Tag: Rick Scott

• CO-Sen: So since the last time we checked in, Ken Buck royally stepped in it not just once, but twice. First, he made the argument that voters should opt for him and not Jane Norton because “he doesn’t wear high heels.” (It was by way of arguing that, instead, he wears cowboy boots with actual bullshit on them, but the gender card was pretty clear. And Norton’s response was easy to write, and was on the air almost instantaneously. It probably played at least something of a role in today’s decision by Arizona governor Jan Brewer, amassing her own clutch of Mama Rattlesnakes, to extend an endorsement to Norton.) Then second, it came out over the weekend that on June 11, Buck was overheard referring to Tea Partiers (or at least the birthers among them) as “dumbasses.” (Compounding the unforced nature of the error was that he was joking around with his Democratic tracker while saying it!) Buck was out with the inevitable apology to the teabaggers within the day. (Y’know, for a bunch of self-styled tough guys, they sure do get their feelings hurt easily.)

• CT-Sen: Despite his blowing through a large chunk of his remaining cash on hand in a baffling ad urging people to vote in the Republican primary (although not specifically for him), Rob Simmons is still maintaining that he’s not currently a candidate for the Senate. He considers his $350K ad buy as something like “public service announcements.”

• FL-Sen: Must be nice to have Jeff Greene’s money! Concerned observers are a bit troubled by the close correlation between his hiring of DNC member Jon Ausman as a consultant, and his next-day endorsement of Greene’s campaign. Greene has spent $6 million of his own money on the race so far, which apparently is a drop in the bucket for him, as he’s been content to ignore a $1.87 million fine from the government of Belize that’s outstanding against him, after he crashed his 145-foot yacht into a sensitive coral reef there.

• IL-Sen: Continuing the boat-crashing theme, in case you’ve been living under a rock all weekend, the big news in Illinois is that Mark Kirk has gotten caught in yet another series of misrememberments, this time about his sailboat accident and subsequent Coast Guard rescue that supposedly got him devoted to public service. Turns out he at least got the being in a sailboat accident part right, but, unlike his own description of the events, he was rescued long before nightfall, he probably didn’t swim for a mile because he was within half a mile of shore, and his core temperature certainly wasn’t 82 because he would have lost consciousness long before getting to that point. Sensing a pattern here?

• KY-Sen: Rand Paul is re-affirming that he supports Mitch McConnell. Well, sort of. During his Fancy Farm appearance this weekend, he said he’s going to vote for McConnell for leader, but almost immediately afterwards, reduced that to not seeing a reason why he wouldn’t vote for him. Observers also noted that, in his earlier sorta-support for McConnell, he was implicitly dissing Sharron Angle as unlikely to win, by way of saying that Jack Conway’s first action would be to vote for Harry Reid for majority leader (something that, of course, wouldn’t happen if Reid weren’t to get re-elected).

• NV-Sen: Sharron Angle’s media policy can be summed up in one word: RUN! That’s what she did when faced with questions from a six-months-pregnant reporter last week, who, in typical lamestream media fashion, insisted on asking some further questions after a three-minute speech of boilerplate on the estate tax. How presumptuous! Harry Reid got further good news, too, with the endorsement of Las Vegas mayor and relentless self-promoter Oscar Goodman, who called Reid “the man we go to get things done in the city.” If there’s one Nevadan having an even worse time than Angle, though, it’s John Ensign; his one-time crony Tom Coburn just hung him out to dry, handing over e-mails from Ensign in the ongoing criminal investigation by the DOJ into l’affaire Hampton.

• WV-Sen: With filing closed in West Virginia, there are eleven GOPers fighting in the primary for the right to oppose Joe Manchin in the Senate special election. Most prominent, of course, is businessman John Raese, who lost the 2006 Senate race to Robert Byrd and is also something of an archenemy to the Moore/Capito family. The only other noteworthy GOPer is Mac Warner, who already lost the WV-01 primary this year (and whose brother, Monty Warner, was the 2004 GOP gubernatorial nominee, losing badly to Manchin). Raese punctuated his entry with some ill-advised and outdated ethnic humor, comparing the Italian-American Manchin to Tony Soprano. The NRSC, probably not liking any of its options here (and having gotten burned by some of its earlier interventions), says it isn’t getting involved in the primary.

• CO-Gov: The rumor du jour last week was that the RGA was prepared to pull out of Colorado entirely — and that was before this morning’s confirmation that Tom Tancredo was going to jump into the race as an indie candidate in order to either leverage the GOP nomination or crash-land the whole operation. The RGA denied the rumors when they first came out, but the local GOPers working on the race are suddenly leaking e-mails that they’re broke. And with Tancredo‘s bid today, suddenly his allies and core backers among the Tea Partiers are suddenly denouncing him, accusing him of being a likely spoiler, whether intentional or not. Bafflingly, Tancredo pushed back in the way most likely to rub them the wrong way, calling the teabaggers new members of the “establishment.” Tancredo’s getting some pushback from state party chair Dick Wadhams, too; TPM has audio of the literal screaming match between the two of them.

• FL-Gov: You may remember state Sen. Paula Dockery, who was running a futile campaign against Bill McCollum in the GOP gubernatorial primary until dropping out after getting totally eclipsed by Rick Scott. Well, now she’s teaming up with Scott; she’s stopping somewhere short of endorsing him, but is joining him on his bus tour, saying she share similar stances on the issues. (She can’t be angling for a Lt. Gov. slot, as Florida elects its LG separately, so what her angle is, I don’t know. UPDATE: Actually, commenters have corrected me on Florida’s LG procedure, wherein the nominees pick running mates, so, yes, it does sound like she’s angling for LG.) Also, while it isn’t exactly about the horse race, here’s a fascinating (at least to me) piece of backstory about Democratic candidate Alex Sink. Her slightly Asian appearance is because she’s 1/8th Thai, and her great-grandfather was a well-known celebrity in the early 1800s: circus performer Chang Bunker, one-half of the original so-called “Siamese Twins.”

• GA-Gov: Dueling (banjo) endorsements in the Georgia GOP gubernatorial runoff, and they seem to fit the overall media narratives about the two candidates. The suburbanized Karen Handel got Mitt Romney’s endorsement, while the more hickory-smoked Nathan Deal got the backing of the NRA.

• OK-Gov (pdf): There’s one more poll of the primaries in Oklahoma (to be decided tomorrow night), from the Republican firm of Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates, apparently on their own and not on anyone else’s behalf. The results are pretty similar to this weekend’s Sooner Poll: they see AG Drew Edmondson beating Lt. Gov. Jari Askins 38-27 on the Dem side, and Rep. Mary Fallin well ahead of state Sen. Randy Brogdon 50-22 on the GOP side. Askins did get one late-breaking endorsement, though, that’s good as gold in this football-mad state: she got the backing of former OU and Dallas Cowboys head coach Barry Switzer. Switzer’s backing is credited with helping Brad Henry win a come-from-behind victory in the 2002 Dem gubernatorial primary.

• OH-St. House: Here’s something you don’t see every day: a local article about a competitive state legislative chamber where you don’t get just platitudes about the closeness, but actual detail about the most competitive races. Democrats currently control the state House 53-46 after picking it up in 2008, and it could revert back to the GOP this year. The Democratic seats on defense that they list are scattered among Columbus, Cincinnati, and Cleveland suburbs, and Appalachian-flavored rural areas like Portsmouth and Zanesville.

• OR-Init: Oregon stands out as the only west coast state that doesn’t have an independent redistricting commission for state legislative seats. It looks like that’s going to continue: a proposed initiative to create an independent commission of retired judges for redistricting didn’t qualify for the ballot, after too many signatures turned out to be invalid. 2002 GOP governor candidate and bringer-of-the-crazy Kevin Mannix was the leader of the move, although he actually had some big money interests behind him this time (like Nike’s Phil Knight).

• Rasmussen:

• AZ-Sen (R): John McCain (R-inc) 54%, J.D. Hayworth (R) 34%

• ND-Sen: Tracy Potter (D) 22%, John Hoeven (R) 69%

We’re back from a successful Netroots Nation, and in the midst of sweeping up from half a week of limited posting, we’re going to do a polls-only digest first and tackle the rest of the damage later today.

• AK-Sen (pdf): Local pollster Ivan Moore is out with the first (and probably only) public look at the Republican primary between incumbent establishment figure Lisa Murkowski and Tea Party fave (and proxy for foxy GOP doxy Sarah Palin) Joe Miller. Y’know what? Alaskans know that their local economy is largely propped up with federal dollars, and the teabagger message isn’t likely to have much resonance here, no matter how much pro-gun posturing it gets dressed up in. The poll finds Murkowski with 53/29 positives, and a 62-30 lead over Miller.

• FL-Sen, FL-Gov (pdf): The Attack of the Shady Billionaires seems to continue unabated, as they pour even more money into advertising. PPP looks at both of their primaries. It’s still a close race in the Democratic Senate primary, where Rep. Kendrick Meek leads the yacht-crashing Jeff Greene 28-25 (with Tom Jensen observing “Democratic voters seem uninterested in this election,” with many of them already having settled on Charlie Crist). In the GOP gubernatorial primary, Columbia/HCA-crashing Rick Scott is in firm control, though, leading AG Bill McCollum 43-29. McCollum’s favorables among Republicans are a horrible 26/40, while Scott’s are 35/32.

• KY-Sen: Another public poll places the Kentucky Senate race in near-dead heat territory. Braun Research, on behalf of local politics website cn|2, finds Rand Paul with a 41-38 lead over Jack Conway. Conway has substantial leads among moderates (52-18) and among women (43-36).

• LA-Sen: The Charlie Melancon camp and the NRSC exchanged fire over the last few days, issuing dueling internal polls with dramatically different takes on their races. Melancon struck first with an Anzalone Liszt internal showing a much closer race than anyone has seen before: David Vitter led Melancon only 44-43 (the previous A-L internals had 10-point spreads). The NRSC responded with a POS poll over the weekend, giving Vitter a more predictable 48-31 lead when including leaners. Maybe more importantly, this poll is the first look at the GOP primary, and it shows Vitter may not have too much trouble with it: he claims a 76-5 lead over Chet Traylor.

• NC-Sen: Here’s one more Democratic internal that really serves to shake up what’s been considered a Republican-leaning race. The Elaine Marshall camp released a poll from Lake Research last Thursday giving her a 37-35 lead over Richard Burr (with 5 to Libertarian Mike Beitler). Burr’s favorables are 34/43, and he has a re-elect of 25/31, numbers no incumbent would like to see.

• GA-Gov (pdf): I have trouble believing this one, but maybe Nathan Deal, who seems to be staking out more conservative turf than Karen Handel, is consolidating more of the votes of the various primary losers than is Handel. Deal is out with a new internal, from McLaughlin & Associates, giving him a 39-38 lead over Handel in the GOP gubernatorial (or goober-natorial, in Georgia) runoff. 56% of respondents say Deal is conservative, while 35% say Handel is and 30% call her a moderate.

• MI-Gov: A new poll of the Democratic primary from Inside Michigan Politics gives a different result from just about everybody else: they give a significant lead to Virg Bernero, who leads Andy Dillon 36-22. The article is strangely silent on other details about the poll, especially the issue of sample size, where Inside Michigan Politics has been pushing the limits of credibility.

• OK-Gov: SoonerPoll.com, on behalf of the Tulsa World, is out with what’s probably the last word on the gubernatorial race before this Tuesday’s primaries. Tuesday night looks to be pretty drama-free: on the Dem side, AG Drew Edmondson leads LG Jari Askins 49-33 (up from a 10-point gap in their previous poll, way back in January). For the GOPers, Rep. Mary Fallin leads state Sen. Randy Brogdon 56-18 (which is actually a drop for Fallin from the last poll). They also look ahead to November matchups, finding Fallin leading Edmondson 47-39 and Askins 46-40.

• TN-Gov: The Tennessee primary will also be fast upon us, and Mason-Dixon, on behalf of the Tennessee Newspaper Network, takes their first look at the GOP gubernatorial primary there. Like other recent polls, they give the edge to Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, who’s at 36. Rep. (and now, apparently, aspiring secessionist) Zach Wamp is at 25, and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey is at 20. (All three candidates are from the eastern third of the state, and western Tennesseeans are disproportionately undecided (29%). That would tend to benefit the biggest advertiser, which is Haslam.) Mason-Dixon also tried out November matchups, finding Dem Mike McWherter looking DOA against the sorta-moderate Haslam, 49-31, but in closer races against the more strident Wamp (45-38) and Ramsey (43-38).

• PA-03: There’s one House internal to mention, and, as has been the trend lately, it’s from a Republican. It’s from a race that been on most people’s back-burners; we’ll have to see if this raises auto dealer Mike Kelly’s profile. Kelly’s own poll, via the Tarrance Group, give him a 48-37 lead over freshman Dem Kathy Dahlkemper.

• Rasmussen

• AR-Gov: Mike Beebe (D-inc) 50%, Jim Keet (R) 40%

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 35%, John Boozman (R) 60%

• AZ-Gov: Terry Goddard (D) 37%, Jan Brewer (R-inc) 56%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 20%, Marco Rubio (R) 35%, Charlie Crist (I) 33%

• FL-Sen: Jeff Greene (D) 19%, Marco Rubio (R) 34%, Charlie Crist (I) 36%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 43%, Nathan Deal (R) 49%

• GA-Gov: Roy Barnes (D) 44%, Karen Handel (R) 45%

• ID-Gov: Keith Allred (D) 36%, Butch Otter (R-inc) 53%

• ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy (D-inc) 46%, Rick Berg (R) 49%

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 58%, Rick Lazio (R) 27%

• NY-Gov: Andrew Cuomo (D) 58%, Carl Paladino (R) 29%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 30%, John Robitaille (R) 23%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 37%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 33%, Victor Moffitt (R) 18%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 36%

• WV-Sen: Joe Manchin (D) 51%, John Raese (R) 35%

PPP (pdf) (7/16-18, Florida voters, 3/5-8 in parentheses):

Alex Sink (D): 36 (NA)

Rick Scott (R): 30 (NA)

Bud Chiles (I): 13 (NA)

Undecided: 22 (NA)

Alex Sink (D): 37 (31)

Bill McCollum (R): 23 (44)

Bud Chiles (I): 14 (NA)

Undecided: 26 (25)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

This is a dramatically different race from the last time that PPP polled it in March: Rick Scott arrived on the right, and unleashed a multi-million dollar barrage of ads against Bill McCollum, and Bud Chiles plunked his rather small, beat-up flag in the middle, perhaps hoping to be the only survivor after everyone else nuked each other. If PPP’s new poll numbers are any indication, things aren’t going the way either of them planned: the civil war between Scott and McCollum seems to be irreparably damaging them, and Sink, rather than Chiles, seems to be the main beneficiary so far.

Scott and McCollum — who both seemed extremely personally unlikeable even before their primary began — seem to have reduced each other to off-the-charts levels of toxicity. Scott’s favorables are 23/41, while McCollum’s are an unbelievable 16/51 (levels previously reserved only for Dick Cheney and David Paterson). Sink’s the only person in positive territory, probably by virtue of being less-known, at 24/22. A post-primary unity rally between Scott and McCollum’s supporters seems unlikely to succeed: PPP also rolled out numbers yesterday showing that among Scott supporters, McCollum’s favorables are 7/65, and among McCollum supporters, Scott’s favorables are 4/62. With a late primary (Aug. 24), there would be little time for healing left anyway. If these numbers hold, despite a humdrum campaign so far, Alex Sink could wind up being the Democrats’ second luckiest sucker in November (as no one can top Harry Reid).

• Election Results: No big surprises last night in the Alabama runoffs. Robert Bentley, who’d had the edge in the one public poll shortly before the runoff, beat Bradley Byrne in the gubernatorial GOP runoff, 56-44; he and Ron Sparks are now promising each other a positive, issues-oriented race. (Assorted wonks are trying to figure out today if Bentley, friendly – or at least friendlier – with the AEA, was helped along by Democratic crossover votes… and the answer appears to be no, not really.) In the GOP runoff in AL-02, Mike Barber is sending his gathered armies back home after losing by a 60-40 margin to Martha Roby. In the Dem runoff in AL-07, Terri Sewell beat Shelia Smoot 55-45, and is almost certain to succeed Artur Davis. Finally, the closest race of the night was the GOP Agriculture Commissioner runoff, where Dale Peterson-powered John McMillan sent Dorman Grace back to his chicken farm, 52-48.

• AZ-Sen, AZ-Gov (pdf): A new Rocky Mountain poll from the Behavior Research Center finds [insert usual “good news” joke here]. John McCain leads J.D. Hayworth (seeming DOA after the free-grant-money thing) in the GOP primary 64-19, with 5 for someone named Jim Deakin. They also polled the now-irrelevant gubernatorial primary, finding Jan Brewer at 57, with 12 for Owen Buz Mills and 9 for Dean Martin (both of whom have dropped out since the poll’s completion). Matthew Jatte remains in the primary, but he polled at “less than 1%.”

• FL-Sen: Here’s some good news for Kendrick Meek, who seems to be counting on a last minute Democratic surge: Bill Clinton will be appearing on his behalf in August, to stump for him in August. Dem primary rival Jeff Greene has some less good news: he just lost his campaign manager Josh Morrow. (It’s unclear whether he fled, or was pushed.) The St. Petersburg Times has an interesting profile of Greene today, too, that delves below the headline-grabbing superficial weirdnesses.

• KS-Sen: Tancredo sez: get a brain, Moran! (No, I’m never going to get tired of that joke.) The loudmouthed ex-Rep., last seen torpedoing ally Ken Buck, today barged back into the Kansas GOP Senate primary and admitted he had gotten it all wrong. He withdrew his earlier backing for Rep. Jerry Moran and switched over to Rep. Todd Tiahrt instead, saying that Moran had “deceived him” on his apparently inadequate hatred for teh brown people. In other news, did you know there was actually a third guy running in the primary, and he wasn’t just Some Dude® but a former state Attorney General? Of course, he was AG from the years 1965 to 1969 Anno Domini, so you could be forgiven for not remembering Robert Londerholm. At any rate, Londerholm dropped out of the race today.

• LA-Sen: Bobby Jindal had previously hedged on his support for David Vitter, showing up at some fundraising events but never actually going so far as to say that he endorsed him. That’s going to be more of an issue now that Vitter has some serious primary opposition from Chet Traylor, and Jindal is doubling down on his neutrality, saying he’s not focused on the race. At least Vitter continues to have the NRSC in his corner.

• NC-Sen: SurveyUSA is out with another poll in NC-Sen, on behalf of WRAL. Richard Burr continues to have a lead over Elaine Marshall, currently at 46-36, with 6 to Libertarian Mike Beitler. Burr’s favorables are 28/27 (with 23 neutral and 22 no opinion), while Marshall is at 25/12 (with 28 neutral and 35 no opinion), so usual caveats at Marshall’s room to grow apply. Interestingly, SurveyUSA followed their WA-Sen lead and added a cellphone oversample, which in various permutations had little effect on the toplines.

• NV-Sen: No polling memo to link to, at least not yet, but Jon Ralston calls our attention to a new poll from Dem pollster Fairbanks Maslin on behalf of the Patriot Majority. If it’s a quasi-internal, you can probably guess where we’re going with this… it actually has Harry Reid in the lead, over Sharron Angle 44-40. Both Reid (45/52) and Angle (40/41) have net-negative favorables, though.

• FL-Gov: Rick Scott lost a court battle (though the war over the Millionaire’s Amendment is no doubt not over, though). A federal district court judge denied Scott’s request for an injunction against Florida’s campaign finance law, which would give a truckload of money to the near-broke Bill McCollum because of Scott’s aggressive self-funding.

• MI-Gov: There are two separate polls of the Michigan GOP gubernatorial primary floating around today. One is a public poll from Mitchell Research & Communications; it sees a flat-out three-way tie between Mike Cox, Peter Hoekstra, and Rick Snyder, each of them at 18, with Mike Bouchard at 9 and Tom George at 2. Not quite content with that, Bouchard rolled out an internal poll (from McLaughlin & Associates) which, in marked contrast with, well, every other poll, had Bouchard tied for the lead. His poll has him and Hoekstra at 19, with Cox at 16, Snyder at 12, and George at 3. Mitchell also has numbers from the Dem primary, where they find Andy Dillon leading Virg Bernero 35-15.

• RI-Gov: This seems out of the blue, although he had been lagging in fundraising and underperforming in the polls: Democratic AG Patrick Lynch will be dropping out of the gubernatorial primary, effective tomorrow. That leaves state Treasurer Frank Caprio as de facto Dem nominee, sparing him a primary battle with the more liberal Lynch. It’s the day before nominating papers are due, so maybe he’ll re-up for more AGing. The main question now seems to be positioning for the general election… maybe most notably whether independent ex-GOP ex-Sen. Lincoln Chafee finds himself running to the left of the generally moderate Caprio.

• WA-08: Via press release, we have fundraising numbers from Suzan DelBene, who’s raising strongly despite little netroots interest so far. She raised $378K last quarter, and is sitting on $1.04 million CoH. She’s raised $1.65 million over the cycle.

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Sen: Barbara Boxer (D-inc) 49%, Carly Fiorina (R) 42%

• MO-Sen: Robin Carnahan (D) 45%, Roy Blunt (R) 47%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 37%, Kelly Ayotte (R) 49%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 40%, Ovide Lamontagne (R) 43%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 38%, Bill Binnie (R) 49%

• NH-Sen: Paul Hodes (D) 39%, Jim Bender (R) 43%

• NV-Gov: Rory Reid (D) 36%, Brian Sandoval (R) 57%

Ipsos for Reuters (7/9-11, registered voters, 5/14-18 in parens):

Kendrick Meek (D): 17 (15)

Marco Rubio (R): 28 (27)

Charlie Crist (I): 35 (30)

Undecided: 20 (23)

Jeff Greene (D): 18 (NA)

Marco Rubio (R): 29 (NA)

Charlie Crist (I): 34 (NA)

Undecided: 19 (NA)

(MoE: ±4%)

It seems like Charlie Crist successfully threaded the needle with his abandonment of the GOP primary and his move to an independent candidacy; Ipsos finds that he’s leading Marco Rubio and in fact gaining a little ground since their last poll in May. (Worth noting: no pollster other than Rasmussen has given a lead to Rubio since Crist pulled the trigger on his switch.) Democrats Jeff Greene and Kendrick Meek perform at about the same level of futility; either way, it looks like Crist is successfully vacuuming up a big share of center-left votes.

Alex Sink (D): 31 (32)

Bill McCollum (R): 30 (34)

Bud Chiles (I): 12 (NA)

Undecided: 27 (26)

Alex Sink (D): 31 (NA)

Rick Scott (R): 34 (NA)

Bud Chiles (I): 12 (NA)

Undecided: 23 (NA)

(MoE: ±4%)

It’s a dramatically different gubernatorial race since the last time Ipsos polled, with Rick Scott having appeared on the scene and spent one-time frontrunner Bill McCollum into near obscurity, and with independent Bud Chiles having launched an inexplicable centrist bid. Here’s an indication of how far McCollum has fallen: now he’s actually trailing Democrat Alex Sink. (The movement is all within the margin of error, though, and Rick Scott has a small lead over Sink instead, probably by virtue of his saturation advertising — although his latest round of advertising, allegedly about his pro-life credentials, may be backfiring, given that the St. Petersburg Times is now calling him “deceitful” and “heartless.”) Interestingly, since the entry of Chiles, this is the second poll to show that Chiles hardly budges the needle at all (rather than taking all his votes out of Sink’s column, as many had feared); he seems to draw evenly from both sides, probably finding most of his support among conservative Dixiecrats.

• CO-Sen: Isn’t this the second time this has happened in about a month? Tom Tancredo says something ridiculous, Republican candidate with an eye on the general repudiates the statement, then walks back the repudiation once he realizes that the teabaggers’ widdle feewings might get hurt. This time it was Ken Buck (on whose behalf Tancredo called Barack Obama the “greatest threat to the United States today” last week); he might have been helped along in his flip-flopping after Jane Norton, who’s losing the primary because Buck outflanked her on the right, started going on about how she agreed with Tancredo,.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio’s having a good day so far: he rolled out a ridiculously big fundraising number for the second quarter: $4.5 million raised. No mention of his CoH, though. (All eyes turn to Charlie Crist, though, for his first report after switching to an indie bid, to see whether that shrank or expanded his pool of donors.) Rubio’s second bit of good news is an endorsement from Crist’s former right-hand-man, temporary Sen. George LeMieux. (Since LeMieux reportedly has designs on Bill Nelson’s seat, and he seems to prefer running as a Republican and not on the Crist For Florida line, what else is he going to do, though?)

• NH-Sen: I know, I know, straw poll, terrible gauge of broad public support, take with salt, bla bla bla. Still, here’s a barometer of where the hardcore Live Free or Die crowd currently stands: Ovide Lamontagne dominated the straw poll at the Taxpayer Reunion Picnic, an annual gathering of those who were teabagging long before it was cool. He won 109 to 74 over Jim Bender, a rich guy who’s going the crazy viral ad route. Establishment candidate Kelly Ayotte and moderate outsider Bill Binnie were at 23 and 10.

• WA-Sen: Clint Didier, apparently aware of the stink lines of rank hypocrisy radiating off him, said that he’s swearing off farm subsidies in the future. (Seeing as how it made him look like the worst possible caricature of the teabaggers’ mantra of “I hate the gub’ment! Except when it’s giving me money for doing nothing!”) Apparently that was enough absolution for Rep. Ron Paul‘s satisfaction, as he threw his backing behind Didier this weekend.

• WV-Sen: Rep. Shelly Capito Moore is at least honest about being scared about running for Senate (almost certainly against highly popular Gov. Joe Manchin), although she isn’t couching it in terms of being afraid of Manchin per se, instead saying “I’m afraid to lose momentum that I think I provide for the state.” At any rate, she says she’ll make her (seeming unlikely) decision whether to run in the next few days, probably coinciding with the clarification on the election’s when and how, to be decided in a July 15 legislative special session.

• AZ-Gov: Ain’t that a kick in the head? State Treasurer Dean Martin, who was regarded as something of a frontrunner when he jumped into the GOP primary earlier this year, is suspending his campaign, ostensibly because he didn’t want to be a distraction to Gov. Jan Brewer as she fights lawsuits over SB 1070. In reality, Martin never really caught fire, first when rich self-funder Owen Buz Mills grabbed the not-Brewer mantle and then, mostly, when Brewer suddenly became belle of the right-wing ball when she signed SB 1070.

• FL-Gov: Bill McCollum apparently didn’t want to be touting his fundraising numbers, but they’re out anyway, thanks to a court filing pertaining to Rick Scott’s challenge to the state public financing system. At any rate, McCollum’s sitting on a paltry $800K in cash, a mere blip compared to what Scott can pull out of his own wallet. Of course, Scott could still pull defeat out of the jaws of victory, by antagonizing pretty much the entire RPOF by trying to hang ex-state party chair Jim Greer around McCollum’s neck… and by staking his pro-life credentials on a family who are loudly preferring that he shut up about them.

• GA-Gov: InsiderAdvantage, which offered its poll of the GOP primary last week, has a matching Dem poll today. The question for Dems isn’t whether Roy Barnes gets the most votes but whether he avoids a runoff, and they seem to err on the side of “no runoff:” Barnes is at 59, with Thurbert Baker at 15, and Dubose Porter and David Poythress both at 2, behind someone by the name of Bill Bolton (at 3). Meanwhile, on the GOP side, it seemed like something of an oversight that this endorsement hadn’t happened before, but Sarah Palin finally added Karen Handel to the ever-growing list of Mama Grizzlies. UPDATE: Thurbert Baker just got a top-tier endorsement, from Bill Clinton. It may be too late for that to matter much, though, because at this point Baker needs to not only win all the undecideds but peel away a significant number of Barnes voters. (H/t TheUnknown285.)

• MI-Gov: Motor City endorsements aplenty in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in Michigan: Andy Dillon got the backing of former Detroit mayor Dennis Archer, who many observers thought would have made the strongest candidate had he run. Virg Bernero got endorsements from Detroit’s two House members, John Conyers and Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

• MN-Gov: Republican nominee Tom Emmer seems to have dug a large hole for himself with his proposal to start including tips toward restaurant servers’ minimum wage requirement (which has the effect of slashing their hourly base pay); he’s planning on doing a “listening tour” with servers as atonement. Also adding to Emmer’s worries is blowback from his Sarah Palin endorsement, which helped him upset Marty Seifert at the GOP convention but is now already being used as a cudgel in general election advertising (courtesy of Matt Entenza). Meanwhile, Entenza’s Democratic rival Margaret Anderson Kelliher is running her first TV spot; the total buy is for only about $50K, though.

• NE-Gov: Democrats in Nebraska seem to be actively considering just punting the ball, rather than trying to find a replacement candidate for nominee Mark Lakers. On the plus side, that would free up local Democratic money for other ventures (like the race in NE-02), in what was destined to be a thorough loss even with Lakers in the race. On the other hand, Tom White’s challenge to Lee Terry would probably benefit from having, well, something at the top of the ballot.

• PA-Gov: If Tom Corbett is trying to position himself as a moderate for the general election, well, this isn’t the way. He’s publicly using the Sharron Angle line of argumentation that unemployment benefits cause more unemployment, because, naturally, people would rather live on their meager checks than go out and get one of those many abundant jobs that are out there. The ads write themselves… presuming the Democrats ever get around to actually writing them.

• TN-Gov: A mysterious 527 (is there any other kind?) has emerged to pour money into the Tennessee GOP primary. There’s no word on who’s the power behind the throne for Tennesseans for a Better Tomorrow, but they’ll be advertising on behalf of Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who’s back in third in the polls and needs a surrogate to do the dirty work of negative advertising against Bill Haslam.

• AZ-03: Jon Hulburd’s fundraising (and self-funding ability) is the main thing keeping this red-district open seat race at least somewhat on the map for the Dems; he’s announcing $250K raised last quarter. (No word on CoH.)

• CO-04: Freshman Rep. Betsy Markey had a strong quarter, raising $530K and sitting on $1.5 million CoH. In this Republican-leaning district, she’ll need every penny of it to get through this year.

• KS-04: Democratic State Rep. Raj Goyle, whose fundraising skills have put this dark-red open seat onto the map, is out with an introductory TV spot. Seems a little earlier for that, doesn’t it? We’d guess that he’s concerned about the primary (remember that there was a SurveyUSA poll a few weeks back that showed him not that far ahead of Some Dude with, well, a more ‘Merican sounding name) and not wanting to go the route of historical footnote Vic Rawl.

• MO-08: Tommy Sowers, if nothing else, is showing a lot of hustle in his long-shot bid against GOP Rep. Jo Ann Emerson in this dark-red rural district. He says he’s passed the $1 million mark for funds raised over the total cycle (nothing specific on 2Q or CoH, though).

• NJ-03: Democratic freshman Rep. John Adler seems to be putting some fundraising distance between himself and Jon Runyan. Adler raised $415K in 2Q to break the $2 million mark for CoH, while Runyan has about $500K in cash.

• NY-01: Randy Altschuler’s got a whole lotta cash: he’s reporting $1.8 million CoH. A lot of that is coming right of the Altschuler family piggy bank, though. He raised a decent $257K last quarter, but loaned himself another $500K on top of that.

• OH-16: Yikes! GOP nominee Jim Renacci must have some deep-pocketed connections from the high-stakes world of Arena Football, because he’s reporting $725K raised last quarter. (No word on CoH.)

• PA-04: This is kind of a small haul to be touting (touting may not be the right word, actually, when even your own campaign adviser calls it “not half bad”), but maybe it’s a good amount when you weren’t even supposed to have won the primary in the first place. Keith Rothfus, who blasted establishment fave Mary Beth Buchanan in the GOP primary, says he has $200K CoH (up from $157K in his pre-primary report … no word on what he actually raised).

• VA-05: Finally, here’s the delicious cherry on top of the shit sundae of fundraising reports: Tom Perriello announces that he raised $660K last quarter, giving him $1.7 million CoH. No word yet from Robert Hurt, but with $121K on hand in his May 19 pre-primary report, I can imagine it’s not in Perriello’s ballpark. The Richmond Times-Dispatch has an interesting compare-and-contrast enterprise in how Perriello and fellow vulnerable freshman Dem Glenn Nye are approaching their re-elections (Perriello emphasizing his base, Nye emphasizing his independence); clearly, based on these numbers, playing to the base can pay off, at least at the bank.

• CA-LG (pdf): We’re still sweeping up from that last installment of the Field Poll. In the Lt. Governor’s race, there’s surprisingly good news for Dems, with Gavin Newsom looking solid against appointed GOPer Abel Maldonado, leading 43-34. The Attorney General results aren’t that surprising: Republican Los Angeles Co. DA Steve Cooley has a narrow edge over SF DA Kamala Harris, 37-34.

• Illinois: It looks like we’ll never have another Scott Lee Cohen scenario again (or for that matter, probably not even another Jason Plummer scenario). Pat Quinn signed into law new legislation requiring, from now on, that Governor and Lt. Governor tickets are joined together before the primary, not after.

• Rasmussen:

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth (D) 30%, Dan Coats (R) 51%

• MD-Gov: Martin O’Malley (D-inc) 46%, Bob Ehrlich (R) 47%

AZ-Sen: Props to the Hotline’s Sean Sullivan – and to the McCain campaign! Thanks to them, we know that the size of J.D. Hayworth’s first ad buy is an amazing $2,100 – and that “the ad will only run on Fox News in Tucson for the entire month of July.” This is incredibly pathetic, and it’s really too bad that this Matthew Lesko wannabe is going nowhere. A McCain flack gets in a good dig:

“That’s actually less than he spent on bumper stickers and lapel pins in the first month-and-a-half of his campaign. Sounds like Hayworth really could use some of that free government money he hawked in his infomercial.”

CO-Sen: Jane Norton says she raised $900K in Q2 and has $600K on hand. Her primary against Ken Buck (who hasn’t released any numbers yet) is on August 10th.

FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek raised another million bucks in Q2, essentially the same as his hauls in each of the previous two quarters. He has about $4 million on hand – which, as Shira Toeplitz points out, is less than the $5 mil that zillionaire asshole Jeff Greene has already spent on the race.

IN-Sen, MO-08: Speaking of bullshit ad buys, Politico’s Dave Catanese takes a good close look at several attempts to “earn media” by spending just a few bucks on the airwaves. Catanese’s piece includes that quip about Hayworth cited above, and also some digs at Brad Ellsworth (IN-Sen) and Tommy Sowers (MO-08) for their less-than-impressive ad time purchases. A consultant for Dan Coats says that Ellsworth’s buy is “very light and brief – not statewide – and about evenly split between cable and broadcast.” Meanwhile, Sowers bought “just $6,400 in air time, with most of that on cable television in two counties.”

SC-Sen: Just click the link. A mouth-agape must-read.

FL-Gov: Zillionaire whacko Rick Scott is challenging Florida’s version of the “millionaire’s amendment,” which provides matching funds to candidates whose opponents exceed a certain spending cap – in this case, a pretty portly $25 million. You may recall that Crazy Jack Davis successfully challenged the federal millionaire’s amendment before the Supreme Court in 2008, and that the SCOTUS blocked Arizona from distributing matching funds last month, so I’d give Scott decent odds of prevailing.

GA-10 (via email): Russell Edwards (no, I’d never heard of him either) is a Democrat running against Rep. Paul Broun in this dark red 61% McCain district. Still, he managed to raised just over $100K (from “nearly 500 individual donors”) in the second quarter, which seems pretty good for a guy running in these circumstances.

ID-01: Rep. Walt Minnick kicked some fundraising ass last quarter, pulling in $410K and leaving him with $1.1 mil on-hand. Anyone care to guess what GOPer Raul Labrador will show?

SC-02: The otherwise seemingly invisible Rob Miller will be in DC today, doing some relatively low-dollar fundraisers. But it’s not like the guy – who lucked into millions thanks to Joe Wilson’s undying outburst – is really hurting for money (he had $1.7 mil on hand as of Q1). No word on his Q2 haul as of yet, though.

• CO-Sen: Republican candidate Ken Buck has a couple pieces of good news today: one, he’s the recipient of $172K in independent expenditures from mysterious conservative group Americans for Job Security. And two, Jim DeMint‘s coming to town on July 8 to stump on Buck’s behalf

• NE-Sen: Ironically, on the same day that he was the deciding vote in the Senate’s failure to extend unemployment benefits, Ben Nelson announced that he won’t be making an appearance in the unemployment lines himself in 2012. He confirmed that he plans to run for re-election.

• SC-Sen: The profile of Lindsey Graham in the New York Times magazine is well worth a read. While it serves to make me like him a little more, I’ve gotta wonder if he’s even going to bother running (or at least running as a Republican) when he’s up again in 2014, considering it’s just going to tick off the teabaggers even more. He derides the Tea Partiers, saying they’ll be gone in a few years, “chortling” that Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today… and also has a good laugh at the rumors about his sexual orientation, instead of, y’know, punching the interviewer in the nose or something unequivocally manly like that.

• WI-Sen, WI-Gov: PPP rolls out a last batch of numbers from their Wisconsin sample, looking at the Republican primaries in the Senate and gubernatorial races and seeing them as foregone conclusions. On the governor’s side, Milwaukee Co. Executive (and legendary 60’s crooner) Scott Walker leads ex-Rep. Mark Neumann 58-19, while in the Senate race, Ron Johnson leads Dave Westlake 49-11.

• WV-Sen: OK, so the rumor today is that things are still on for a 2012 special election to replace Robert Byrd, not a 2010 one as suggested yesterday. Gov. Joe Manchin and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin are sending signals that they won’t call for a legislative special session to shift the election date to this year, despite the decision by SoS Natalie Tennant to have it in 2012.

• AL-Gov: Here’s one more politican trapped in the semantic quicksand that seems to be developing around the issue of stateside service during Vietnam. Alabama GOP runoff contestant Robert Bentley has drawn some heat for the words “Hospital commander” and “Vietnam War” appearing on-screen in one of his TV ads. Bentley was ranking medical doctor at Pope AFB (in North Carolina) during the Vietnam era, although he didn’t serve physically in Vietnam.

• FL-Gov: Now the supposed hero of 9/11 has RINO cooties, too? Rick Scott’s camp sent out press releases yesterday attacking opponent Bill McCollum for having supported “pro-abortion, pro-homosexual” Giuliani for President, back in those heady days of, say, 2007, when it was assumed that Giuliani was going to steamroller everyone else in the Florida primary.

• MD-Gov: Republican ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich picked a running mate for his 2010 campaign, and, no, he’s not giving Michael Steele his old job back. He picked Mary Kane, who was the SoS under Ehrlich (an appointed position in Maryland). She’s from Montgomery County, suggesting he sees the route to 50%+1 through this increasingly-blue suburb.

• OR-Gov (pdf): Republican pollster Magellan is quickly becoming one of the most prolific purveyors of public polls, this time with a look at the gubernatorial race in Oregon. They join the consensus that this is a deadlocked race right now; they find Republican Chris Dudley leading Democrat John Kitzhaber by a paper-thin 41-40 margin. Dudley has 41-27 support among independents. They also offer an interesting breakdown by CD; it’s OR-04 that’s keeping Dudley in this, giving him a 44-38 edge, while predictably, Kitzhaber dominates in OR-01 and OR-03, Dudley sweeps OR-02, and they fight to a tie in OR-05.

• WY-Gov: OMG! Stop the presses! Veteran character actor and widely trusted commercial pitchman for products for old people (and Wyoming resident) Wilford Brimley has made an endorsement in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He’s backing state Auditor Rita Meyer. No word on whether he was won over by her pro-oatmeal stances.

• NJ-07: There’s an internal poll out from a Democrat? Not only that, but it’s from one who’s been totally off the radar, as national Dems seem to have ceded the 7th to freshman GOPer Leonard Lance. While the “informed ballot” numbers are the ones getting promoted (we at SSP think informed ballot questions are good… for us to poop on), there are legitimate toplines in there too, with Lance leading Ed Potosnak by a not-so-imposing 43-30. Lance also has a weak 31/46 re-elect number in the Garin Hart Yang poll.

• NM-02: Construction liens seem to be the common cold of political scandals, but Democratic freshman Harry Teague is in an uphill battle to retain his GOP-leaning seat and probably wouldn’t like any bad PR. He personally, and the four oil and gas industry companies he controls, are facing a civil lawsuit over failure to repay loans to purchase equipment.

• Ohio: PPP has some odds and ends left over from their Ohio sample. Two items are on the bad news side of the ledger, although only barely: a generic House ballot test for Ohio (where there are at least five competitive Democratic holds) has Republicans leading Democrats 44-43, and GOP ex-Sen. Mike DeWine is leading appointed Democratic AG Richard Cordray 44-41 in the Attorney General’s race. (Screw that; what about SoS race numbers?) The good news is that Sherrod Brown’s favorables have rebounded quite a bit since PPP’s last poll; he’s now at 38/38.

• NRCC: More expectations management from the NRCC? After previous pronouncements that John Boehner was looking to pick up 436 100 seats, now he’s sending out a fundraising e-mail that touts a 39-seat pickup as their target.

• RGA: Haley Barbour’s rolling around in a trough full of money today: the Republican Governors Association hauled in $19 million in the last fundraising quarter. Also suggesting that GOP fundraising is kicking into higher gear, American Crossroads, the Karl Rove venture that earned a whopping $200 in May, had a much better June: they raised $8.5 million.

NV-Sen: An interesting tidbit from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which Jon Ralston rightly knocks them for burying: Former Rep. Barbara Vucanovich, the first and only Republican woman to hold federal office in Nevada, says she isn’t sure whether she can support Sharron Angle, and might just vote “none of the above.”

WI-Sen: Former GOP candidate Terrence Wall is claiming that teabagging richie rich Ron Johnson engaged in “bribery” to win the state Republican convention in May – where “bribery” is characterized as, apparently, paying for some delegate hotel rooms. Johnson denies the allegations, and even his remaining opponent, Dave Westlake, isn’t buying them either.

WV-Sen: Sen. Robert Byrd, age 92, was admitted to the hospital over the weekend and is said to be “seriously ill” by his staff. We of course extend our wishes for his recovery.

AZ-Gov: While she has some distance to go before she reaches Sharron Angle or Rand Paul levels of foot-in-mouth disease, I think Jan Brewer is going to be one of those Republicans who really helps us by not knowing how to shut up. Case in point: She said on CNN this weekend that “the majority of the people that are coming to Arizona and trespassing are now becoming drug mules.”

CT-Gov: Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley is busy explaining two arrests in his past, both involving vehicular incidents. (Click the link for full details.) No charges were filed in either incident.

FL-Gov: Florida Republicans are drafting a new immigration law for their own state modeled after Arizona’s. We’re slotting this under the FL-Gov header because AG Bill McCollum’s office is helping to write this new bill. (Florida has one of the largest Hispanic populations in the country, with 21% of the state claiming Hispanic origin.) Meanwhile, the St. Pete Times takes a lengthy look at Rick Scott’s tenure at Columbia/HCA, the healthcare giant which engaged in massive fraud and eventually paid a record-setting $1.7 billion fine. Scott is trying to tout his experience as a CEO, but of course keeps attempting to distance himself from his former company. Ah, but what’s a little two-faced bullshit on the campaign trail?

IA-Gov: Ah, the Republican Party never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. As desmoines dem chronicles at her blog, Bleeding Heartland (bookmark it), Terry Branstad was dealt a pretty ugly vote-of-not-a-lot-of-confidence at the GOP state convention this past Saturday. Even though Branstad nominated his own Lt. Gov. candidate (the largely unknown Kim Reynolds), a state rep. put Bob Vander Plaats’ name into the hopper for the nod – and Branstad’s pick squeaked by with just 56% of the delegate vote. (Vander Plaats, of course, ran against Branstad for the gubernatorial nomination, losing by only about 10 points despite huge disparities in name rec and money.) And just the day before, BVP said he still wasn’t planning to support Brandsad, nor would he rule out an independent bid. Smell the cat fud, baby!

AR-02: I’m not really getting Joyce Elliott’s messaging here. On the one hand, she’s trying to tie former AG Tim Griffin to his one-time mentor, Karl Rove. On the other hand, she says she won’t run a campaign against Washington, DC. So not only is her message muddled, but she’s also unilaterally disarming. I hope she sees the error of her ways on this one.

MA-10: State Rep. Jeffrey Perry is touting an internal poll from Public Opinion Strategies showing him with a 41-25 lead in the GOP primary over ex-state Treasurer Joe Malone. Perry also claims to have favorables of 44% and unfavorables of just 1%….

VA-02: Sarah Palin is going to be in town for a wingnut event called the “Freedom Fest.” But GOP nominee Scott Rigell won’t attend – and his campaign is offering some made-up sounding b.s. about FEC regulations preventing him from going. Unsurprisingly, teabagger Kenny Golden is hitting Rigell for his failure to appear. Ironically, Rigell is claiming the fact that Golden wasn’t offered equal time at the event is a reason he (Rigell) isn’t going!

• AZ-Sen: Wow, ultimate blowhard J.D. Hayworth actually realized he was in an untenable situation and had to apologize… for his having appeared in an infomercial touting “free grant money” seminar ripoffs. (He was unapologetic on Monday when the story broke, saying Republicans’ two favorite words: “buyer beware.”)

• CO-Sen: The Denver Post has a must-read profile of Ken Buck’s time as a federal prosecutor in Colorado, focusing on a 2000 case where he declined to file charges against gun shop owners, suspected of illegal sales, that he knew from local Republican circles. The incident ended with Buck resigning in 2002 to take a job as counsel for a construction company, after receiving a letter of reprimand and having to take ethics courses. (Ironically, the US Attorney who issued the letter of reprimand is Republican now-AG John Suthers, who probably would have been the GOP’s strongest Senate candidate here had he decided to run.)

• CT-Sen: Linda McMahon is accusing Rob Simmons of running a “stealth campaign,” despite his having “suspended” his operations. Simmons’ name remains on the ballot, and he still has a skeletal staff, although apparently for fundraising purposes and to help other local candidates… but it seems pretty clear he’s keeping his engine idling in the event that the McMahon campaign implodes, which is probably the source of her chagrin. McMahon is also out with a new ad, which, for the first time, features her admitting to her past as pro wrestling impresario (instead of just vagueness about being a “businesswoman”); she says that pro wrestling “isn’t real” but “our problems are.” Yeah, tell Owen Hart it isn’t real…

• KS-Sen: Sarah Palin sez: Get a brain, Moran! Well, she didn’t quite say that, but she did tell her Facebook legion to support Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary in Kansas instead of Jerry Moran. Social con Tiahrt trails fiscal hawk Moran in the polls, though.

• NV-Sen: There’s more amazing dirt today on the Independent American Party, the right-wing third party in Nevada that included Sharron Angle as a member back in the 1990s. The party, during that time period, paid for a bizarre anti-gay flier (referencing “sodomites” and “brazen perverts”) to be included in local newspapers. The party’s other pronouncements during this time included prohibiting “the financing of the New World Order with American taxes” and eliminating “the debt money system.”

• TX-Sen (pdf): PPP has approval numbers for Kay Bailey Hutchison as part of their Texas sample this week, and they might give her some pause about running for re-election in 2012 (which she’s on the fence about, apparently). Her futile run for Governor seems to have hurt her standing, as her overall approval is 37/43 and it’s only 47/37 among Republicans. On the question of whether she should run again, Republicans are split 43/43, and maybe most alarmingly for her, 39% of Republicans think she’s too liberal while 46% say she’s about right. It definitely creates an opening for a teabagger challenge, if she does run again.

• CA-Gov: Meg Whitman’s trying an interesting damage control approach, having taken harder hits from the California Nurses’ Association than anyone else. She’s doing a targeted direct mailing to nurses’ homes, offering her side of the story, saying “don’t take the union boss’s word for it.”

• FL-Gov: I didn’t think super-rich Rick Scott really needed any intervention from outside groups, as he’s able to pay his own way. But he’s getting $1.5 million worth of advertising bought on his behalf by a 527 called “Let’s Get to Work.” It’s yet another anti-Bill McCollum ad, questioning his work as a lobbyist as well as his immigration stance.

• IA-Gov: Terry Branstad, who picked little-known state Sen. Kim Reynolds as a running mate yesterday, is now trying to sell her to the state’s social conservatives, letting them know that she’s really one of them (even if they hadn’t heard of her). Branstad, of course, is trying to head off an indie bid by vanquished primary foe Bob Vander Plaats. There are two other Branstad-related articles you might check out today: one is a piece from the Univ. of Minnesota’s Smart Politics on the success rates for ex-Governor comebacks (bottom line: it’s a pretty high rate (63%), although that’s usually for open seats, not against incumbents). And the other is a Politico look at the possible resurgence of the mustache in politics: Branstad, along with John Hoeven and John Kitzhaber, is wearing the ‘stache with pride (unfortunately, we can’t say the same about Ron Sparks anymore).

• IL-Gov: While nobody seems interested in challenging Scott Lee Cohen’s 133K signatures (five times as many as needed), Democrats are still weighing other legal methods of dispatching Cohen. While Cohen’s situation is unusual and there aren’t court cases on point, it’s possible the state’s sore loser law would prevent him from winning a Dem nomination, resigning it, and subsequently launching his own indie bid for a different office.

• SC-Gov: Here’s what initially seems like a big surprise, but is symptomatic of the rocky relations between the country-club wing of the state GOP and the Mark Sanford wing (of which Nikki Haley is a member). The state’s Chamber of Commerce just endorsed Democratic nominee Vincent Sheheen, suggesting that the GOP’s old-boy network in SC may take desperate measures to keep Haley out. The animus, at least on the surface, seems driven by efforts by Sanford (and Haley, in the legislature) to reject federal stimulus funds. Nice to see something of a public admission that, at the end of the day, big-business Republicans like to see government spending on the infrastructure that they, y’know, need in order to successfully do business, as opposed to the teabaggers’ empty-headed anti-government nihilism.

• TX-Gov: A Texas judge yesterday blocked the Green Party from the ballot in November, which ought to help Dems’ chances if the gubernatorial race winds up close. Moreover, the investigation into who was behind efforts to get the Greens onto the ballot in Texas (and conceivably save Rick Perry) has turned up some remarkable evidence: that Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, personally paid for efforts. Toomey paid a monthly stipend for six months to the organizer of the petition drive. (That drive failed, but a subsequent one bankrolled by mysterious group Take Initiative America later succeeded; Democrats, however, blocked the Greens from qualifying, saying that Take Inititative’s $500K operation was an illegal in-kind contribution to the Greens.)

• KS-01, KS-04: SurveyUSA has polls of the Republican primaries in two dark-red districts in Kansas. In the 1st, state Sen. Jim Barnett (probably the most moderate figure in the race) is still in the lead, at 23. Someone by the name of Tracey Mann has surged into 2nd place at 20, from 4 in the last poll of this race in February (probably by virtue of consolidating the Tea Party vote), while CfG choice state Sen. Tim Huelskamp is at 18. Rob Wasinger is at 11, Sue Boldra is at 8, and Marck Cobb is at 2. And in the 4th, it’s a dead heat between two businessmen: Mike Pompeo is at 39 while Wink Hartman is at 37. (Pompeo is the insider here; he’s an RNC committeeman.) State Sen. Jean Schodorf is at 8, with Jim Anderson at 6 and Paji Rutschman at 1. They also look at the Dem primary, where Raj Goyle, despite his fundraising prowess, is only at 42-32 against “retiree” Robert Tillman. Looks like Goyle might need to expend some shoe leather to avoid going the route of Vic Rawl.

• PA-11: Rep. Paul Kanjorski is some Beltway-media hot water, after delivering a very convoluted sentence at a financial reform bill hearing on the topic of foreclosure prevention that made it sound like that “minorities” weren’t “average, good American people.” Extended parsing of the sentence seems to suggest that he was actually taking issue with Republican characterizations of the types of people who wind up in foreclosure. Still, any time that the crusty Kanjorski, facing another tough challenge from Lou Barletta this year, has to spend digging out of his own holes is too much.

• TN-08: With the hard-right rabble whipped up into such a froth that anything short of punching Democrats in the nose is seen as RINO collaborationism, this can’t bode well for Stephen Fincher’s primary hopes. Fincher voted in the May 2010 Democratic primary for local races. Fincher offers the excuse that, with no GOP primary, it was vote in the Dem primary or not vote at all, but that undercuts his own attacks on Ron Kirkland for his occasional Dem-voting past. (wtndem has more in his diary.)