Tag: Ron Johnson

• AR-Sen (pdf): One more poll added to Blanche Lincoln’s woes today. It’s from Republican pollster Magellan, and unlike a number of their polls lately that have been sua sponte, this one is on behalf of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network. It gives John Boozman a 60-29 lead over Lincoln. Lincoln decided to put a stop to the string of polls showing her DOA, by (taking a page from Raul Labrador here) releasing her own internal from Benenson showing her, well, only a little bit dead. It has her trailing Boozman “only” 45-36, with 6 going to indie Trevor Drown.

• KS-Sen, KS-Gov: SurveyUSA looks at the statewide primaries in Kansas yet again, and, as usual, finds Rep. Jerry Moran with a big lead over fellow Rep. Todd Tiahrt in the GOP Senate primary, 50-36 (which is actually an improvement for Tiahrt; the last SUSA poll was 53-33). College professor Lisa Johnston continues to lead the Dem Senate primary at 23, with 14 for Charles Schollenberger and 12 for state Sen. David Haley. The GOP gubernatorial primary continues to be a non-event, with Sam Brownback leading Joan Heffington 73-19.

• NE-Sen (pdf): Magellan, on behalf of JCN, is also out with a poll of the 2012 Senate race, presumably intended to scare Ben Nelson into voting against Elena Kagan. At this rate, it may not matter how he votes on Kagan or anything else: if he runs again, Nelson is losing to GOP Gov. Dave Heineman 58-28.

• NH-Sen: The Paul Hodes campaign continues to hit Kelly Ayotte over her being asleep at the switch on mortgage fraud with another ad on the topic. It’s a $100K ad buy, and it’s going up in Boston, meaning that it’ll hit a lot of eyeballs (but also that that $100K gets burned through pretty quickly).

• PA-Sen: Joe Sestak has been fighting with local TV stations over them airing an ad from a conservative group attacking him on Israel policy. Now he’s getting some backing from liberal Israel policy group J Street, who are running a new TV spot saying he “consistently votes for aid to Israel.” NWOTSOTB, but it is running “in major media markets.”

• SC-Sen: Green, not Greene? The Columbia area AFL-CIO must not have been impressed with Alvin Greene’s first major policy speech last weekend, because now they’ve rolled out their endorsement of Green Party candidate Tom Clements instead.

• WI-Sen (pdf): But wait, there’s more! With your purchase of these fine AR-Sen and NE-Sen polls, you also get a bonus WI-Sen poll, perfect for triggering one of Russ Feingold’s patented flashes of maverickiness. Magellan, on behalf, of JCN, also finds Feingold leading Ron Johnson 45-43.

• CT-Gov: Dan Malloy got the endorsement of the six state affiliates of the SEIU in Connecticut, a key union endorsement. Ned Lamont isn’t hurting for union backing, though; he has the support of the Connecticut Education Association, the UAW, and the UFCW.

• MI-Gov: The Detroit News poll from yesterday also had a Democratic primary component to it. They find, with only weeks to go, Undecided still in the lead at 40. Andy Dillon leads Virg Bernero 34-25. 44% of respondents haven’t heard of Bernero, while 26% don’t know Dillon. On the GOP side, this may give some more moderate cred to Rick Snyder: he got the endorsement of ex-Rep. Joe Schwarz, who had briefly considered an independent run for Governor himself.

• MT-Gov: GOPers already have a candidate for Governor in 2012 in Montana, where Brian Schweitzer is termed out. Republican former state Senate minority leader Corey Stapleton just announced his bid. The article mentions some other possibilities too, including long-ago ex-Rep. Rick Hill on the GOP side. AG Steve Bullock may be the Dems’ best bet.

• FL-02: Politico has a profile of Rep. Allen Boyd, who’s getting squeezed both left and right as he first faces state Sen. Al Lawson in the Dem primary and then faces funeral home owner Steve Southerland. Boyd’s response? To play “offense,” including going negative in TV ads against Lawson. Boyd’s already spent $1.9 million this cycle, and still has many times more CoH than his two opponents together.

• NY-15: Buried deep in a Hill article about how Chuck Schumer is still standing up for Charles Rangel when no one else will, kicking him a $10K check for his re-election, is a noteworthy poll of the Dem primary. The poll was conducted by PPP, and was paid for by Democrats.com; it finds Rangel with a not-very-imposing lead of 39-21 over Adam Clayton Powell IV in the primary.

• NY-23: After being the flavor of the month for, well, a month or so prior to last fall’s NY-23 special election, Doug Hoffman seems to have fallen off most people’s radars. He wants you to know he’s still around, though, and just released an internal poll from McLaughlin & Associates that gives him a sizable lead over Matt Doheny (who has most of the local GOP establishment backing) in the GOP primary. He leads Doheny 52-20. Bear in mind, of course, that Hoffman already has the Conservative line and Doheny has the IP line, meaning they’re going to meet in the general election (and spoil each other’s days) either way.

• TN-09: Finally, here’s a poll of the Dem primary in the 9th. It looks like former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton is having the same trouble playing the race card that Nikki Tinker did in 2008; he’s trailing Steve Cohen by a 65-15 margin. The poll’s not an internal, taken by Yacoubian Research for WMC-TV, but there’s one reason to raise an eyebrow at it: it screens voters by asking them if they’re in the 9th District (and how many people in the real world know the number of their congressional district?).

• Rasmussen:

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 53%, Linda McMahon (R) 40%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 52%, Peter Schiff (R) 34%

• CT-Sen: Richard Blumenthal (D) 52%, Rob Simmons (R) 38%

• ID-Sen: Tom Sullivan (D) 27%, Mike Crapo (R-inc) 64%

• ME-Gov: Libby Mitchell (D) 31%, Paul LePage (R) 39%, Eliot Cutler (I) 15%

• OH-Sen: Lee Fisher (D) 39%, Rob Portman (R) 45%

• CT-Sen: Quinnipiac (7/8, registered voters, likely Republican primary voters, 6/2-8 in parentheses):

Richard Blumenthal (D): 54 (55)

Linda McMahon (R): 37 (35)

Undecided: 7 (8)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 55 (54)

Rob Simmons (R): 35 (33)

Undecided: 9 (10)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 58 (56)

Peter Schiff (R): 31 (29)

Undecided: 9 (12)

(MoE: ±2.7%)

Linda McMahon (R): 52

Rob Simmons (R): 25

Peter Schiff (R) : 13

Undecided: 10

(MoE: ±3.4%)

Not much change in the Nutmeg State. And it looks like Rob Simmons might have some pretty serious disincentive to not get back into the Senate primary again, as he briefly threatened.

• FL-Sen: Marco Rubio’s $4.4 million haul blew a lot of people away, but what’s equally impressive (and didn’t get any coverage at the time) is his burn rate. It turns out that, even though he no longer has a primary to worry about, he spent almost all ($4 million) of what he made.

• NY-Sen-B: You might remember that there was some uncertainty as to whether Joe DioGuardi, who has the Conservative line for November, would even make it into the Republican primary thanks to his poor finish at the GOP state convention. Well, after gathering enough signatures, he has now successfully petitioned his way onto the primary ballot. He has consistently led polls of the GOP primary, although generally in the low 20s. (H/t andyroo312.)

• WI-Sen, WI-Gov (pdf): Apparently, voters in Wisconsin are dimly aware that something called an “election” may be transpiring at some point in the future, as more than half of all those surveyed not having decided yet on a Senate pick, at least according to Univ. of Wisconsin’s Badger Poll. The likely voters in Wisconsin are currently going for Russ Feingold at 33 and Ron Johnson 28. RVs are Feingold 27, Johnson 21, and Wisconsin residents are Feingold 25, Johnson 19. In a remarkable contrast with Rasmussen (who’d have thunk?), nobody knows who Johnson is: he has 12/8 favorables among likely voters. They also look at the even-more-disinteresting gubernatorial race, finding Tom Barrett losing to both Scott Walker and Mark Neumann by the same margin of 32-15 (!). (UPDATE (DavidNYC): Here’s another good reason to mistrust this poll: It was in the field for a month. What the…?)

• WV-Sen: The West Virginia legislature is still busy tinkering with their state’s election laws today as part of the preparations for the special election to succeed Robert Byrd. Perhaps most significantly, it sounds like they are planning special primaries (tentatively set for fast-approaching Aug. 28), rather than a jungle-style election in November. They threw out a Joe Manchin proposal, however, that would scrap the special primaries if only one candidate from each party decided to run.

• AZ-Gov: We reported yesterday on the Rocky Mountain Poll (by the ominously-named Behavior Research Council), and it looks like they also have general election numbers. GOP incumbent Jan Brewer leads Democratic AG Terry Goddard 45-25, a surprisingly large margin since most non-Rasmussen pollsters have seen a close race (although that was mostly before SB 1070-mania hit).

• CO-Gov: SurveyUSA, on behalf of the Denver Post, is out with a snap poll on the subject of Scott McInnis, post-plagiarism-scandal. It turns out that this scandal does have a lot of resonance — there’s a lot less semantic ambiguity here than with Richard Blumenthal or even Mark Kirk… either you wrote it or you didn’t (and then tried to pass the blame on an octogenarian ally). 20% of Republicans now say they’ll vote for someone else, but 39% say they’ll still vote for him. Looking ahead to a replacement, the poll also asked who “the strongest Republican” would be, and the number one pick was… you guessed it… Tom Tancredo, at 29. McInnis followed at 19, with primary opponent Dan Maes at 13. Jane Norton (a possible switchover, given her dwindling Senate campaign) was at 11, former candidate and state Sen. Josh Penry was at 7, and Univ. of Colorado Bruce Benson was at 3. (In other polling news, note that even Rasmussen can’t find a way to polish this turd, as seen in a poll (see below) taken last night.)

If you’re wondering who Benson is, he’s now the subject of perhaps the most speculation as the GOP’s preferred fill-in. Another name getting tossed around is long-ago former Sen. Hank Brown, who more recently served as president of Univ. of Northern Colorado. The Post also was apparently set to do its regularly-scheduled endorsement for the primary this week, and they said that prior to this week, they would have endorsed McInnis; now they can’t endorse anyone at all (which is quite the slap at Maes).

• GA-Gov: Not that he seems to need a lot of help at this point, but Roy Barnes is getting the endorsement of Atlanta’s new mayor, Kasim Reed. Turnabout’s fair play, as Barnes gave Reed a late endorsement in last year’s election.

• NY-Gov: Well, this race is effectively over: Andrew Cuomo reported raising $9.2 million in the last six months for a total of $23.6 million CoH. (You think he could redirect a little of that to the DGA? Of the nation’s 10 most populous states, 9 have gubernatorial races, and of those 9, New York is the lone one that isn’t highly competitive.) Rick Lazio, by comparison, raised $1.4 million in that period, and has $689K CoH, which might make him competitive in an upstate House race. GOP primary rival Carl Paladino reported raising $1.7 million during the same period… but $1.6 million of that came out of his own pocket.

• TN-Gov: We normally don’t report on Mitt Romney’s many endorsements, as he seems to hand out low-four-figures sums of money to any Republican with a pulse who survived a primary. Here’s one that’s a big race though and where the decisive primary hasn’t happened yet. Romney backed Bill Haslam, the establishment and most moderate of the three GOPers in the primary.

• TX-Gov: With full information available from Rick Perry, we know now that Bill White won each fundraising category. White outraised Perry $7.4 million to $7.1 million in the post-primary period, and White leads in CoH by a $9 million to $5.8 million margin. And here’s an interesting tidbit: the White campaign says it’s raised more than $1 million from former Kay Bailey Hutchison contributors.

• CO-04: EMILY’s List is weighing into the 4th with a big independent expenditure. They’ll be spending $300K on TV advertising on behalf of Betsy Markey over the next three weeks; the ad’s a negative spot hitting Corey Gardner, including on health care issues.

• FL-17: The Miami Herald has some helpful background on the largely-forgotten Democratic primary in the open seat 17th, which is where all the action will be in this dark-blue district. (This seat, long held by the Meek family, hasn’t had a competitive primary in decades.) They look at state Sen. Frederica Wilson as frontrunner, and they cite an AFL-CIO poll from March (the first I’ve seen of it) that had Wilson at 34, with 12 for Miami Gardens mayor Shirley Gibson and 10 for North Miami city councilor Scott Galvin. The race’s rapidly emerging wild card, though, seems to be physician Rudolph Moise, by virtue of having over $900K CoH, at least six times what anyone else has. Some of that is self-funded, but he seems to have raised the most from other donors too, and he plans to start an advertising blitz soon.

• GA-12: Rep. John Barrow’s been burning cash fast lately: he raised $204K last quarter but spent $374K in that period, leaving him with $655 CoH. But that’s probably because his big challenge this year is in the Democratic primary (next week), not in the general, where his possible GOP opponents are all pretty weak. Of course, Regina Thomas doesn’t present that much challenge to him, either, if her financials are any indication: she raised $2,400 last quarter and had $6,600 CoH. But hey, at least she managed to file her FEC report on time this year.

• ID-01: Here’s another way that Raul Labrador is an unconventional candidate: he thinks that following that unspoken rule that you release your internal polls only when they have good news for you is for pussies. He’s out with an internal, by Moore Insight, that gives Rep. Walt Minnick — in theory one of the most vulnerable freshmen by virtue of his district and narrow win last time — a 37-27 lead. Minnick’s re-elect is only 38/40, though, which I guess is worth something. Reid Wilson also has more detail on Labrador today, slamming Kevin McCarthy’s efforts to reach out to citizens for help on creating a new Contract with America-type-thing. (The democracy-hating Labrador, no fan of the 17th Amendment either, thinks House leadership should impose the agenda top-down.) Also, were you wondering why Labrador didn’t loudly tout his fundraising haul from last quarter? Well, that’s because he raised $101K in the post-primary period of May and June, and is sitting on all of $69K CoH with $30K debt.

• MI-01: Is this the smallest sample size ever? Another Inside Michigan Politics poll of a House primary is out, this time in the Republican field in the open seat race to replace Bart Stupak, and it’s got a whopping n of 140. State Sen. Jason Allen and physician Dan Benishek (who was the lone GOPer before Stupak’s retirement announcement) are tied at the top with 20 each. There’s also a handful of no-names polling in the low single digits, one of whom, Linda Goldthorpe, just dropped out yesterday. (H/t TheGradyDem.)

• Caucuses: Well, it was only a matter of time before this happened. Michele Bachmann is taking out the paperwork to create a whole new caucus in the House: the Tea Party Caucus. Hmmm… I thought that already existed, and it was called the RSC.

• NY-St. Sen.: Here’s an interesting piece on the fundraising and infrastructure collapse behind the scenes for the GOP in the New York State Senate (who may, via GOP-held open seats, actually manage to lose further seats in November despite the nature of the year). Case in point: the race to replace retiring Senator Vincent Leibell in the Hudson Valley, where there’s cat fud a-flyin’ between establishment pick Mary Beth Murphy and teabaggish Greg Ball (who you may recall from briefly making a splashy entry in the NY-19 field).

• Rasmussen:

• CO-Gov: John Hickenlooper (D) 45%, Scott McInnis (R) 43%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 36%, Mike Castle (R) 47%

• DE-Sen: Chris Coons (D) 39%, Christine O’Donnell (R) 41%

• GA-Gov (D): Roy Barnes (D) 59%, Thurbert Baker (D) 16%, Dubose Porter 5%, David Poythress 5%

• PA-Gov: Dan Onorato (D) 38%, Tom Corbett (R) 48%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 45%, Dino Rossi (R) 48%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 45%, Clint Didier (R) 48%

• WA-Sen: Patty Murray (D) 46%, Paul Akers (R) 41%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karen Handel: 32

Nathan Deal: 18

John Oxendine: 18

Eric Johnson: 12

Ray McBerry: 3

Jeff Chapman: 3

Otis Putnam: 0

Undecided: 14

(MoE: ±2.8%)

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

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

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

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

Bryan Lentz (D): 26

Pat Meehan (R): 47

(MoE: ±4.9%)

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

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

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

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

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

AK-Sen: It’s not every day you see an incumbent agreeing to debate a primary challenger, but Sen. Lisa Murkowski has done just that. She’ll meet Joe Miller for three debates in the middle of August, just before the primary on the 24th.

CT-Sen: This Politico story reminds me of that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where, amidst the Black Plague, the peasant exhorts everyone to “Bring out yer dead!” and dump them on his cart. One not-quite victim protests, “But I’m not dead yet!” So, too, the Rob Simmons campaign. A whole bunch of people – including Rob Simmons himself – plan on voting for Simmons in the August 10th primary. But it’s pretty clear that hope indeed seems to be the plan here, since Simmons still isn’t campaigning and seems to just be praying for an unlikely win. At least it’s a better system of governance than strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords.

FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is pulling the trigger on a special legislative session in which he’ll ask lawmakers to add a constitutional amendment to the November ballot which would allow voters to ban offshore drilling. The Miami Herald notes that Crist didn’t lay any groundwork for this special session with state House leaders, meaning he could potentially get negged here. But even that could redound to Crist’s benefit, as he’d be able to campaign against the legislature’s failure to give the people a voice on this pressing issue.

KY-Sen: It’s like John Galt forgot the fact that his motors still had to be delivered along public roads: Rand Paul is taking heat from local officials on account of his distaste for using federal money for drug treatment programs. Note that we aren’t talking about the “war on drugs” here, but money used to treat addicts – which Paul says should come from local sources. But the people who actually have to deal with the problem say that Paul doesn’t understand how important federal dollars are for these programs. Not really surprising, given Rand Paul Math:

When tax money flows to the nation’s capitol, half stays there, half is wasted and half of it goes to political cronyism, Paul said.

LA-Sen: David Vitter got a somewhat-prominent primary challenger at the very last minute: retired LA Supreme Court Judge Chet Traylor. There’s also at least one other Some Dude in the race. If for some reason Vitter can’t get 50% in the primary – which is not until August 28th – then he’d have to deal with a runoff on October 2nd, barely a month before the general. Also interestingly, Republican state Rep. Ernest Wooton qualified for the race, too – as an independent. This might be a rare bit of good news for Charlie Melancon. (H/t Darth Jeff.)

NV-Sen: At the state GOP convention, Sharron Angle expressed her support for the party’s platform – a wonderfully nutty document, as Jon Ralston points out, that touts its opposition to a “one-world government.” Angle was later seen leaving the convention on a black helicopter. Meanwhile, President Obama just did a fundraiser for Harry Reid late last week, which apparently raised $800K.

SC-Sen: Alvin Greene won’t face any charges regarding the $10,440 filing fee he paid to run for senate, or over whether he misrepresented his finances when he asked for a public defender after being charged with a crime (showing an obscene photo) last fall. It turns out that Greene really did pull together the scratch himself, mostly from his Army exit pay and a hefty tax refund. It’s not how I would have spent my last ten thousand bucks, but to each his own.

SD-Sen: With zero opponents on the ballot – not even a Some Dude independent – John Thune is shuttering his campaign team. While it’s always painful to see a Republican senate seat go completely uncontested like this, I wonder if this might not be for the best in terms of Stephanie Herseth Sandlin’s re-election chances. At the very least, it means that Thune won’t be out there stumping on the campaign trail – and won’t provide an attractive top-of-the-ticket draw in November. While it’s probably unprovable, I know a lot of folks here feel that Dick Lugar’s lack of an opponent probably helped us win three house races in Indiana in 2006, a sentiment I tend to share.

WI-Sen: Cute: Zillionaire teabagger Ron Johnson had previously criticized President Obama for pushing BP to set up a fund to pay out claims for damage their oil spill has caused. It turns out that Johnson owns at least $116,000 worth of BP stock. Johnson laughably tried to point out that Wisconsin’s public employee pension fund also invests in BP – and that Russ Feingold is a member of that fund (he was a state legislator before being elected to Congress). Srsly?

WV-Sen: It looks like that statement is no longer operative. On Friday, Gov. Joe Manchin told Politico’s Ben Smith that he would “declare his intentions about a Senate run Monday.” The next day, though, he informed Politico’s Jonathan Martin that he’s going to hold off until two things happen: first, he wants the state legislature (called back for a special session) to clarify the law on special election to replace Sen. Robert Byrd. Second, he wants to name an interim office-holder. Manchin also said that the special session will be held this Thursday at noon. (And in an odd aside, Manchin – who seems all but certain to run for Byrd’s seat – just became head of the National Governors Association.)

AL-Gov: This is probably too late to help much, but term-limited Gov. Bob Riley is endorsing former college chancellor Bradley Byrne in tomorrow’s runoff against state Rep. Robert Bentley. Still, Bentley seems to be in the better position. Despite being something of a dark horse in the first round, Bentley has apparently done a good job of consolidating conservatives, and internal polling has generally showed him in the lead.

AL-02: It’s not like we can love Bobby Bright – but we probably can credit him with running a good campaign. Republican Martha Roby is trying to paint herself as a champion against illegal immigration, but as Politico points out, in past battles on the subject, Bright took a harder line than Roby did. As Alex Isenstadt says, “It’s the newest iteration of a recurring challenge for Roby’s campaign: How do you run to the right of a Democrat who’s been squarely on the conservative end of his party since even before he was elected?” Roby still has a runoff fight tomorrow with Rick “The Barber” Barber.

CA-11: David Harmer, running against Dem Rep. Jerry McNerney, pulled in more than $400K last quarter.

FL-25: Marili Cancio, running against establishment favorite David Rivera in the GOP primary, accused him of “repeat domestic violence” on her Facebook page. There have been some rumors circulating about a potential story here (you can Google for more).

LA-02: State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, who lost a runoff to then-Rep. Bill Jefferson in 2006, will not seek to challenge Rep. Joe Cao. This leaves state Reps. Cedric Richmond and Juan LaFonta as Cao’s most likely opponents. I’m actually a bit surprised that more big names didn’t get into the race, given how tempting a target Cao seems to be.

MI-13: The Detroit Free Press takes a look at the field challenging Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick in the Dem primary – and points out that Kilpatrick, who only took in 39% in the 2008 primary – doesn’t even have a website. The Freep thinks her two toughest challengers are state Sen. Hansen Clarke and businessman John Broad, while three other Some Dudes round out the field. No one has raised very much, and even Kilpatrick has only $300K on hand. But she may yet benefit from a split field for the second cycle in a row, much like Jean Schmidt.

NM-02: Handsome Harry Teague raised some $320K in Q2 and has $1.2 mil in the bank.

NY-14: Reshma Saujani is claiming that Carolyn Maloney agreed to a debate – but Maloney’s camp says no such thing ever happened. Given Maloney’s consistent stance of refusing to credit Saujani in any way, I have a very hard time believing anything Saujani’s team says about this. And meanwhile, the Washington Post has a pretty puffy profile of Saujani, which if nothing else confirms that she truly is the candidate of the banksters.

NY-18: Self-funding venture capitalist Paul Wasserman has dropped his bid to take on Rep. Nita Lowey in this suburban New York district. Westchester County Republicans are now instead backing 2008 nominee Jim Russell, who has a decidedly less-gaudy campaign warchest ($5,000).

Fundraising: A couple of memos – which were probably designed to be leaked – are now circulating which detail Democratic fears that they will be outspent by conservative interest groups this fall. What I don’t get is why every cycle, people always act like one side outspending the other is some kind of big surprise. New 527s come and go all the time, and it’s not like big Dem or GOP donors all of a sudden forget every January that, hey, there’s an election on! Maybe we should look into this newfangled 527 thing? This stuff is cyclical, and the fact that we’re getting our asses kicked in 2010 is not really news. But if memos like these spook a few rich Dems into opening their wallets, then okay.

Polltopia: Or more like poll dystopia. Media Matters has a distressing piece on McClatchy’s decision to stop polling altogether as part of a budget cutback. (They had previously done about a dozen polls a year with Ipsos.) The piece also details how many, many other news organizations, particularly local newspapers, have also pared down or eliminated their polling in recent years. I know there are far worse problems in the world, but as far as Swingnuts are concerned, this is very, very sad and unfortunate.

• 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.

PPP (pdf) (6/26-27, Wisconsin voters, 3/20-21 in parens):

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 45

Ron Johnson (R): 43

Undecided: 12

Russ Feingold (D-inc): 45 (48)

Dave Westlake (R): 38 (31)

Undecided: 17 (21)

(MoE: ±3.9%)

There was a general sense of Russ Feingold having dodged a bullet when ex-Gov. Tommy Thompson decided not to run (in PPP’s March poll, Feingold led Tommy Thompson 47-44). In a bit of a surprise, though, likely GOP nominee Ron Johnson performs about as well as Thompson, trailing Feingold only 45-43. PPP’s Tom Jensen speculates Republicans may have actually done themselves a favor here by running a fresh face (Johnson) instead of the stale Thompson; with only 20/18 favorables right now, Johnson does certainly have a lot of upside. (Feingold’s approval is 42/42.) Of course, on the other hand, some of Johnson’s support now may simply be because he’s something new and different, and while Thompson had some moderate crossover appeal, the very conservative Johnson may not have much of that once the candidates start talking about specifics.

PPP may have run into a more conservative batch this time than last time; today’s sample broke 48 Obama, 47 McCain, and it’s also apparent in the trendlines for the low-profile Some Dude in the race, Dave Westlake. Regardless, it’s a pretty clear signal that Russ Feingold (and the DSCC, unfortunately) are going to have to fight this one out.

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!

CT-Sen: Despite having no shortage of cash, the Journal-Inquirer of north-central Connecticut says Paulist freakazoid Peter Schiff might be having trouble petitioning his way on to the ballot. What an ignominious end! Anyhow, we’ll know for sure by the end of this week. (Also, see our CT-04 bullet for another Nutmeg state petitioning debacle, only worse.) Meanwhile, Aaron Blake lays out some possible circumstances under which Rob Simmons’ zombie campaign might come back to life (though ultimately he thinks reanimation of this particular corpse is unlikely).

WI-Sen: I like what Russ Feingold is doing here: He’s putting his opponent, richie rich Ron Johnson, on the defensive by linking Johnson to Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, and charging that he hasn’t said whether he supports Social Security, Medicare, and the Civil Rights Act. Interestingly (at least according to Politico), Johnson’s spokesbot shot back with some pablum – and didn’t bother to say whether he does support any of these three pillars of modern society.

ME-Gov: An op-ed by George Smith in the Kennebec Journal suggests that environmental lawyer Eliot Cutler, running as an independent, could win Maine’s gubernatorial race. Cutler apparently has personal wealth, and Smith suggests he could split the GOP vote, earning the support of some of its more moderate members while the teabaggers stick with the very conservative Paul LePage. (And remember, Maine’s last governor before Dem John Baldacci was also an independent, Angus King.)

SC-Gov: So Politico has a piece claiming that the South Carolina GOP establishment, including the SC Chamber of Commerce, is going all-out to try to stop Nikki Haley from winning the run-off. But CNN notes that former First Lady Jenny Sanford is stumping for Haley, and of course third-place finisher and state AG Henry McMaster endorsed her as well.

AR-01: Dem Chad Causey is “in talks” about an endorsement with Tim Wooldridge, whom Causey beat 51-49 in the runoff.

AZ-08: Remember Randy Graf? If you don’t, all you need to know is that he craaazy. He also ran for this seat in 2006 and, after the NRCC abandoned him, got beat badly by now-Rep. Gabby Giffords. Anyhow, he endorsed veteran Jesse Kelly in the GOP primary, who was once touted but then got outshined by the later entrance of state Sen. Jonathan Paton.

CO-04: Man, I bet Cory Gardner really wishes Rep. Steve King would shut up. The other day, Gardner cancelled a fundraiser in Colorado with King after King declared that President Obama “favors the black person.” Now King is lambasting Gardner for spurning him – and claiming that Gardner agrees with what he said! Gardner of course disputes King’s claims. I don’t know if you can properly call this cat fud, but it sure smells like it.

CT-04: This sack is so very, very sad. Republican Tom Herrmann flushed his campaign down the toilet today like your kid’s dead goldfish, only there won’t be any trips to the pet store to buy a replacement. Turns out Herrmann’s campaign engaged in a little bit o’ ye olde petition fraud (something we mentioned the other day), meaning he won’t have enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. I admit that I was initially skeptical of this story, but it turned out that where there was smoke, there was indeed fire.

DE-AL: Republican Kevin Wade dropped out of the race, leaving Michele Rollins and Glen Urquhart to compete in the September primary. Wade endorsed neither, but touted Some Dude Rose Izzo.

LA-02: In a story about state Rep. Cedric Richmond formally kicking off his campaign, there’s a throwaway line suggesting that state Sen. Karen Carter Peterson is still considering a run. Carter Peterson (then known only as Karen Carter) lost badly to ex-Rep. Bill Jefferson in a 2006 run-off. She also infamously supported Republican Jim Tucker to be Speaker of the Louisiana House in 2007, over (of all people) Dem Don Cazayoux.

NC-08 (PDF): Damn, I hope PPP is wrong about this. They have Harold Johnson leading beautiful maniac Tim D’Annunzio 49-39 in the runoff (which takes place next week). Surely the Ark of the Covenant can help turn the tide for Timmy D, no?

ND-AL: Earl Pomeroy’s team did some nice work in getting a bullshit third-party ad yanked off the air. The spot accused Pomeroy of supporting healthcare taxes which led to lost jobs. The only problem(s): No new healthcare taxes have gone into effect yet, and the jobs in question related to reform of the student loan system, not healthcare. Yeah, whoops is right.

NY-13: Does the name Kieran Lalor ring a bell? He ran against Rep. John Hall in NY-19 in 2008 and got pasted. He’s resurfaced of late, but this time, he’s attacking a fellow Republican, Michael Allegretti. Lalor claims to represent a group of Iraq veterans, and he’s miffed that Allegretti has pictures of himself with members of the military on his website. Lalor’s hands are not exactly clean here, as his group’s own website has a picture of Allegretti’s opponent, Michael Grimm – whom Lalor says his organization will likely endorse.

NY-14: SEIU 32BJ, an important, 70,000-strong building workers union, endorsed Rep. Carolyn Maloney, citing her work in securing $4 billion in federal money for major east side transit projects.

PA-07: What a huge – and unforced – blunder. GOPer Pat Meehan tried to accuse Bryan Lentz of having been involved in the big “bonusgate” scandal (where Dem campaign workers were paid with state money). First problem: He had no such evidence, and the press (to their credit) had no trouble realizing this. Second mistake: He held his press conference in the state capitol – where the state legislature (of which Lentz is a member) is still in session. This meant that Lentz got to watch Meehan’s presser in person – and then when Meehan was done and the cameras were still rolling, Lentz strode up to the same podium and delivered a biting rebuttal to Meehan’s bullshit. Lentz’s impressive political skillz are matched only by Meehan’s lack thereof.

VA-05: Is there a word in English which expresses the idea that a debacle for one side is actually a boon for the other? No, it’s not schadenfreude, and it’s not crisitunity, either. But in any case, this is what seems to be brewing in VA-05, where the second-place finisher in the GO primary, Jim McKelvey, finally announced that he ain’t endorsing no one – at least, not yet. We can only hope he’ll give his backing to independent teabagger Jeffrey Clark rather than state Sen. Robert Hurt.

NRCC: The NRCC is setting a $20 million goal for its “Battleground” fundraising effort from members of its caucus. In 2008, their goal was $12 million, though it’s not clear whether they actually met it. In 2006, they started at $17.5 mil but later bumped it up to $22.5 mil.

• AR-Sen: Here’s a non-surprise. Americans for Job Security, who poured $1.8 million into anti-Bill Halter ads during the primary, say they probably aren’t going to be doing any further work on behalf of Blanche Lincoln. The anti-labor group already got what it wants (two anti-labor candidates), so its work is done. Also worth noting, Nate Silver points out what a tough lift a Bill Halter victory would have been, revealing something called the ‘blogginess’ index (a factor of being white, liberal, and college-educated), on which Arkansas scores very low and Pennsylvania scores pretty high (by way of explaining how Pennsylvania was more responsive to a labor/netroots primary challenge — although I’d point out that actual labor and netroots support wasn’t the main factor in pushing Joe Sestak past Arlen Specter, whereas it was the driving force in Halter’s bid). I’m not sure if he noticed or not, but the rank ordering of the states on that index is quite similar to the graph of most liberal-to-conservative Democratic electorates that Andrew Gelman introduced last week.

• CO-Sen: Jane Norton is making a rhetorical rush to the right, if her new advertising is any indication: it’s all about stopping “Obamacare” and “yanking it out by the roots,” and it’s playing mostly in the dark-red Colorado Springs market. Wondering why? She’s probably seeing the same thing in her polling as what Republican pollster Magellan (who are getting quite active in offering public polls of Republican primaries where they don’t have a horse in the race) is seeing. They have a poll out today showing Weld County DA Ken Buck leading Norton, 42-32.

• IL-Sen: Worse to worst for Mark Kirk? It looks like frustration with his constant politicizing of his military service was present even within the Department of Defense, as a DoD memo has surfaced that expressed “concerns arising from his partisan political activities during his last two tours of active duty.” Kirk was required to get a waiver before deploying to Afghanistan in 2008, which required him to write out “an acknowledgment of limitations required for all candidates on active duty.”

• NC-Sen: This is kind of an out-of-the-blue endorsement, but it may help Elaine Marshall gain a little traction with the national netroots. Ohio SoS Jennifer Brunner is apparently OK with endorsing outside her own state’s boundaries, as she offered her support to Marshall.

• NV-Sen: Echoes of Rand Paul’s still-in-progress post-primary makeover? Jon Ralston notices that Sharron Angle’s wacky website just got scrubbed, with no discussion of her positions at this point (no mention of Social Security elimination, for instance). Meanwhile, the GOP signals that they’re going to actively get involved in breaking out the message massage oil and work on rehabbing Angle: RNC head Michael Steele has pledged his support. RNC funds will go to the Nevada GOP rather than directly to Angle, whose campaign actually was in the red ($139K CoH, $179K debt) on May 19. (Compare that to Harry Reid’s $9.1 million.) And Angle’s reaching out to the GOP establishment, too, to the extent that she says she’s willing to accept campaign help from John Ensign, a flip-flop from her pre-primary position. Fitting, though, since she’s been a big proponent of embracing radioactive waste in Nevada. (And while I don’t ordinarily like to honk my own horn, after looking back through the SSP attic, I have to remind everybody that I forecasted an Angle primary victory back in October.)

• SC-Sen: There’s a growing sense that something’s amiss with Alvin Greene’s entry to the race, to the extent that Jim Clyburn explicitly called him a “plant” today and asked for a probe. The real puzzle is the timeline on Greene’s obscenity arrest, obtaining a public defender because of his indigence, and then his filing for the race:

The South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense, which operates the state’s public defender program, makes clear that courts take into account “the number of people in your household, whether you own any real estate, or have money in the bank” when deciding whether to assign a public defender to a defendant.

Greene has claimed that he paid the $10,400 filing fee out of his savings from his military pay. But he was discharged from the Army in August 2009 and says he hasn’t held a job since then.

So, in economic terms, the timeline goes like this: Greene’s military paychecks stopped in August. Three months later, he filed an affidavit with a South Carolina court claiming to be indigent. And four months after that he walked into the South Carolina Democratic Party headquarters with a personal check for $10,400.

Losing gubernatorial candidate Robert Ford (who’s African-American) also sheds some light on how Greene might have won despite his complete unknownness: apparently, in South Carolina, “Greene” (as opposed to “Green”) is understood to be an African-American last name. With South Carolina’s Democratic electorate with a black majority, voters with no other information about the two choices might vote based purely on that.

• UT-Sen: After previously having had some nice things to say about him, 4th place finisher Cherilyn Eagar went the whole way and endorsed Tim Bridgewater for the GOP Senate primary against Mike Lee.

• WI-Sen: Republican businessman Ron Johnson, who has some personal wealth to draw on in his bid against Russ Feingold, is launching his first television ads. A source tells SSP that this is a one-week statewide ad buy for about $350K.

• AL-Gov: Second-place finisher Robert Bentley is out with an internal poll (by Dresner Wicker) giving him a big lead in the runoff against Bradley Byrne, 45-29. That’s somewhat plausible, since Bentley seems likelier to consolidate the votes for the most conservative options, Roy Moore and Tim James, than is “moderate” Byrne. (Of course, since James is paying for a recount, it’s not a done deal that Bentley’s in the runoff.)

• CO-Gov: Scott McInnis, facing a primary from teabagger Dan Maes (who pulled even with him at the state convention), now says he “doesn’t remember” serving on the board of pro-choice group Republicans for Choice. However, paperwork filed with the FEC lists him on the group’s letterhead as a board member from 1996 to 2005… that’s ten years.

• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley is out with an internal poll giving her a big lead heading into the runoff against Gresham Barrett, 62-28 (suggesting she’s gotten the majority of the gains from the primary, where she led 49-22). Barrett‘s staying in (despite a sandbagging by the RGA), and he’s already out with a TV ad, where he appears with a drill sergeant who calls him “a Christian family man who won’t embarrass us.” I’m not sure if that cringeworthy line is supposed to be an anti-Mark Sanford dogwhistle or an anti-Haley dogwhistle; maybe it’s intended to do double-duty.

• GA-09: Despite losing the runoff in the special election in the 9th, Lee Hawkins is continuing to fight on; he’ll also challenge Rep.-elect Tom Graves in the regularly scheduled July primary. Hawkins didn’t fare as poorly as expected, staying within 56-44, and may be counting on the late-breaking news about Graves’s attempts to dodge a lawsuit over an unpaid business loan continuing to be a story in coming months.

• ID-01: Greg Smith & Associates released a poll (apparently not on any candidate’s behalf), showing Raul Labrador leading Democratic freshman Walt Minnick, 36-24. Recall, though, that this is the same pollster that found Minnick leading “the Republican” candidate 50-20 before the primary (and the link also helpfully provides a list of other times Smith has been way off the mark).

• VA-05: This should put to rest any notions that ex-Rep. Virgil Goode was considering a third-party independent teabagger-powered run in the 5th, or that he might throw his backing to one of the minor-league third-partiers running. Goode endorsed establishment Republican Rob Hurt to go against Rep. Tom Perriello.

• AR-Sen: The Bill Halter campaign is looking for last minute phonebanking help to seal the deal. And you can do it from the comfort of your own home.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov (pdf): The Senate GOP primary portion of the Field Poll came out over the weekend, and it’s right in line with the various other pollsters finding a last-minute Carly Fiorina surge into a double-digit lead. She leads Tom Campbell and Chuck DeVore 37-22-19. (Campbell led 28-22-9 in the previous Field poll in March.) Also, it looks like Campbell’s last-minute ad pitch, centered around his electability, may fall on deaf ears: 42% of primary voters think that Fiorina has the best chance of beating Barbara Boxer, while 22% think that Campbell does (and 12% think that Chuck DeVore does — which is also about the same percentage of Californians who believe there is a 1,000 foot high pyramid in Greenland). There are also primary polls out from Republican pollster Magellan (who don’t have a horse in this race), who find things even worse for Campbell: they have Fiorina leading Campbell and DeVore 54-19-16. They also give a big edge to fellow rich person Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race; she leads Steve Poizner 64-22. The unfortunate moral of the story here: have a lot of money.

• DE-Sen: New Castle Co. Exec Chris Coons is pre-emptively getting ahead of Republican charges that he raised taxes, by, instead of hiding under the bed like conventional wisdom dictates, saying ‘guilty as charged’ and explaining how it helped. The county wound up with a AAA bond rating and a eight-digit surplus. Coons also previewed one of his lines of attack against Mike Castle: Castle’s role in deregulating the banking sector.

• FL-Sen: As Charlie Crist rebuilds his team from scratch, he’s rolling out a new media team that’s heavy on the Democratic ties. Most prominently, Chuck Schumer’s former chief of staff, Josh Isay, will be Crist’s lead media person. Isay’s firm SKD Knickerbocker may be best-known for helping out other moderate independents, like Joe Lieberman and Michael Bloomberg. One of the fires that Isay will have to put out as soon as he gets in the building, though, is what to do about the Jim Greer situation. Greer’s lawyer is saying that Crist gave the initial OK on Greer’s fundraising workaround which avoided usual party channels (which Greer allegedly turned into a scheme for filling his own pockets).

• IL-Sen: Rep. Mark Kirk’s very, very bad week last week just seems to be spilling over into this week. There are allegations popping up that he fibbed on getting shot at in Afghanistan too, and also evidence that he made a lot of stuff up while talking off the cuff about the Somalia situation last year. Taking a page from Richard Blumenthal, late last week he finally dropped the playing offense against the charges and instead went to the Chicago Tribune’s e-board to say “I’m sorry” — but that apology comes after letting the story fester all week.

• NH-Sen: After a year and a half of having the Democratic primary to himself, there are hints that Rep. Paul Hodes might get some late-in-the-game company. Mark Connolly, the former head of the state’s Securities Division who resigned to become a whistleblower in the wake of the Financial Resources Mortgage coverup (the same one that’ll have Kelly Ayotte testifying before the state legislature soon), expressed some interest and said “he’s angry enough to do it.” (Looks like a common theme this year.) Speaking of Ayotte, it sounds like she doesn’t know how to read a poll: she says she won’t take drilling for oil off New Hampshire’s tiny coastline “off the table.”

• WA-Sen: You might remember from last week that the Univ. of Washington engaged in some methodologically weird stuff by adding an extra week’s worth of samples on the end of their already-released poll and re-releasing the numbers (which were nevertheless unchanged, at Patty Murray 44, Dino Rossi 40). Well, now they’re re-releasing the poll yet again with even more samples, with changed toplines and with specific numbers for that tiny extra sample for the days May 24-28 (following Rossi’s official announcement). The number that’s getting all the press is that Rossi led Murray 42-39 in that batch, although that’s only based on 221 likely voters with a margin of error of 6.6%, so its usefulness is, well, questionable. Their full numbers are now 42-40 for Murray for the entire RV sample and 46-40 for Murray for the entire LV sample (i.e. those who voted in 2006), and she leads Generic R 44-39 among RVs (and 46-41 in the May 24-28 sample), but this poll has gotten so methodologically convoluted I’m not really sure it’s worth much of anything at this point.

Murray got some good news today in the form of an endorsement, and it’s not from a human but a corporation: Boeing. While she’s received plenty of Boeing money in the past, I’m not aware of Boeing ever having explicitly endorsed her or anyone else before (although anyone with a pulse knows that Murray has taken over for Scoop Jackson as the “Senator from Boeing”). Frankly, in the state of Washington, this is a bigger endorsement than any human politician’s endorsement would be, considering the way Boeing’s tendrils reach so much of the state. Finally, the field of miscellaneous Republicans kept shrinking today, as chiropractor Sean Salazar (probably the first guy to try to grab the teabagger mantle here, although he got shoved over by Clint Didier) bailed out of the race and backed Rossi.

• WI-Sen: Here’s a strange vulnerability for Ron Johnson in the Wisconsin Senate race: his fixation on opposing bipartisan Wisconsin state legislation making it easier for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue their abusers. That’ll require some explanation, and I assume it’ll be something other than his current explanation, that such legislation would only lead to more victims of sexual abuse by making organizations likelier to sweep it under the carpet.

• IA-Gov: After endorsing a variety of misspelled odds-and-ends last week (“Cecil Bledsoe,” “Angela McGowen,” and Joe Miller), Sarah Palin went with a big gun this weekend, and it was one who doesn’t match her carefully cultivated teabagging/religious right image at all: establishment retread Terry Branstad in Iowa. Is she counting on getting repaid by Branstad in the 2012 caucuses, if she decides to give up the grifting lifestyle and take the huge pay cut associated with running for President? (Branstad also has the backing of Mitt Romney, who seems more of a kindred spirit for him.)

• MI-Gov: The Schwarz is not with us after all. Joe Schwarz, the moderate ex-Rep. who got bounced from MI-07 in 2006 in the GOP primary by Tim Walberg, has decided against pursuing the independent bid in the Governor’s race that he’d been threatening. On the surface, the loss of a center-right indie looks like bad news for the Dems, but depending on which two candidates match up in November, Schwarz could just have easily pulled more left-of-center votes… and in all likelihood, he wasn’t going to rack up more than a few percent anyway.

• NY-Gov: In their standoff with Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, the Working Families Party seems to have blinked first. They went ahead and nominated placeholders in the Governor, Lt. Gov, and AG slots, presumably to allow coordination with the Dem choices later. Cuomo had been leaning hard on the WFP to do so. The person most affected by this is state Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Cuomo foe who had been considered the most likely WFP candidate for AG; instead, the WFP may wind up going with Nassau Co. DA Kathleen Rice, who’s Cuomo’s preferred AG for his informal “ticket.”

• TX-Gov: The Greens are actually going to be on the ballot in Texas this year, for the gubernatorial race? I’m as surprised as you are, but it’s less surprising when you find out who’s behind it: Arizona Republican consultant Tim Mooney, who set up the petition drive to get them on the ballot (and who’s also a veteran of the 2004 efforts to get Ralph Nader on as many states’ ballots as possible). GOP incumbent Rick Perry faces a tough race from Dem former Houston mayor Bill White, and he can have a little breathing room if the Greens siphon off a few lefties.

• AR-01: Chad Causey has an interesting argument for Democratic runoff voters in the 1st not to vote for ex-state Sen. Tim Wooldridge: he’s likely to bolt for the Republican Party at his earliest convenience. Causey’s evidence for the flight risk posed by Wooldridge includes his very conservative voting record in the state legislature, starting with his pro-public hanging legislation. Wooldridge, for his part, said he’d never switch. The Wooldridge camp is also offering up an internal poll (no word on the pollster) claiming a 48-24 lead over Causey in the runoff.

• CA-19: SurveyUSA has one last poll of the race in the 19th’s GOP primary, which they’ve polled exhaustively (and found almost exactly the same thing each time). However, this time it’s a little more interesting: there seems to be some late movement to former Fresno mayor Jim Patterson, who now leads state Sen. Jeff Denham 34-30. Ex-Rep. Richard Pombo is back at 17, with Larry Westerlund at 8. On the Dem side, it’s a 26-26 tie between Loraine Goodwin and Les Marsden.

• MN-06: What started out as a thorny three-way primary (when Elwyn Tinklenberg was in the race) has turned into a walk for Democratic state Sen. Tarryl Clark. Maureen Reed, a physician and former Independence Party Lt. Gov. candidate, ended her bid and endorsed Clark against Rep. Michele Bachmann. Reed had done surprisingly well at fundraising, but didn’t have the institutional advantages that Clark did, especially once Clark got the DFL endorsement. Clark still has an uphill fight against Bachmann, who’s insulated against likely future foot-in-mouth incidents by the district’s reddish lean as well as a huge war chest.

• TN-08: A Hill piece on the possibility of another NRCC-touted candidate (in the form of Stephen Fincher) going down in flames actually has some nice dirt on all three Republicans contesting the primary in the 8th. Fincher, of course, is widely noted for his hypocrisy on attacking the federal government while receiving millions in farm subsidies, but it’s also been revealed that he has voted in three Democratic primaries in the last eight years, “used virtually the same TV ad as a candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commisioner” (I have to assume it was an ad from one of the “thugs,” since if he’d riiiiiiipped off Dale Peterson’s ad, the whole blogosphere would already know about it by now), and perhaps most pathetically, misspelled “Tennessee” in a mailer. His challengers, Ron Kirkland and George Flinn, have their own troubles; Kirkland contributed to outgoing Democratic Rep. John Tanner in 2000 and 2004, while Flinn tried to cover up a lawsuit by a contractor who wasn’t paid for remodeling work.