Nye touts his work to keep an aircraft carrier at Hampton Roads

CT-Sen: Obama alert! The POTUS is going to do a fundraiser in Stamford for Dick Blumenthal on Sept. 16th, the same day he was already scheduled to do a DNC event in Greenwich. Sorry to get all emo on you again, but if even Dick Blumenthal needs Obama’s help….

DE-Sen: It’s the battle of the sketchy polls! The Tea Party Express is touting a survey which supposedly shows Mike Castle up just 44-38 in the Republican primary over Christine O’Donnell. (Actually, they say Castle is at “43.7%” – too many significant digits is a classic sign of sketchiness.) Meanwhile, the Fix claims that “Internal GOP polling conducted last week showed Castle with a margin of nearly 20 points over O’Donnell.” Anyhow, the TPX has no plans to evacuate in their moment of… well, we’ll see if it’s their moment of triumph… despite a surge of new questions about O’Donnell’s fitness as a candidate. Among other things: Former aides say she never paid promised salaries on her 2008 campaign against Joe Biden, and she just received her degree from Farleigh Dickinson University last week, despite having attended 17 years ago and having repeatedly described herself as a graduate. Come on, baby, hold together!

IL-Sen: Amanda Terkel has spotted a trend among Mark Kirk’s public statements: He can’t shut up about the economic crisis in Greece – and Terkel thinks Kirk is attempting to link Alexi Giannoulias (who is of Greek descent) to the meltdown. Perhaps most egregious is Kirk’s statement that while he “wore a U.S. Navy uniform, Alexi Giannoulias wore a basketball uniform in Greece.” Really? That last part is relevant? A pretty ugly example of “othering.”

LA-Sen: A little bit of Cajun-flavored cat fud: Gov. Bobby Jindal won’t endorse Sen. David Vitter in his re-election campaign. Jindal claims he doesn’t get involved in federal races, but WDSU has two very recent examples to the contrary. Anyhow, I can’t think of too many sitting governors who haven’t endorsed same-party, same-state senators, can you?

NH-Sen: Finally, a survey of the severely under-polled GOP senate primary in New Hampshire – though it’s from Republican pollster Magellan, who likes to do Rasmussen-style one-day samples (a methodology that I think it’s fair to say is not a best practice). Anyhow, here are the results (9/1, likely voters, May in parens):

Kelly Ayotte (R): 34 (38)

Ovide Lamontagne (R) : 21 (9)

Bill Binnie (R) : 17 (29)

Jim Bender (R) : 13 (4)

Other: 4 (4)

Undecided: 11 (15)

(MoE: ±3.3%)

UT-Sen: The battle for Orrin Hatch’s senate seat – which won’t take place until 2012 – is already getting ugly. Hatch is claiming that freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (who, you’ll recall, already knocked off one sitting incumbent at a state convention in 2008) promised him he wouldn’t challenge him next cycle. Chaffetz says he only pledged not to run against Sen. Bob Bennett, who of course already lost earlier this year. A Hatch spokesbot took off the gloves in response, saying: “Senator Hatch takes very seriously the principle of keeping his word. Of course, I suppose Jason can break it any time he wants to.”

WV-Sen: Robert Byrd’s family is excoriating self-funding Republican John Raese for using a photo of Dem Joe Manchin and President Obama that was taken at Byrd’s memorial service earlier this year in an attack ad. Raese’s campaign manager said, “That’s a stock photo. We had no idea it was from the memorial service.” Well, now you know.

AZ-Gov: Does this statement remind you of O.J. Simpson’s ill-fated “hypothetical” book, If I Did It? Because that was the first thing I thought of:

“That was an error, if I said that,” Brewer said about beheadings occurring in Arizona.

AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick is out with her first ad of the cycle, a pretty dull positive spot about how she donated 5% of her congressional salary… national treasury… opposed bailout… etc., etc. Ordinarily I’d just relegate this to our ad roundup at the bottom of the digest, but I also wanted to point out this great observation from SSP’s own Johnny Longtorso: namely, the fact that the Navajo Nation (the largest Indian tribe in the United States) is holding its presidential election this fall, which may help Kirkpatrick on the turnout front. (Indians vote heavily Dem.) According to Wikipedia, some 130,000 Navajo live within the nation’s boundaries in Arizona (it also includes parts of Utah and New Mexico), almost all of which is contained within the 1st CD.

AZ-08: You know how the WWF tried to become the WWE? Well, true hardcore wingnuts aren’t content with (the bad kind of) SSP – they want SSE: Social Security elimination. Given how toxic this is in the real world (i.e., for the 99.999% of people who have never heard of John Galt), it’s no wonder that Republican nominee Jesse Kelly now say he wants to “protect” Social Security. Good luck getting past statements like this one, from just last year: “If you have any ideas on that, I’m all ears. I would love to eliminate the program.”

IA-01: This doesn’t seem like a positive sign to me. Bruce Braley is going on the air with an ad (watch it here) hitting back against an outside group’s attack ad – not something a candidate in an apparently “Safe D” race ordinarily feels a need to do. The group, American Future Fund, is accusing Braley of “supporting” the Park51 community center, though Braley has taken the standard “don’t wanna deal with it” approach of calling it a local zoning issue for NYC. On the flipside, I’ll take it as a good sign that Braley doesn’t plan to get Martha Coakley’d. (Though doesn’t it sound like Braley’s “I approve this message” was recorded via cell phone? Does that mean the ad was rushed on to the air?) NWOTSOTB for Braley, though AAF claims it has spent $50K and plans to spend more.

IN-03: A common theme rears its head once more: A Republican rails loudly against bailouts, but it turns out he’s been the beneficiary of government largesse himself. In this case, Dem Tom Hayhurst has been attacking GOPer Marlin Stutzman for accepting $180K in agricultural subsidies since 1995. But as the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reports, just last month Stutzman said: “It’s time to get rid of farm subsidies. The subsidies only manipulate the market.”

KS-04: You know, we always love reporting on cat fud for cat fud’s sake. Sometimes it’s just a whiff, but other times, the cat fud can really stink up a race. Case in point: Mike Pompeo, a top competitor for GOP Dickbag of the Year, wasn’t endorsed by any of the candidates he beat in the Republican primary, and even refused to return phone calls from his opponents. Now, the cats are coming home to roost, because one of those opponents, rich guy Wink Hartman, is considering re-entering the race on the Libertarian Party line. (The Lib candidate dropped out of the race for health reasons.) Hartman, who spent almost $1.6 million of his own money on the primary, notably includes among his reasons for wanting to get back in the game the fact that Pompeo “misrepresented Hartman’s pro-life position and residency.” The Libertarians have until Sept. 20th to decide whether to tap Hartman. In any event, this could provide a huge boost to Dem Raj Goyle, who appears to be in a surprisingly good position to stage an upset.

LA-03: In an unusual move, the Louisiana state Republican Party has formally endorsed Jeff Landry over Hunt Downer in the runoff. State parties don’t typically take sides in primaries like this, but it sounds like the powers that be are eager to see Downer bail, rather than prolong the race all the way until October 3rd. I personally suspect that Downer has no chance in the second round, and I think he’ll wind up playing Kevin Calvey to Landry’s Jim Lankford. (Check out our OK-05 tag if the analogy isn’t ringing any bells.)

NC-11: Heh – looks like Heath Shuler’s suggesting he could run for Speaker of the House, clearly as a way to distance himself from Nancy Pelosi. Shuler also claimed that cats eventually turn into dogs.

NH-02: Nice – progressive fave Ann McLane Kuster raised $223K in her pre-primary report (7/1-8/25), totally kicking the asses of all the other major candidates (Katrina Swett (D): $37K, Charlie Bass (R): $57K, Jennifer Horn (R): $39K). As for cash, it goes Kuster: $450K, Swett: $798K, Bass: $312K, Horn: $32K. Even better news: Kuster is touting an internal poll from the Mellman Group showing her with a commanding 47-24 lead over Swett in the primary, which is Sept. 14th.

NY-20, NY-23: Rahm Emanuel is headlining a joint fundraiser on Sept. 19th for two upstate Dems: Scott Murphy of the 20th CD and Bill Owens of the 23rd. Murphy has $1.5 million on hand but Owens has only $600K.

PA-06: A nasty bit of racial ugliness from the campaign of Jim Gerlach. Said a spokesman about Dem opponent Manan Trivedi: “The only one who has played the race card here is him, by going to Indian-American groups to raise money.”

SC-02: The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating Rep. Joe Wilson’s trips abroad – at least thirty over the last eight years – and his per diem spending habits. Wilson is a prolific traveler on the taxpayer’s dime, ranking 29th among current House members and 39th among 734 members who’ve served since 1994, according to The State. Wilson has tried to downplay prior reports of the probe, claiming it was only about $12 spent on some cheap mementos from Afghanistan, but that’s evidently not the case. Meanwhile, Dem Rob Miller has a new ad out hitting Wilson for his support of CAFTA. Check it out – I think it’s pretty effective.

VA-05: In a move that vaguely brings to mind Carl Mumpower, teabagger Jeffrey Clark said he’d withdraw from the race if the party or parties responsible for disseminating information about his financial history came forward to claim responsibility. Dem Tom Perriello’s campaign said it wasn’t them, but Republican Rob Hurt wouldn’t say anything, so Clark says he’s staying in the race. Feel the Mumpower!

OH-AG: Wrapping up some odds-and-ends from their recent Ohio poll, PPP find ex-Sen. Mike DeWine leading incumbent Dem AG Richard Cordray 44-40.

DCCC: Another day, another triage story. This time, the NYT claims that “party leaders are preparing a brutal triage of their own members in hopes of saving enough seats to keep a slim grip on the majority.” And while they don’t have an actual quote from him, the Times claims Chris Van Hollen “conceded” that Dems “would ultimately cut loose members who had not gained ground.” In response, reports The Hill:

Van Hollen released a statement saying that the story “erroneously” said that the DCCC would redirect resources to two dozen viable campaigns if a review in the next two weeks showed that vulnerables weren’t gaining ground.

I have to wonder: Did the NYT really get Van Hollen wrong here, or is CVH deliberately trying to send mixed messages in order to motivate his troops through fear?

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon’s gotta be wondering why all those former employees couldn’t wait until after the November election to up and die. With the death two weeks ago of Lance McNaught still in the news, another WWE star, Luna Vachon, died over the weekend. An autopsy is scheduled, but the WWE paid for rehab for substance abuse for Vachon last year.

• KY-Sen: Democrat Jack Conway’s out with his first TV ad for the general election. The ad buy, touting Conway’s work against prescription drug abuse and child pornography as AG, is for about $150K. Meanwhile, Rep. Ron Paul is out with a doozy of a legislative proposal: to audit the nation’s gold reserves. As with many things that come out of the gray area between ultra-libertarianism and black helicopters-territory, the “huh? why?” part is best answered by reading the comments on the article, which apparently suggest that our nation’s gold supply actually been given away as collateral on all our debt to commercial banks/our Chinese overlords/the UN/the Bavarian Illuminati. Why is this getting filed under KY-Sen? Partly because those reserves are (allegedly!!!!1!) in Kentucky at Fort Knox, but also because at some point Rand Paul is going to inevitably get called on the carpet to say whether he agrees with dad’s latest scheme.

• NC-Sen: Civitas is out with a new poll of the Senate race in the Tar Heel State, but it’s an odd little critter, only polling “unaffiliated” voters. They seem to mirror the larger split statewide, with Richard Burr leading Elaine Marshall 39-32 (with 7 for Libertarian Michael Beitler). 34% of respondents had still never heard of Marshall. Burr is also out with his first TV ad of the cycle, focusing on his down-home-ness, presumably to ward off the “gone Washington” problem that sank Elizabeth Dole two years ago. The buy is for $578K (click the link to see the breakdown among the state’s many media markets).

• NH-Sen: Ovide Lamontagne just got a big score: the endorsement of the Manchester Union-Leader, the state’s largest newspaper and also one of the most consistently right-wing editorial pages anywhere. Newspaper endorsements can usually be shrugged off, but the Union-Leader’s endorsement of Lamontagne in the 1996 GOP gubernatorial primary helped him pull of the surprise upset of Rep. Bill Zeliff. Can this help him in a four-way split, though, instead of just a two-way, especially when Kelly Ayotte and Bill Binnie have dramatically outspent him so far? Lamontagne is also finally hitting the airwaves with his first TV ad, with the primary approaching in just a couple weeks. (No dollar figure given, but it’s only a one-week cable buy.)

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle just keeps handing gift after gift to Harry Reid, this time unfortunately timed to coincide with Katrina’s 5th anniversary: video has surfaced from Angle’s 2006 NV-02 bid in which she says she would have voted against Katrina relief funds. One other minor Nevada point, also courtesy of Jon Ralston: Clark County‘s GOP chair just resigned, leaving more disarray in the local Republican hierarchy as far as staying organized and disciplined for November.

• OH-Sen: The national Chamber of Commerce is out with a new positive ad touting Rob Portman, which is odd since Portman has enough money in the bank that he can pay his own way and then some. (The establishment, free-tradin’ Portman is definitely their kind of guy, though, much more so than the teabaggers cluttering a number of other close Senate races.) NWOTSOTB.

• AL-05: Republican Mo Brooks (who blew out party-switching Parker Griffith in the GOP primary) has a decent, but not overwhelming, lead over Dem Steve Raby, at least according to his own internal courtesy of POS. Brooks leads 48-37; taking into consideration that it’s an internal, this race isn’t a likely pickup but certainly still on the table.

• KY-06: One other ad to consider today: Ben Chandler’s out with another spot, this time going negative against local attorney Andy Barr, hitting him on the issue of the bad kind of SSP (social security privatization).

• MI-01, MI-03, MI-07: We Ask America is out with a trio of House district polls in Michigan. As is their usual modus operandi, the Republicans are in the lead. In the Dem-held open seat 1st, Dan Benishek leads Gary McDowell 45-29 (even WAA admits they expect that to tighten a lot, based on Benishek’s name being in the news from the ultra-close GOP primary). In the reddish open-seat 3rd being vacated by GOPer Vern Ehlers, Justin Amash leads Patrick Miles 51-30. And the state’s most vulnerable Dem incumbent, Mark Schauer trails ex-Rep. Tim Walberg in a rematch, 45-37.

• OH-17: “Trafican’t” just got turned into “Trafican.” Although there’s no official word, supporters of ex-con ex-Rep. Jim Traficant are saying that re-canvassing of petitions has yielded enough valid signatures to get him on the ballot as an independent. He was only 20 shy, and they’ve found at least 27 new valid signatures. Traficant isn’t likely to be much of a factor against incumbent Rep. Tim Ryan in this solidly blue district, though.

• AGs: I know I can rely on Louis Jacobson to go even deeper into the weeds than we here at SSP ever will. Writing for Governing magazine, he handicaps and encapsulates the nation’s many state Attorney General races. He finds the Dems (who currenly have a 32-18 edge in AG positions) in danger of losing at least six seats this year, including Dem-held open seats in California, Arizona, and Georgia. One of the Dems’ best (if only) offensive opportunities is Bill McCollum’s old post in Florida. The St. Petersburg Times has a deeper profile of the race between Democratic state Sen. Dan Gelber, and the Sarah Palin-backed Hillsborough Co. prosecutor Pam Bondi.

• Mayors: Here’s a second poll in a week’s time showing current Washington, DC mayor Adrian Fenty significantly trailing in his bid for re-election, against Democratic primary opponent Vincent Gray. The Washington Post finds Gray leading Fenty 53-36 among likely voters, or 49-36 among registered voters.

• Rasmussen:

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 38%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 57%

• CO-Sen: Michael Bennet (D-inc) 44%, Ken Buck (R) 47%

• OK-Gov: Jari Askins (D) 37%, Mary Fallin (R) 52%

• OK-Sen: Jim Rogers (D) 24%, Tom Coburn (R-inc) 67%

• SC-Sen: Alvin Greene (D) 19%, Jim DeMint (R) 63%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 48%, John Raese (R) 42%

MO-Sen: AFSCME just threw down another hefty hunk of cash, pouring $700K into radio ads attacking Roy Blunt for voting against minimum wage hikes. According to The Hill, the union says that the ad is airing “statewide on over 200 radio stations outside the St. Louis and Kansas City media markets.”

NH-Sen: Despite leading in the polls, AG Kelly Ayotte is joining third-party groups and launching a TV ad of her own attacking rival Bill Binnie as a “liberal.” This comes in response to Binnie’s new ad attacking Ayotte for her handling of the FRM scandal. NWOTSOTB, though Binnie’s latest purchase is reportedly for some $430K.

WI-Sen: It’s hard to keep up with Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, but really, the lamestream media is being unfair to Ron Johnson, who definitely deserves a starting spot on the Wingnut 9. Watch him bash this stand-up double into deep right field:

There’s a reason Greenland was called Greenland. It was actually green at one point in time. And it’s been, since, it’s a whole lot whiter now.

FL-22: Absolute fucking maniac – and absolute fucking whiner – Allen West has been decrying the “Gestapo-like intimidation tactics” he fantasizes have been deployed by Ron Klein, Nancy Pelosi, and Barack Obama. What are his dark Orwellian warnings about? The fact that the Klein campaign has been sending a video tracker to West’s events. Yep, exactly like the Holocaust. Good comparison to be making in Palm Beach.

IA-01: The American Future Fund, a conservative 501(c)4, claims it’s preparing to spend “six figures” against Rep. Bruce Braley (D), not a guy generally considered to be vulnerable. Part of that is because Braley leads his opponent, lawyer and former congressional staffer Ben Lange, $630K to $110K in cash-on-hand. Let’s see if they actually follow through, though.

MO-04: For the first time since the mid-90s, the Missouri Farm Bureau’s political arm, FARM-PAC, is not endorsing Ike Skelton – and in fact, they’re supporting Republican Vicky Hartzler. FARM-PAC cited Skelton’s vote in favor of cap-and-trade as the main reason for their change of heart. The Skelton campaign did, however, announce they received the backing from another agricultural group, the Missouri Corn Growers Association.

ND-AL: Rep. Earl Pomeroy is out with a new ad attacking Republican Rick Berg for his long (28-year) tenure in the North Dakota state lege, as well as his support for privatizing Social Security. NWOTSOTB.

NM-02: Defenders of Wildlife has re-upped its ad buy against Steve Pearce, who is attempting a comeback bid against Rep. Harry Teague, throwing down another $125K. It’s not clear whether this is the same ad from a couple of weeks ago, which one station refused to air.

NJ-03: Props to Jane Roh of the Courier-Post, a paper which serves southern New Jersey. She exposes Republican Jon Runyan’s first television ad for the video press release that it is, reporting that it’s a mere $8,400 (on FOX News and CNN), but notes – do I detect a touch of mockery here? – that it’s “expected to swell to $12,500 this week.” This is pretty much a joke buy anywhere, but in the NYC media market, this doesn’t even rate with late-night infomercials.

NY-13: Rudy Giuliani’s lent all kinds of support to Mike Grimm in his primary against Michael Allegretti, and now he’s cut an ad for him as well, touting Grimm’s experience with terrorism as a “9/11 first responder.” I wonder if that’s the tie that binds these two men, or if Rudy is making some long-term play against the entrenched GOP interests on Staten Island which, for whatever reason, have been backing Allegretti. Anyhow, NWOTSOTB, and incidentally, the FBI (and the Marines) have expressed displeasure with similar Grimm ads in the past.

NY-29: Teabagger Janice Volk failed to collect the necessary signatures to appear on the ballot as an independent… but now says she’ll run as a write-in. Whatever. Anyhow, has anyone heard anything – anything at all – about Dem Matthew Zeller?

OH-18: The Ohio Elections Commission ruled late last week that Rep. Zack Space made false statements about Republican opponent Bob Gibbs in an attack ad, but is issuing no penalty – not even a letter of reprimand. Sort of makes you wonder why this commission exists in the first place. I also find it weird that Ohio even has some body that tries to act as a referee for political campaigns. Isn’t that what voting is for?

Redistricting: Redistricting geeks, rejoice! Thanks to some key volunteer help, Dave’s Redistricting App now has partisan data for North Carolina and New Mexico. But more help is needed to get the remaining states online. Check out Dave’s diary to see how you can help.

• DE-Sen: Looks like New York mayor Michael Bloomberg had to show some of that patented post-partisanship, having endorsed Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania yesterday. He offered a counterpoint in the form of an endorsement of Mike Castle in Delaware as well, and is doing a New York-based fundraiser for him tonight.

• IN-Sen: That grinding sound you hear is old-school Republican Dan Coats shifting gears, trying to fit into the Tea Party template. Having won the Republican Senate nomination in Indiana probably with big help from the split among teabagger votes between Marlin Stutzman and John Hostettler, he’s now working on outreach to that set, trying to keep the focus on financial issues.

• LA-Sen: Chet Traylor (who’s been seen polling in the single digits in polls we’ve seen so far of the Republican Senate primary) is out with an internal poll that purports to have him within striking distance of incumbent David Vitter. The poll by Verne Kennedy gives Vitter a 46-34 lead, keeping Vitter down in runoff territory. However, there’s a huge caveat: that number comes after voters were informed about Vitter’s use of prostitutes and employment of sociopathic aides, and there’s no word of what the non-informed toplines were. Meanwhile, Traylor seems to be gaining little momentum on the fundraising front: he’s filed a fundraising report showing he’s raised $42K since announcing his bid last month, and has $41K on hand.

• NH-Sen: Bill Binnie, with little time left to catch up to Kelly Ayotte in the GOP primary, is defying orders from state party boss John Sununu to keep everything positive, and is rolling out two negative ads against Ayotte. Both ads focus on her time as Attorney General and her failure to pick up on anything wrong at Financial Resources Mortgage, which engaged in large-scale fraud and then collapsed.

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin hasn’t wasted any time on the fundraising front. He’s raised $410K already since declaring his candidacy last month, which may not initially seem like much but will go a long way in the cheap markets in West Virginia. Likely GOP opponent John Raese has raised only $30K, although he’s also poured $320K of his own money into the race.

• IA-Gov, IA-Sen: Local GOP blog The Iowa Republican commissioned some polls of Iowa through Voter/Consumer Research. In a non-surprise, the Republicans are leading. Terry Branstad leads Chet Culver 53-35 in the gubernatorial race and Chuck Grassley leads Roxanne Conlin 59-33 in the Senate race. (Down the ballot, though, things look OK for Dems in the AG, Treasurer, and Supreme Court races.)

• OH-Gov: This goes in the “nice work if you can get it” file. In further evidence of the high-dollar revolving door between politics and academia, there are more details out on John Kasich’s rich-guy sinecure at Ohio State University over the last decade. For instance, during 2008 he made $50K from OSU, but worked about four hours a month there, essentially making $4,000 for each visit to campus.

• PA-Gov: While the Dems got good news yesterday in the Senate race in Pennsylvania with the dropout of the Green Party candidate, they got bad news in the gubernatorial race today with the dropout of John Krupa. Krupa was running as the Tea Party candidate, but had to pull the plug after a GOP petition challenge left him with too few signatures.

• AZ-03: It looks like Ben Quayle’s week or two in the sun is pretty much over after a one-two punch of salacious website revelations and his own incompetent TV ad; conventional wisdom is treating him as having plunged out of front-runner status in the GOP primary in the open seat 3rd. Self-funding businessman Steve Moak seems to have that role now, followed by underfunded but better-known state Sen. Jim Waring. (The article alludes to polling, but irritatingly doesn’t offer any specifics.)

• FL-17: The Miami Herald offers interesting profiles of all nine Democrats competing in the primary to replace retiring Rep. Kendrick Meek. This dark-blue seat may be, of all the nation’s open seats, the one we’re most starved for information about, so it remains to be seen whether we can get an upgrade from Meek (who voted with an eye always toward his next promotion) in this seat.

• New York: Wow, there’s a serious race to the bottom going on among the New York House delegation, with regards to Cordoba House: Mike McMahon, Tim Bishop, and even non-endangered Steve Israel all offered statements saying they should look elsewhere to build. This is playing out most interestingly in NY-24, where Richard Hanna — one of the few conspicuously moderate Republicans on the front lines this year — offered support for the project last week. Then Dem Mike Arcuri came out in opposition… and Hanna, realized he was getting outflanked on the right, did a 180 and is now against it too. While it’s nice to see a GOPer getting caught in such a transparent and ad-worthy flip-flop, is this the kind of high-ground-ceding way we want to do it?

• NRCC: Everyone seems abuzz that the NRCC is out with its list of 40 targeted districts today and its plan to spend $22 million (more than their current $17 mil CoH). It’s worth noting, though, that unlike the DCCC’s $49 mil list of 60 districts from July, these aren’t even reservations (which require deposits – or a willingness to seriously piss off television stations if you try to cancel), only a telegraphing of their plans, so things may change. (They may also roll out more in two steps, as did the DCCC.) Most of the buzzing is about what got left out. (Where are the defenses in LA-02 and HI-01? There’s a grand total of one defensive buy: the open seat in IL-10.) National Journal also has an interesting analysis of the method behind the NRCC’s madness, noticing that they’re playing Moneyball, focusing on the cheaper media markets and letting some of the more expensive East Coast markets slide.

• Ads: Lots of ad miscellany today, starting with big buys from Karl Rove-linked GOP group American Crossroads, which is spending $425K on an anti-Michael Bennet piece in CO-Sen, and $500K on a pro-Rob Portman (doesn’t he have his own money?) spot in OH-Sen. Dina Titus and Betsy Markey, freshman Dems in tough defenses in NV-03 and CO-04, are both on the air with new spots with a similar strategy: go negative on TARP (they’re inoculated from it, not having been in Congress in the previous cycle). Finally, Scott Murphy is dipping into his huge cash stash with his first ad in NY-20, a feel-good piece featuring his enormous family that (like Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s ad) traffics in the metaphor that Washington sometimes eats too much (although luckily this ad doesn’t show anyone pooping).

• Rasmussen:

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 37%, Rob Portman (R) 45%

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak (D) 37%, Pat Toomey (R) 46%

• AK-Sen: Wow, now we’ve got Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin working in harmony in at least one place: Huckabee just endorsed Joe Miller, the little-known right-wing challenger to Lisa Murkowski in the GOP Senate primary.

• AZ-Sen: J.D. Hayworth is out with a new ad in a last-ditch effort to make up some ground on John McCain, and he’s relying on time-honored tradition of pulling a few of his opponents’ words out of context. In this case, he swipes the passage “I chose lying” from McCain’s 2002 audiobook, although in the book it was talking about the South Carolina confederate flag controversy, and Hayworth just slaps it down in an ad about immigration. The ad buy is for $365K.

• CA-Sen: This isn’t a surprise in terms of which of the candidates they endorsed, but it might be interesting that the Chamber of Commerce decided there was enough of a shot in this race for them to weigh in. They’re backing Carly Fiorina in the California Senate race, based on, y’know, her long track record of success at Hewlett-Packard.

• FL-Sen: A Mason-Dixon poll released late last week gives some hope to Kendrick Meek, who other polls had shown had fallen behind billionaire weirdo Jeff Greene in the Democratic primary. Their poll (conducted for “Leadership Florida and the Florida Press Association”) gives Meek a 33-29 lead. Greene’s main problem seems to be that the press keeps on doing stories about, well, all those things that Greene has been doing for the last couple decades; yesterday the St. Petersburg Times looked at Greene’s involvement in a California condo deal that belies his claims that he was a high-level investor and not involved in any of the myriad ground-level predatory lending transactions that, when all added together, helped create the real estate asset bubble. Greene’s defense? “I don’t follow what happens after the sale…. All I care about is that I get my money.” Finally, whether Greene or Meek wins the primary, one more problem they’ll have to deal with is the movement of prominent Democratic money to indie Charlie Crist. Pollster Mark Penn hasn’t been anyone’s image of a reliable or useful Democrat lately, but he is at least a prominent Democrat; he’s now raising for Crist.

• KY-Sen: Will “I worship you, Aqua Buddha” become the newest political catchphrase that sweeps the nation? GQ has a hilarious (if somewhat disturbing) look back at Rand Paul’s hellraising days at an undergrad at Baylor (a school from which, by the way, he doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree). It’ll be interesting to see if this actually creates any blowback for Paul.

• WA-Sen: Interesting: another endorsement for the once-moderate Dino Rossi from another celebrity on the right in the Senate. Unlike Jim DeMint (whose backing he got last week), who has something of a fundraising network that comes with his endorsement, Tom Coburn (who just announced his support) just has cachet with right-wing fanboys. More evidence that Rossi, while publicly pretending to be focused only on the general, is scrambling to shore up his right flank before the Top 2 primary where he faces competition from various teabaggers, most significantly Sarah Palin-backed Clint Didier.

• FL-Gov: That Mason-Dixon poll had a Republican gubernatorial portion as well, and they do provide some confirmation for the sense that Bill McCollum is worming his way back into this thing, with not much time left on the clock. Rick Scott leads McCollum only 37-31. Worth noting: it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with people taking notice of Scott’s legacy of Medicare fraud at Columbia/HCA, but rather, McCollum consolidating the Republican Hispanic vote (where he leads 3-1), probably thanks to Scott’s demagoguery on the immigration issue and McCollum’s more even-handed stance. Meanwhile, not that Bud Chiles was gaining much momentum, but explaining this could be a big distraction: his former leadership of innocuous-sounding charity HOPE Worldwide, which it turns out is an arm of the cultish International Churches of Christ.

• IA-Gov: Social conservative activist Bob Vander Plaats ran a surprisingly close race against Terry Branstad in the GOP gubernatorial primary and then threatened an independent run when he didn’t receive the proper amount of fealty post-primary. However, he announced last Friday that he won’t attempt a third-party bid (which would probably give the advantage in the race back to Chet Culver). He’ll focus his energies on defeating members of the Iowa Supreme Court, in retaliation for its gay marriage ruling.

• MN-Gov: If there’s one campaign out there in need of a shakeup, it’s Tom Emmer’s, as polls have made clear that the GOP gubernatorial nominee’s trajectory post-nomination has been aimed almost straight down. Old campaign manager Tom Mason departed for a farm upstate, replaced by former ’08 Norm Coleman CM Cullen Sheehan.

• PA-Gov: Remember Sam Rohrer, the socially conservative state Rep. who persisted in the GOP primary against AG Tom Corbett (and lost big)? His supporters still haven’t given up hope, and, although Pennsylvania law prohibits him from a ballot line in November, are now launching an independent write-in campaign for Rohrer. (Rohrer hasn’t endorsed the idea, but isn’t dissuading them either.) The write-in campaign is a particularly difficult beast, though, meaning that it’s likely that Rohrer wouldn’t pick up more than a couple percent, and the race would have to get closer than it currently is for that to harm Corbett’s odds against Dem Dan Onorato.

• RI-Gov: Brown University is out with a poll on the Rhode Island gubernatorial race, and one thing is clear: no current Republican is going to win the race. Democratic state Treasurer Frank Caprio leads independent ex-Republican ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee, by a bare 28-27 margin. For some reason, they seemed to poll the two Republicans jungle-style, but it really doesn’t matter as both are non-factors: former Don Carcieri communications director John Robitaille is at 7 and ex-state Rep. Victor Moffitt is at 2.

• FL-08: Jeb! backs Web! Ex-gov. Jeb Bush cut an ad in support of ex-state Sen. Daniel Webster, who, with his dithering, managed to blow his early shot at consolidating GOP establishment support in the primary. Instead, he’s one of many guys stuffed in the clown car, fighting for the right to oppose Rep. Alan Grayson.

• ID-01: The omission of Raul Labrador from the NRCC’s Young Guns, which seems to admit any Republican who has enough opposable digits to successfully operate a telephone and call donors, seemed like it was becoming too embarrassing for even the NRCC’s skilled writers to spin away. Labrador says he “changed his mind” and is now willing to join the entourage. Labrador, who has $69K, is only entering at the “On the Radar” level, though, the bottom of the pyramid.

• IL-14: State Sen. Randy Hultgren thought he struck some electoral gold when he found a contribution to Rep. Bill Foster from fellow Dem Maxine Waters for $1,000, which then demanded Foster give back. Unfortunately, there’s something to be said for basic reading skills: the contribution wasn’t to Bill Foster, but rather to former music industry exec Gary Foster, who’s now head of a charitable org called Upliftment Jamaica. Naturally, the Hultgren camp blamed the FEC for forcing them to screw up.

• LA-02: Sen. Mary Landrieu announced her backing for state Rep. Cedric Richmond in the Dem primary in the 2nd, more evidence that the Dem establishment is trying to unite behind Richmond and put the squeeze on primary rival state Rep. Juan LaFonta.

• MI-09: As part of the transition from primary to general election, one item that’s high on GOP nominee Rocky Raczkowski’s to-do list is to walk back his previous birtherism. After telling Politico in a post-primary interview that he’d “love” to see Obama’s birth certificate, he’s now out with a statement that Politico took his out of context… without, of course, explaining what context such a comment should be taken in.

• OH-18: Stop the presses! (And hide the women!) Bill Clinton adviser turned Fox News talking head Dick Morris has announced he’ll be making appearances on behalf of at least 40 Republican candidates this year. That includes a fundraiser for Rep. Zack Space’s opponent, state Sen. Bob Gibbs, later this month.

• RI-01, RI-02: That Brown gubernatorial poll also looked at the Democratic primaries in the 1st and 2nd, although the margin of error is terribly high (7.4% in RI-01). In the 1st, Providence mayor David Cicilline is in command of the Dem field, leading former state party chair William Lynch 32-11 15, with 11 for businessman Anthony Gemma and 5 for state Rep. David Segal (who just got the local SEIU‘s backing, by the way). In the 2nd, Rep. Jim Langevin looks likely to weather his primary challenge with ease; he leads state Rep. Elizabeth Dennigan 55-12.

• SBA List: Anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List has come out with polls of one open Senate race and three House races featuring Dem incumbents (where the common thread seems that all the Dems are anti-abortion), courtesy of that Republican pollster with the oh-so-creative name, The Polling Company. They find Dan Coats leading Brad Ellsworth 50-35 in the Indiana Senate race. The House races are an interesting mix of the good, the bad, and the so-so. For the good, Rep. Joe Donnelly seems to start on solid ground in IN-02, where he leads state Rep. Jackie Walorski 52-35. For the bad, Rep. Steve Driehaus may just be the most DOA of any House Democrat, as this is one more poll giving him a double-digit deficit against ex-Rep. Steve Chabot (51-41). And for the so-so, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (last seen losing in a too-good-to-be-true internal from GOP opponent Mike Kelly) is leading Kelly by a pretty plausible 46-42.

• Blue Dogs: The Blue Dogs handed out a load of endorsements to Dem candidates, looking to replenish their soon-to-be-depleted ranks (thanks to a number of retirements, as well as many of their members being in many of the nation’s most competitive races). Endorsees are Steve Raby in AL-05, Chad Causey in AR-01, Roy Herron in TN-08, Trent van Haaften in IN-08, and Stephene Moore in KS-03.

• Rasmussen:

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 37%, Mike Castle (R) 49%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 46%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 36%

• IA-Gov: Chet Culver (D-inc) 36%, Terry Branstad (R) 52%

• KS-Gov: Tom Holland (D) 34%, Sam Brownback (R) 57%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 38%, Kelly Ayotte (R) 51%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 40%, Bill Binnie (R) 46%

• SD-Gov: Scott Heidepriem (D) 27%, Dennis Daugaard (R) 59%

• SD-AL: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-inc) 42%, Kristi Noem (R) 51%