Tag: AZ-01

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• SSP TV:

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

AK-Sen: As of Friday, Lisa Murkowski was saying that she still hasn’t made a decision about whether to pursue a write-in bid. At least one major Republican is opposed to the idea: Sen. John Cornyn says that Murkowski would have to quit her job as vice chair of the NRSC if she goes the third-party route. I also wonder if her Senate committee spots might be in jeopardy, too. Anyhow, Eric Ostermeier of the University of Minnesota’s excellent Smart Politics blog has a good post on the history of write-in campaigns in the Land of the Midnight Sun. In eight statewide contests, the best-ever score in a senate race was 17%, and 26% in a gubernatorial race. I actually think those numbers aren’t bad at all!

More importantly, we’re very close to our fundraising goal for Dem Scott McAdams. So far, 61 people have donated $2,080. I’d love to see us hit our goal of $2,400 – the equivalent of one maximum federal donation – by the end of this week. Think we can do it? Help make it happen!

DE-Sen: While everyone’s still abuzz about last night’s poll numbers, there’s some other DE-Sen news worth reporting. For one, the NRA endorsed Christine O’Donnell. For another, so did Sen. Jim DeMint, Kingmaker of Loons. For yet another, Sarah Palin recorded a robocall for O’Donnell, playing up their shared sense of victimhood.

Meanwhile, The Hill says that the Tea Party Express has spent some $300K on radio and TV ads on O’Donnell’s behalf, but it’s a little hard to double-check that since TPX’s FEC filings seem to use, shall we say, “new math.” Finally, a reporter asked Mike Castle if he’d pursue an independent bid if he lost the primary. (DE’s laws are apparently similar to Alaska’s in this regard.) Castle was surprisingly non-committal, saying he’d “have to give it thought.”

GA-Sen: Big Dog Alert (retroactive)! Bill Clinton was in Atlanta late last week to do a fundraiser for Labor Comm’r Michael Thurmond, the Dem senate nominee challenging GOPer Johnny Isakson. Thurmond, as you’d expect, was a big-time Hillary Clinton supporter.

IA-Sen: Chuck Grassley, making a play for the dirty old man vote, had this to say when asked why he didn’t once look at opponent Roxanne Conlin during a recent debate:

“I wish you had told me because I would have been very happy to look at her. She’s a very nice looking woman.”

NH-Sen: The New Hampshire Union Leader has been combing through a batch of emails released by the NH attorney general’s office pursuant to a freedom of information request, and they’ve turned up a doozy: Then-AG Kelly Ayotte used her official email account to discuss campaign strategy with a guy who later became one of her consultants. In better news for Ayotte, Sarah Palin recorded a robocall for her, too (see DE-Sen item above), but man is this imagery getting crazy: She calls Ayotte a “Granite Grizzly.” Zuh? Anyhow, Jim DeMint’s also decided to get involved here (again, see DE-Sen), endorsing surging wingnut Ovide Lamontagne.

NV-Sen: Jon Ralston has the complete tick-tock on how he got Harry Reid and Sharron Angle to agree to a debate on his show – only to have Angle, in a spasm of campaign dysfunction, pull out, despite being the one to throw down the challenge to Reid in the first place.

AK-Gov: Anchorage attorney Bill Walker, who drew about 30% in his primary against Gov. Sean Parnell (thanks to $300K in self-funding), says he’s still waiting to see if either the Alaskan Independence Party or Libertarian Party candidates withdraw from the race. If there’s a drop-out by Wednesday, Walker could take that spot for the general election.

HI-Gov: A new robopoll by Aloha Vote (taken for online news service Civil Beat) shows ex-Rep. Neil Abercrombie beating Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann by 48-31 in the Democratic primary. That’s a pretty different picture from a Ward Research survey a few weeks ago which had Abercrombie leading just 49-44.

NY-Gov: It’s been a long time since anyone has come out with any interesting statewide poll numbers in New York, but with just days to go before the primary, Siena has finally managed to surprise us (well, sorta): They show scuzzbucket businessman Carl Paladino in a dead heat with ex-Rep. Rick Lazio, trailing just 43-42. In mid-August, Lazio had a 43-30 lead, so this is all Paladino surge. The rest of the numbers (which test the senate races) are all meh – click the link if you want `em.

In other NY-Gov news, the Working Families Party decided to endorse Andrew Cuomo, and Cuomo – who had kept the WFP at arms’ length for a long time – accepted. A federal investigation of the WFP was recently dropped, which seemingly helped smooth things. The party was in a very tough spot, though, as without Cuomo on their ballot spot, there was no real path for them to get the 50,000 votes they needed to avoid losing their ballot line. So I’m guessing there may be more to this story.

CO-03: What is wrong with GOPer Scott Tipton?

“John Salazar, it’s time to come home,” Tipton said as he opened the debate. “It’s 9/11. Let’s roll.”

FL-25: Another mystery teabagger has (not really) come out of the woodwork. Roly Arrojo is running on the Florida Tea Party line, and it seems no one knows a thing about him, except for the fact that he hasn’t filed any FEC reports – except for a Statement of Candidacy in which he identified himself as a Democrat. Republicans are suggesting this is a Dem put-up job, but Joe Garcia’s camp is of course denying any knowledge of this guy. Interestingly, so is the head of the FL Tea Party!

ND-AL: I know, it sounds like parody, but Republican Rick Berg has a great idea: Drill for oil in North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park! Not only is it, of course, illegal to do so, but it’s also a fucking national park!

NY-13: Republican Michael Allegretti just got bounced from the new teabaggish Taxpayers Party line, thanks to a lack of sufficient signatures. Rival Mike Grimm already has the Conservative line, come hell or high water.

NY-15: Of all people, Mayor Mike Bloomberg wound up recording a robocall for Rep. Charlie Rangel.

PA-08 (PDF): Yikes. Sophomore Dem Patrick Murphy just put out an internal from the Global Strategy Group showing him up by a mere 47-43 margin over the man he beat in 2006, Republican Mike Fitzpatrick. This is scary.

VA-05: The Weiner Watch continues: Republican Rob Hurt has already skipped two debates, and now he’s announced he’s skipping a third. Weiner!

Chicago-Mayor: Outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley says he won’t make an endorsement in the race to succeed him.

NY-AG (PDF): Siena also released some final attorney general numbers, finding Eric Schneiderman narrowly in the lead at 25, with Kathleen Rice nipping his heels at 23. Sean Coffey is at 13, Richard Brodsky at 7, and Eric Dinallo at 4. The race has continued to get nasty in its final days, with Rice putting out a TV ad trying to link Schneiderman to scumbag state Sen. Pedro Espada, while a Schneiderman spot hits Rice for only becoming a Democrat in 2005.

DCCC: Blah blah blah, Dems not paying their DCCC dues. It’s old news, and I’m beyond sick of these stories, but not (only) for the reason you might expect. Oh yeah, I’m pissed at the schmucks who are holding out on their party for no discernible reason, but I’m also frustrated with the DCCC. We’ve repeatedly told them we want to help them raise money from their members – the netroots is not all-powerful, but we can bring some pressure on stingy Dems. But the DCCC steadfastly refuses to share their dues spreadsheet with us – even though they have no problem sharing it with the likes of Politico, and even though they actually promised to give us a copy at Netroots Nation. Not just obnoxious, but weirdly self-defeating.

SSP-TV:

• NV-Sen: Dem Sen. Harry Reid
• PA-Sen: Dem Joe Sestak
• CA-47: Dem Rep. Loretta Sanchez
• IA-02: Dem Rep. Dave Loebsack
• PA-08: GOPer Mike Fitzpatrick

Independent Expenditures:

• DE-Sen: Tea Party Express ($13K & $55K on media on behalf of Christine O’Donnell)
• MO-Sen: AFSCME ($43K on anti-Roy Blunt mailer)
• PA-Sen: CFG ($122K on anti-Joe Sestak ads)
• KY-06: NRCC ($96K on anti-Ben Chandler ads and polls from two different firms)

More generally, the NRCC’s IE arm said that it would go up with anti-Dem ads in eight districts (though no IE reports have yet been filed): AZ-01, AL-02, FL-02, MS-01, TN-08, TX-17, VA-05 & WI-07. A representative ad is available at the link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• SSP TV:

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

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

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

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

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

• IE tracker:

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

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

AK-Sen: The NRSC is coughing up money for Joe Miller; they just cut him a $42,600 check and say they’ll be spending $170,000 in coordinated expenditures on his behalf, which CQ reports represents “the maximum allowed under the law”. I’m not sure how that’s possible, though, as the FEC has a $87,000 limit on coordinated party expenditures for Senate races in Alaska. What I do know is that Democrat Scott McAdams is already making the GOP sweat (although, Joe Miller’s balls-out insanity may have a little something to do with that). You see that thermometer on the top right corner of this page? You know what you have to do.

FL-Sen: Libertarian Alex Snitker has popped up to remind the world that he’s actually in this race… by announcing that he won’t be dropping out of the race, despite pressure in the form of “numerous e-mails and Facebook messages” from Republicans urging him to get out of Marco Rubio’s way.

NC-Sen: Normally, I’d bunch this bullet down in the ad section, but Richard Burr’s latest spot deserves some special attention. The ad, entitled “Front Porch”, resurrects the highly-acclaimed “rocking chair” actors employed by the DSCC in their extremely effective ads against Elizabeth Dole in 2008. Only this time, they’re singing Richard Burr’s praises and railing against the national debt. At least, I think those are the same actors; if not, they’re dead ringers for the originals. (To see what I mean, click here.) I’ve gotta say – pretty damned clever move on Burr’s part.

WA-Sen: The DSCC has reserved $2 million worth of ad time to help protect Patty Murray against Dino Rossi. The DSCC’s ads will begin on October 5th.

CO-Gov: Democrat John Hickenlooper doubled up on American Constitution Party candidate Tom Tancredo in August fundraising, bringing in just over $400K to Tancredo’s $200K. Tancredo, in turn, quadrupled up on Republican flag-bearer Dan Maes, who raised $50K, nearly half of which was spent on legal fees and campaign finance penalties. Meanwhile, downballot Republicans are doing their best to rally around Tancredo, the only guy with the money and semblance of cred to run a real campaign. More than 20 elected GOPers in Colorado came out in support of Tanc. RGA chair Haley Barbour sounds about ready to throw in the towel, though.

AZ-01, AZ-05: Here’s a pair of fresh GOP internal polls from Arizona for your consumption: In AZ-01, rogue dentist Paul Gosar is tied with Dem Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick at 43-43 in a Moore Information poll conducted at the end of August. In AZ-05, National Research, Inc. has David Schweikert up on Dem Harry Mitchell by 46-38.

FL-02: Blue Dog Allen Boyd rolled out the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce yesterday.

KS-04: By all indications, Republicans are set to have a very good year at the polls, but they would be foolish to consider a race like the open seat battle to replace Todd Tiahrt in the bag. Not only has Democratic state Rep. Raj Goyle been fundraising strongly and polling competitively in this GOP-friendly district against dickbag Republican Mike Pompeo, it looks like there’s a very real chance that there could be some serious vote-splitting on the right. Mega-wealthy businessman Wink Hartman, who lost to Pompeo in the Republican primary, is interested in running as a Libertarian, and Kansas Libertarian Party Chairman Andrew Gray said the chances of that happening are “very favorable”. Hartman, who spent over $1.5 million on Republican campaign, had a phone interview with the Libertarians on Tuesday, and they apparently loved what they had to hear. Hartman would be taking the place of David Moffett on the Libertarian ballot, who pulled his name last week after citing personal health reasons. Republicans, of course, are crying foul, but the KS SoS has already denied one objection to the withdrawal.

D-bags: Add NRCC tool Andy Sere to the list. Just click the link.

SSP TV:

DE-Sen: Chris Coons is out with his first ad, a spot touting his record as New Castle County Executive. NWOTSOTB, but it’s a statewide cable buy that the campaign decided to roll out earlier than planned in order to take advantage of the cat fud fight between Christine O’Donnell and Mike Castle.

AR-01: Chad Causey’s first ad of the general election is a spot that’s mostly biographical, but one that ends with a left hook on Republican Rick Crawford for his support for the bad kind of SSP.

AZ-08: Gabrielle Giffords is out with a solid hit on tea-flavored douchebag Jesse Kelly, hitting him with his own words on his plan to “privatize” and “phase out” Social Security, which, along with Medicare, are apparently the “biggest Ponzi schemes in history”. Hey, Jesse: thank you for being a moron.

CA-45: Mary Bono Mack’s first ad touts her efforts to support the “magic” of the doctor-patient relationship. Or something.

IL-11: Republican Adam Kinzinger is up with his first ad, an autobiographical piece which touts his Air Force service and his intervention in a knife attack on a woman back home.

IL-17: Phil Hare is out with his first ad in four years, hitting Republican Bobby Schilling on his support of “a bad trade deal with Korea”.

IN-02: GOPer Jackie Walorski has the right issue (the economy), but the wrong remedy (trickle down nonsense).

IN-08: Republican Larry Buschon’s first spot hits Democrats on, you guessed it, spending – and also on the curious notion that food grows in grocery stores.

MD-01: Frank Kratovil Reads The Bills. (The ad will run “on broadcast stations in the Baltimore and Salisbury markets”.)

MI-09: Gary Peters flips the bird to Wall Street.

NE-02: Dem Tom White hits Lee Terry on the national debt, citing his vote for TARP.

NJ-12: Rush Holt’s first ad is half-negative, hitting hedge fund kingpin Scott Sipprelle for his supply-side economics, and half-positive, touting Holt’s support of the middle class.

TN-08: Dem Roy Herron comes out against drug dealers, predatory lenders, and Wall Street. This one seems like it could use more of an emotional punch, though.

SSP IE Tracker:

Longtime fans of SSP will remember the House Independent Expenditure tracker that we updated on a regular basis two years ago. As much as I’d like to resurrect that project this year, the time constraints of law school prevent me from investing that kind of time. However, we’ll still try to keep you in the loop on noteworthy independent expenditure reports here in the Daily Digest.

NH-Sen: CULAC the PAC files a $66K radio ad buy on behalf of conservative Republican Ovide Lamontagne

IN-02: The NRCC files $95K in ads and polls against Joe Donnelly

MA-09: The SEIU is spending $190K on phonebanks and radio ads in support of Mac D’Alessandro in his primary fight against Stephen Lynch

MI-01: The DCCC buys $48K in ads against Dan Benishek

WI-07: The DCCC has re-upped their ad buy against Sean Duffy by another $50K.

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

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

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

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

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

Kelly Ayotte (R): 34 (38)

Ovide Lamontagne (R) : 21 (9)

Bill Binnie (R) : 17 (29)

Jim Bender (R) : 13 (4)

Other: 4 (4)

Undecided: 11 (15)

(MoE: ±3.3%)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

AK-Sen: Joe Miller sure sounds like he’s measuring the drapes here, doesn’t he, with his talk about how much he’d “love” to serve on the Judiciary and Armed Services committees? Donate to Scott McAdams and help make sure we force Joe Miller to make a humiliating, droopy-dog run back to Neiman Marcus to return those curtains.

DE-Sen: Oh, I’m afraid the Tea Party Express will be QUITE operational by the time Mike Castle arrives! The NYT reports that the TPX is going up with five different ads (two TV and three radio) on behalf of Christine O’Donnell, and they have a rough cut of one of the TV spots (check the link). As for how big a buy we’re talking, the TPX just filed its first independent expenditure report, for $46K. Their usual practice is to dribble things out in smallish reports one at a time – but don’t worry, it’ll snowball.

FL-Sen: Charlie Crist is spending over half a million on a new TV buy. We don’t know what ads he’ll be running, but the St. Petersburg Times has some pretty good info on where they’ll appear (notably in Dem-leaning markets). Check the link for full details.

WI-Sen: GOPer Ron Johnson raised $1.2 million between July 1 and Aug. 25th, while Sen. Russ Feingold took in $920K. Johnson also loaned his campaign another $2.9 million out of his own coffers (which of course have been greatly bolstered over the years by government loans and grants to his plastics company). RonJo has been outspending Feingold, though, and has $1.6 mil in the bank compared to the senator’s $3.1 mil.

FL-Gov: Alex Sink has a new ad, touching on the oil spill and calling for a diversification of Florida’s economy. NWOTSOTB, but the spot is apparently airing in Florida’s panhandle.

GA-Gov: Nathan Deal just performed a classic document dump – and not one that’s likely to help him. He made public 28 years of his personal income tax returns, but none of this has anything to do with his auto salvage business which was the focus of a probe by the Office of Congressional Ethics.

CO-04: The House Race Hotline reports that the NRCC has reserved over $1 million in air time in the 4th CD. Let’s see if they actually come through with all that scrilla, though.

FL-08: Put away your can openers – no cat fud here. All six of Dan Webster’s Republican primary rivals have endorsed him, including teabagger Patricia Sullivan. However, Peg Dunmire is still in the race, on the actual Tea Party line.

IN-02: Joe Donnelly has a new spot out (NWOTSOTB), hitting Jackie Walorski for her support of a 23% national sales tax (as well as her desire to eliminate the home mortgage interest deduction). This issue is one that helped sink GOPer Tim Burns in the PA-12 special, so it has potency. I know that sometimes when Dems sink their teeth into this one, weenie liberals like to whine that what Republicans really mean is that they want to replace other taxes with this one. You know what? Let them make that argument. You don’t need to make it for them.

IN-09: Republican Todd Young has a new ad out, featuring footage of Baron Hill imperiously telling a journalism student that she couldn’t videotape a town hall. NWOTSOTB, but CQ notes that the spot is “currently airing only in the Louisville, Ky. market.”

LA-02: With Al Franken acting, you know, senatorial, it looks like Joe Cao has decided to take up the mantle of Stuart Smalley. Sayeth Cao: “I love the president, and I believe he truly likes me.” What a wiener.

MA-09: Labor activist Mac D’Alessandro scored the endorsement of NARAL in his primary bid against anti-choice incumbent Rep. Stephen Lynch. D’Alessandro raised $178K in the pre-primary period (7/1-8/25) and had $158K on hand for the stretch run. Lynch took in only $66K but had a million bucks in the bank.

NJ-03: Dem Rep. John Adler received the endorsement of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which did not back anyone in the race two years ago. They also say they’ll provide financial help. (The Courier Post notes that the district includes Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.) Adler’s also got a second negative spot out, hitting Republican Jon Runyan for his minimalist voting record. NWOTSOTB, and get a load of this stonewalling: “Campaign manager Geoff Mackler would not disclose the size of the buy, where the ads were committed to air or for how long they would air, saying he does not discuss strategy with reporters.” But I don’t think that should be the end of the story for a journalist. Hell, one of my jobs on a campaign I worked on in the 90s was to track down enemy ad buys. Reporters can do it, too. (And BTW, if you haven’t seen Adler’s first ad, I highly recommend you do so.)

NH-01, NH-02: John DiStaso has an asburd wealth of updates on New Hampshire’s two House races, including word that Charlie Bass is set to release his first ad (watch it here), a $40,000 buy on New Hampshire TV. There’s also news of a GOP primary poll in the 1st CD, taken by Cross Target on behalf of the right-wing group Americans for Prosperity. Sean Mahoney is at 33, Frank Guinta at 26, Rich Ashooh at 10, and Bob Bestani at 5. Mahoney’s been out with a positive/negative ad comparing his record to Guinta’s, making it clear that he thinks this poll is right about who the real contenders are. Guinta apparently has a new response ad coming this week.

NY-24: Mike Arcuri is up with a new ad, a positive bio spot. NWOTSOTB, though he has two slightly different versions, one of which is airing in Utica, the other Syracuse (see both here).

PA-07: A nice break for Dem Bryan Lentz: After a series of adverse rulings, Pat Meehan’s campaign withdrew its legal challenge to the candidacy of Jim Schneller, a teabagger who petitioned his way on to the ballot… thanks to a lot of help from Lentz supporters.

PA-10: Interesting: Back when he was a US Attorney, Tom Marino served as a reference for a casino application for a man his office was investigating. In fact, the news was so explosive it led to the DOJ transferring the investigation to another office – and to Marino’s resignation as USA. Back in May, though, Marino told a radio host that the DOJ had given him written permission to provide that reference, but he hasn’t produced it (yet). Dem Chris Carney is hitting him for this, asking, “Where’s the letter?”

WI-08: Steve Kagen is up with his first ad, and it’s a good one. Among other things, he touts the fact that he has refused congressional health coverage until everyone in America has health insurance. He also refers to himself as “Dr. Steve Kagen,” which is probably a helpful alternative to “Congressman” these days.

Enthusiasm Gap: Tom Jensen takes a look at a painful “what if” – as in, what if there were no enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans this year? Among other things, he thinks Alex Sink would have a double-digit lead and that Elaine Marshall would be running slightly ahead of Richard Burr. But check out his full chart.

Dumping Ground: We’ve brought up some serious methodological issues in the past that we have with those zone-flooding American Action Fund House race polls, so it’s best if we just confine the following to their own quarantine zone. (Those issues, by the way, included extremely aged samples and the fact that the GOP pollster, Ayres McHenry, asked respondents about their opinion of the healthcare bill right before diving into the topline match-ups.)

AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick (D-inc) 41%, Paul Gosar (R) 47%

AZ-05: Harry Mitchell (D-inc) 44%, David Schweikert (R) 50%

AZ-08: Gabby Giffords (D-inc) 46%, Jesse Kelly (R) 46%

CA-11: Jerry McNerney (D-inc) 44%, David Harmer (R) 45%

CA-47: Loretta Sanchez (D-inc) 45%, Van Tran (R) 43%

CO-03: John Salazar (D-inc) 43%, Scott Tipton 51%

CO-04: Betsy Markey (D-inc) 39%, Cory Gardner (R) 50%

NM-01: Martin Heinrich (D-inc) 49%, Jon Barela (R) 41%

NV-03: Dina Titus (D-inc) 45%, Joe Heck (R) 48%

OR-05: Kurt Schrader (D-inc) 44%, Scott Bruun (R) 36%

• AZ-Sen: Bad news! For John McCain! J.D. Hayworth still hasn’t conceded. He’s still waiting for those late-breaking absentee ballots to help him make up that oh-so-narrow 56-32 margin, apparently.

• CT-Sen: This doesn’t seem like it’ll end well for Linda McMahon, whose stance on WWE has been that it’s harmless soap opera. Harley McNaught, the father of recently-deceased pro wrestler Lance Cade (who died of heart failure at age 29 in the wake of painkiller addiction), is going on the offense against McMahon in response to her comments that she “might have met him once.” McNaught said that he’d been to several functions with his son where they’d met McMahon and she’d known him by name, and also ripped the company’s “Wellness Program,” which he says was more about PR than about helping employees.

• DE-Sen: There’s no third-party fallback option for teabagger Christine O’Donnell, challenging Mike Castle for the GOP Senate nomination. The Constitution Party had nominated O’Donnell for its ballot line, but didn’t even receive a ballot line after its membership dwindled to 287(!) members. (That’s less than something called the “Blue Enigma Party,” which still qualified for the ballot.) O’Donnell still can mount a write-in campaign after losing the primary to Castle (which she already did in the 2006 race after losing the primary to Jan Ting).

• KY-Sen: Our James L. summed this up pithily: “Douche Day Afternoon.” Losing Dem Senate candidate Dan Mongiardo’s latest statement of semi-support for Jack Conway was that Conway was “not the best” but that “he’s a heck of a lot better” than Rand Paul, whose “scare[s him].”

• PA-Sen, PA-Gov (pdf): The newest Franklin & Marshall poll is another one of their choose-your-own-adventure specials, which shows the dimensions of the enthusiasm gap the Dems are facing, especially in the Keystone State. In the Senate race, Pat Toomey leads Joe Sestak 40-31 among likely voters, but only 31-28 among registered voters, which isn’t much different from where we left off with their last general election poll in May. And in the gubernatorial race, it’s similar, with Tom Corbett leading Dan Onorato 38-27 among LVs, but only 29-28 (probably the best showing I’ve seen in a head-to-head in this race) among RVs.

• FL-Gov: With Hayworth and Murkowski already mentioned today, it’s just turning out to be the big day of GOP disunity and sour grapes all around. While figures like Jeb Bush and state party chair John Thrasher have gotten behind Rick Scott without any major hedging, Bill McCollum is continuing his sulk, flat-out not endorsing Scott.  

• KY-Gov: The aptly-named Republican Agriculture Commissioner, Richie Farmer (I guess “Rich Farmer” was a little too overly descriptive), is still mulling over a run for Governor in next year’s off-year election against Dem incumbent Steve Beshear, where early polling has shown he’d be competitive. He’s also been linked to a possible Lt. Gov. bid, as running mate to state Senate president David Williams.

• SC-Gov: In another sign that a chunk of the local political establishment prefers Dem Vincent Sheheen to GOPer Nikki Haley, Sheheen just got the endorsement of 30 mayors around South Carolina. Most of these mayors are in nonpartisan elected positions, although one, Greer mayor Rick Danner, said he was a two-time voter for Mark Sanford.

• VT-Gov: Faced with the unenviable task of certifying her own gubernatorial primary loss, SoS Deb Markowitz says that the final certification of the super-close race in Vermont will be done on next Tuesday. All five candidates appeared amicably at a unity rally yesterday, but only shortly after Doug Racine’s campaign manager called Peter Shumlin’s declaration of victory premature, saying to wait until Tuesday. Shumlin currently leads Racine by 192 votes.

• AL-02: Rep. Bobby Bright caused some hyperventilating today when it came out that, in meeting with constituents, had punted on the issue of whether or not he’d be voting for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker next session. He did so by listing a number of reasons why that might not be an issue, including the decidedly morbid “heck, she might even get sick and die.”

• CA-18: I don’t know who looks worse in this situation, Mike Berryhill (the Republican launching an uphill, but generally credible, challenge to Rep. Dennis Cardoza), or his former campaign consultant John Villareal. Apparently they parted ways in unpleasant fashion, as Villareal blasted Berryhill’s campaign as a lost cause… but did it in the form of a somewhat unhinged-sounding, 25-minute long rant posted to YouTube.

• OH-17: Jim Traficant may still yet be able to beam himself back into Congress. He just got an extension from Jennifer Brunner, giving him more time to prove that he did collect enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot as an independent. He previously got bounced for the ballot for not having enough valid signatures.

• OR-05: Hot on the heels of a too-good-to-be-true internal from Scott Bruun giving him a small lead a few days ago, Rep. Kurt Schrader hauled out his own internal from Lake Research giving him a pretty comfortable lead: 46-35. The poll’s from late July, though, so one wonders if there’s a more recent one that he’s not sharing.

• PA-08: The ubiquitous POS is out with an internal poll on behalf of ex-Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, giving him a 7-point lead (48-41) over Democratic sophomore Rep. Patrick Murphy. Murphy hasn’t been one of the Dems’ top worries in Pennsylvania, but as we’ve seen in recent weeks, the Dem brand in Pennsylvania seems to be waning particularly quickly.

• VA-05: Tom Perriello, in an interesting bit of distancing from national Dems that’s ambiguous enough that it works from both right and left, called for the replacement of Treasury Sec. Timothy Geithner, at a local town hall. He didn’t say who his preferred replacement would be (Robert Reich, anyone?).

• Ads: Lead-off ad of the day is from Alan Grayson in FL-08; the Hotline actually says it makes Grayson look “angelic” and they refer to it as the most positive ad they’ve seen so far from anyone. That Grayson… always zigging when everyone else is zagging. Other Dems out with their first TV ads for themselves today include Kathy Dahlkemper in PA-03, Julie Lassa in WI-07, and Tom Hayhurst in IN-03.

All the GOP ads today are anti-Dem ads being run by third party groups: America’s Future Fund running against Bruce Braley in IA-01, the Heritage Foundation’s lobbying arm against Mike McIntyre in NC-07, and Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity running against Gabrielle Giffords in AZ-08 and a weird two-fer (aimed at the Phoenix market, I guess) attacking both Anne Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell in AZ-01 and AZ-05. NWOTSOTB, on any of the ads.

• Rasmussen:

• CA-Gov: Jerry Brown (D) 40%, Meg Whitman (R) 48%

• FL-Sen: Kendrick Meek (D) 21%, Marco Rubio (R) 40%, Charlie Crist (I) 30%

• UT-Gov: Peter Corroon (D) 29%, Gary Herbert (R-inc) 60%

• UT-Sen: Sam Granato (D) 29%, Mike Lee (R) 54%

• AK-Gov (R/D): Anything other than slam-dunk wins tonight for incumbent Gov. Sean Parnell and ex-state House Minority Leader Ethan Berkowitz would have to be considered a surprise. Parnell has led his two highest-profile challengers, ex-state House Speaker Ralph Samuels and attorney and ex-Valdez Mayor Bill Walker by huge margins, as has Berkowitz against state Sen. Hollis “October Surprise” French. (JL)

• AK-Sen (R): Could Lisa Murkowski bite it in a intra-party challenge from little-known attorney Joe Miller? In Miller’s corner are the Palins, Mike Huckabee, and a half-million from the Tea Party Express. In her corner, Murkowski has the backing of about 1.9 million dead presidents, and a 62-30 lead over Miller in a late July Ivan Moore poll. Of course, that was before the TPX started unloading, but the odds are always long for Some Dudes… (JL)

• AZ-Sen (R): This looked like it was going to be one of the all-time great Republican primary slugfests when it first appeared on the horizon: Mr. Maverick himself, John McCain, versus fiery conservative ex-Rep.-turned-radio-talk-show-host J.D. Hayworth. Some of the initial polling, in fact, was fairly close, before the novelty wore off… but then the novelty wore off, and we were left with three basic realities: a) John McCain had a ton more money than Hayworth and was willing to use it, b) John McCain had absolutely no shame about taking all that Maverick stuff, throwing it in the trash can along with many of his previous policy positions, and remaking himself as a right-wing ideologue in order to survive his primary, and c) J.D. Hayworth is a complete and total clown. The turning point seemed to be the revelation in June that Hayworth had shilled for a Matthew Lesko-style free-government-money infomercial, which destroyed any remaining credibility he may have still had. Polling from July gave McCain leads ranging from 20 to over 40 points. (C)

• AZ-Sen (D): At this point, the Democratic Senate primary in Arizona looks a good bit more unpredictable than the Republican one. The seeming frontrunner is former Tucson vice-mayor Rodney Glassman, a former Raul Grijalva aide and a young up-and-comer with some family money as well. Glassman seemed to have the field to himself after the NRSC’s desired candidate, wealthy businesswoman Nan Stockholm Walden, begged off… but once the specter of a race against J.D. Hayworth instead of John McCain appeared, some other late entrants arrived, most notably civil rights activist Randy Parraz and former state Rep. Cathy Eden. What little polling we’ve seen of this race (a Rasmussen poll from July and a Parraz internal) has given Glassman the lead, but he didn’t rise above 20% in either poll. More-frequent polling of the general election has actually given Glassman a good chance against Hayworth… but unfortunately, a McCain match is looking much likelier. (C)

• AZ-01 (R): Eight Republicans have jumped into the race for the right to challenge freshman Dem Ann Kirkpatrick. Notably, rogue dentist Paul Gosar has spent the most, but the field also includes former State Senate majority leader Rusty Bowers and 2008 nominee Sydney Hay (whose abysmal campaign netted her a 56-40 defeat). Gosar seems to have most of the establishment support, including endorsements from the Grizzly Momma and (even though the district doesn’t enter it) Maricopa County Sheriff and xenophobe extraordinaire Joe Arpaio. Gosar’s internal polling has him in the lead, ahead of Hay by a 30-10 margin. Primary voters would be doing themselves a favor by not nominating Hay; we’ll see if Gosar can live up to his polling. (JMD)

• AZ-03 (R): Crowded GOP primaries seem to be the norm in Arizona, with a 10-man field for the open seat of retiring GOPer John Shadegg. Several qualify beyond Some Dude status, including former northern Phoenix State Rep. Sam Crump, former State Senator Pamela Gorman (who represented the same district as Crump), former northern Phoenix/Scottsdale State Senator Jim Waring, attorney Paulina Morris, Paradise Valley Mayor Vernon Parker, and Parker’s predecessor as Mayor, Ed Winkler. The two largest warchests, however, belong to Ben “Son of Potatoe” Quayle and self-funding businessman Steve Moak. Moak and Quayle have gone hard after each other, with recent revelations about Quayle’s history with what eventually became TheDirty.com taking their toll and Quayle’s responses being, perhaps hereditarily, ineffectual. Moak seems ready to occupy the vacuum that Quayle’s implosion has left, but the sheer number of credible candidates leaves room for surprise. (JMD)

• AZ-05 (R): Two-term Dem Harry Mitchell will face one of five GOPers, a field that includes a rematch between 2008 candidates David Schweikert and Susan Bitter Smith. Schweikert prevailed then by a 1,000-vote margin out of 48,000 cast and went on to a 53-44 loss to Mitchell. Complicating this rematch are other credible candidates in doctor Chris Salvino and self-funded businessman Jim Ward, both of whom have outraised and outspent Bitter Smith. Schweikert seems to have assumed frontrunner status, going as far as cancelling his last-minute ad buy…before opting in for one again. Will Schweikert’s hubris come to haunt him today? (JMD)

• AZ-08 (R): In a common pattern that we’ve seen this cycle, the primary for the right to challenge sophomore Dem Gabby Giffords has a clear establishment v. outsider rift. However, there is only one teabagger here, Jesse Kelly, who squares off against the “establishment’s” former Tucson-area State Senator, Jonathan Paton. Perhaps owing to the fact that there’s only one teabaggish-type here, Kelly seems to be favored against Paton, posting a hefty 36-17 lead in recent polling. However, this poll was taken before third wheel Brian Miller headed for the exit, endorsing Paton on his way out. Given Miller’s low share of support and Kelly’s sole claim to the Holy Teabag, we might finally see the upset of an NRCC golden child here. (JMD)

• FL-Gov (R): All good things must indeed come to an end – and I am going to be very sad when this primary is over. Until mid-April of this year, Bill McCollum, the colorless, unlikeable, ambiguously hairpieced state AG and former House impeachment manager, at least had one thing to keep his sorry ass happy at night: He was guaranteed to be the Republican nominee for governor of Florida. Then, a funny thing happened: Zillionaire asshole Rick Scott decided he wanted the nod more – a whole lot more. In fact, about $40 million more, which is what he and allied groups (aka his wife’s checkbook) have spent on the race. McCollum and his allies (if you can imagine such a thing), undoubtedly stunned to have to start spending so early, have fired back, but they’ve only mustered some $14 million. (Check out this great graphic of both camps’ spending.)

Anyhow, this race has gone more negative than googolplex divided by minus one. There isn’t much consensus among pollsters on how much damage has been done to both candidates (some show McCollum with worse favorables, others show Scott deep in the doghouse), but I’m going to guess the answer is “a lot.” There’s also some divergence over who the frontrunner actually is. For a while there, Billy Mac’s toplines utterly bombed – you can almost see him in his kitchen, sobbing into his cornflakes, as your eyes traverse that mid-July nosedive. But the problem with zillionaire assholes is that it’s very hard for them to stop being zillionaire assholes, and they’ve also probably done quite a few somethings to deserve that reputation in the first place. McCollum’s hit Scott hard over his ultra-shady past in the healthcare business, and while we can’t say for sure, it seems to have turned the race around. Most recent polls have show McCollum taking back the lead, with PPP’s seven-point Scott lead the main outlier.

It’s hard to know whom to root for, though. Do we take Scott, with his deeply tarnished background but willingness to spend every last dime, or McCollum, with his coffers depleted but less scandal-plagued and still the establishment favorite? I think we have to be happy no matter what happens. And either way, I can hear the sound of that cat fud tin popping open: McCollum’s already saying it would be “very difficult” for him to endorse Scott should he lose. Let’s only hope Scott is willing to return the favor! Anyhow, this one was definitely a primary for the ages. God bless you, Florida Republicans. (D)

• FL-Sen (D): Forget the actual Democratic candidates in this race — the real star of the summer-long Florida Democratic primary saga was not a person, but an inanimate object: Summerwind, the notorious party yacht belonging to billionaire scuzzball Jeff Greene (also known as the Levi Johnston of boats). If there was one factor that helped turn this race upside-down, it was the steady barrage of drug-fueled, vomit-caked, and used condom-strewn stories of Jeff Greene’s adventures on the high seas. Those stories, along with a barrage of hits against Greene’s shady practices as a derivatives pioneer, have completely stunted Greene’s momentum and returned the lead to congressman Kendrick Meek. A Meek primary win undoubtedly complicates things for Charlie Crist, who has to hope that he can marginalize the Democratic nominee in order to drink their milkshake steal their votes in November, but three-way races are notoriously difficult to forecast. (Oh, and as a footnote, technically, ex-Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre is still in this race, but his campaign has been totally eclipsed by the Jeff Greene freakshow.) (JL)

• FL-02 (D/R): Despite that Rep. Allen Boyd is a pretty entrenched Blue Dog facing a potentially hard race in November in this GOP-leaning Panhandle district, the real race to watch tonight is the Democratic primary. Boyd faces a challenge from the left from term-limited state Senate majority leader Al Lawson. Lawson isn’t a raging liberal himself (and, unlike many Dem primary challenges this year, Boyd deprived him of a key piece of ammo by voting “yes” on the second round of health care reform), but he’s hoping that the fact that the district’s Democratic electorate, which is substantially African-American, can keep him competitive with the much-better-funded Boyd. Lawson posted a small lead in an internal poll way back in Nov. 2009, but we haven’t heard any polling details about the primary since then. The likeliest GOP nominee is funeral home owner Steve Southerland, whose fundraising has been adequate enough for the NRCC’s Young Guns program and who even put out an internal also showing him leading Boyd. However, there are four other even-less-known GOPers standing in Southerland’s way in the primary (with David Scholl the best fundraiser of the bunch, although even he hasn’t broken into the six digits). (C)

• FL-05 (R): I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a bad case of Cat Scratch Fever, and there’s only one cure… a primary victory tonight by the Rock ‘n’ Roll Sheriff, the Hernando County Madman, the Ten Terrible Fingers of Local Law Enforcement: Richard Nugent. Current Republican Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, facing only an uneventful challenge from teabagger Jason Sager (whose impetus for getting into the race was Brown-Waite’s support for Dede Scozzafava!), unexpectedly bailed out on filing day, letting her designated successor Nugent pick up the flag and sneak into office without a top-drawer Republican opponent, of which there are potentially many in this red district. Nugent still has to get past Sager, though; we’ll have to see if Sager is beneficiary of people’s discontent over the “selection process.” (C)

• FL-08 (R): Rep. Alan Grayson should be a tempting target, given his shoot-from-the-hip style and his freshman-in-a-swing-district status, but his huge stash of netroots cash seemed an active deterrent as the NRCC tried vainly to find a top-tier recruit. Eventually, they settled on businessman Bruce O’Donoghue, who had some self-funding potential, as their go-to guy. Unfortunately, one of the other guys they’d been unenthusiastically flirting with, social conservative state Rep. Kurt Kelly, decided he was going to get in anyway, and that was compounded by the fact that attorney/talk radio host Todd Long, who nearly beat then-Rep. Ric Keller in the ’08 GOP primary, wasn’t going away. Finally, the guy they wanted all along but who initially blew them off, state Sen. Daniel Webster, decided he wanted to run after all, but came back much too belatedly to clear the field or even get much of a fundraising foothold. Webster does have some key backers (Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush), but with not so much as a leaked internal of the primary from any of the players, there’s no clue as to whether he’ll emerge from tonight’s primary. (C)

• FL-17 (D): This nine-way primary to succeed Kendrick Meek has largely been off the  national radar – and that’s too bad, because it probably represented a good chance for progressive groups to get involved, seeing as it’s an 87% Obama district. In any event, the race features several elected officials, a local community figure, and one wealthy self-funder with a proverbial “colorful past,” Rudy Moise. The only recent poll of the race was taken on behalf of a group supporting activist Marleine Bastien, which had her at 22, while state Sen. Frederica Wilson was at 21. Moise was back at 10, and Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson was at 9. No one (apart from Moise) has raised much, with state Rep. Yolly Robertson leading the pack at $336K. The Miami Herald has a helpful run-down on each of the candidates in this wide-open race. (D)

• FL-24 (R): National Republicans have run through a succession of favored candidates in this primary, starting with former Winter Park Commissioner Karen Diebel. Diebel turned out to be crazy (in a call to 911 a few years ago, she said political opponents placed a snake in her pool – and were spying on her home and hacking her computer), so attention turned to state Rep. Sandy Adams. Adams, however, turned out to be a sucky fundraiser, so the GOP recruited Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse chief Craig Miller, a first-time candidate. Miller has self-funded less than you might have expected (only about $350K), which might explain his last-minute mailer attacking Diebel’s sanity over the Snakes In A Pool incident. If Miller hasn’t in fact sealed the deal, then race could be very much up in the air, especially since we haven’t seen any recent polling. (D)

• FL-25 (R): State Rep. David Rivera, despite a week of horrible press, is still the favorite for the Republican nomination to succeed district-hopping GOP Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, but it will still be interesting to see if any of the ugly headlines will make a dent at the ballot box. First, we learned that Rivera once ran a truck off the road back in 2002 because it was carrying flyers printed for his opponent, in the hopes of preventing it from reaching the post office on time. Next, Rivera’s Republican opponents have resurrected allegations that Rivera was involved in a domestic violence dispute. Damaging as stories like those may be, Rivera enjoys a huge fundraising lead over attorney Mariana “Marili” Cancio and Marine Corps veteran and public-relations consultant Paul Crespo. The real fireworks will have to wait for November, where the GOP nominee will face Tea Partier Roly Arrojo, Whig nominee (!!) Craig Porter, and ’08 candidate Joe Garcia, who is the heavy favorite to beat union leader Luis Meurice for the Democratic nod tonight. (JL)

• OK-02 (R): The last we checked in on this race, underfunded GOPers Charles Thompson and Daniel Edmonds received 34% and 28% respectively, setting the stage for a runoff. Both candidates seem to have improved their financial position, with Edmonds now able to claim $1,300 in his campaign account and Thompson up to a whopping $13k! Given this, whoever stumbles out of the runoff tomorrow will end up quite the underdog to incumbent (and oft-frustrating) Dem Dan Boren. (JMD)

• OK-05 (R): In the first round, Christian camp director Jim Lankford edged out establishment pick former State Rep. Kevin Calvey, 34-32, a development that left some at NRCC headquarters scratching their heads. Third-place finisher State Rep. Mike Thompson, who earned 18%, has endorsed Lankford and not his former colleague. This just might give Lankford’s more grassroots-oriented campaign the extra push it needs to overcome Calvey’s financial advantage; since we last checked in, Calvey’s plunked out $780k’s to Lankfords $415k. While November in this district won’t likely be exciting, true SwingNuts would never give up a chance to see egg on the NRCC’s face. (JMD)

• VT-Gov (D): Democrats have a challenge ahead of them in knocking off reasonably well-liked Republican Brian Dubie in November, but they have a giant, five-way primary to get through first. The players include former Lt. Gov. Doug Racine, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz, state Sens. Peter Shumlin and Susan Bartlett, and ex-state Rep. Matt Dunne. Markowitz and Shumlin have had the strongest fundraising, while Bartlett has raised the least of the major players. Without any public polling of the Democratic primary — or even a leaked internal — it’s impossible to say what will happen here. (JL)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Rasmussen:

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

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

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

INITIAL GOAL OF 200 CONTRIBUTORS: DECIMATED.  We’re now going for $25,000 total raised today.

We did quite a lot of good in November — almost 400 Kossacks made 5,545 individual contributions to the twenty most vulnerable Democrats who voted both for health care reform and against the anti-choice Stupak-Pitts amendment, raising over $30,000 to help these candidates secure reelection in 2010.

What we demonstrated then to Democrats in vulnerable districts that when they stand with our party and for progressive causes, the netroots will have their backs. And they noticed. Several of them called or emailed me personally to thank all of you for your efforts, including Members who have never had anything to do with the netroots before then.  And last night, almost all of them went back and voted for health care again.

And we need to have their backs.

Listed below are the twenty Democrats (plus one) who have cast the toughest votes for health care reform — for HCR last night, and against the Stupak Amendment in November.  A few of them voted “no” the first time around (Boyd, Markey, Kosmas, Murphy), but we should welcome them into the fold and thank them for supporting health care reform now.

These are the Democrats whose districts are most likely to oppose them for what they have done to make health care affordable for all.  It’s up to us to demonstrate to these often-moderate candidates that when they stand up for progressive causes, progressives will stand behind them.

I believe it’s especially important for those of us who’ve decided to turn the spigot off when it comes to Democratic party institutions based on their multitude of failures to take this opportunity to demonstrate what we’re capable of doing for specific candidates who are taking risks to make progress happen.

My initial goal is 200 contributors.  Then we’ll take it as high as you’re willing to go.

Here’s who you should be supporting — these Democrats (listed by District, Name, PVI), elected in Republican and swing districts (and mostly in the past three years), for whom every close vote for reproductive freedom and health care reform can become the next opposition campaign ad:

AZ-01 Kirkpatrick, Ann R+6

FL-02 Boyd, Allen R+6

CO-04 Markey, Betsy R+6

AZ-05 Mitchell, Harry R+5

AZ-08 Giffords, Gabrielle R+4

FL-24 Kosmas, Suzanne R+4

NY-19 Hall, John R+3

FL-08 Grayson, Alan R+2

MI-07 Schauer, Mark R+2

NY-20 Murphy, Scott R+2

WI-08 Kagen, Steve R+2

CA-11 McNerney, Jerry R+1

IL-08 Bean, Melissa R+1

IL-11 Halvorson, Debbie R+1

IL-14 Foster, Bill R+1

MN-01 Walz, Tim R+1

NY-23 Owens, Bill R+1

NH-01 Shea-Porter, Carol R+0

NY-01 Bishop, Timothy R+0

OH-15 Kilroy, Mary Jo D+1

VA-05 Perriello, Tom R+5**

** Technically, Tom Perriello shouldn’t be here: he voted for the Stupak Amendment the first time. But he has also voted for ACES and the stimulus bill despite being a freshman member elected by less than 1000 votes in an R+5 district — McCain and Bush both carried it — so if you’re willing to make one exception, Perriello is the exception you should make.

The overwhelming majority of these twenty Members were elected in 2006, 2008 or, in the case of Scott Murphy and Bill Owens, 2009.  As the most recent additions to Congress, almost every one of them is on the NRCC’s primary target list for 2010.

We need to protect them for having done the right thing.  We need to show that when Democrats act courageously in the interests of our country, progressives will have their backs and support them.

So please, visit the WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK v2.0 ActBlue page and spread some sugar around today — $3 each? $5?  $10, $20 or more?  That’s up to you.  And then promote it on your Facebook page, your Twitter feed and your own diaries.

If politicians in tough districts see that national support exists when they do the right thing on a big vote — and there may be no bigger one than the one they cast last night — they will feel more comfortable doing it again the next time.  They won’t have to worry about losing some donors over these pro-choice and pro-health care votes if they’ve gained our loyal support instead.  And when the NRCC targets them this fall, they will be able to fight back.

Give now.  If you have given to some of these candidates in the past, give to the rest today.  Show them, right now: WE’VE GOT YOUR BACK.