Tag: Ned Lamont

• CT-Sen: Following his loss in the CT-Gov primary after leading the polls almost all the way, I hadn’t heard much discussion about Ned Lamont making a repeat run against Joe Lieberman for the 2012 Senate race. Lamont confirms that, saying he’s “strongly disinclined” to try again.

• FL-Sen: Here’s a dilemma for temp Sen. George LeMieux, as he gave his farewell speech from the Senate floor. Acknowledge the man without whom he’d be utterly unknown and thus not in a position to run again for Senate in 2012… or invoke said man, whose name is utterly mud in Florida GOP circles, thus reminding everyone of those connections that can only hurt in a 2012 primary? In the end, basic human decency prevailed, and LeMieux thanked Charlie Crist for appointing him.

• ME-Sen: This is pretty big news, as everyone has been treating newly-elected Gov. Paul LePage’s imprimatur as a make or break for Olympia Snowe’s hopes in a GOP primary in 2012. LePage, of course, was the tea party choice in the primary, and his say-so would go a long way toward either encouraging or discouraging a teabagger challenge to Snowe. LePage just came out with a statement of support for Snowe in the primary, saying he’d back her in the face of a possible primary challenge.

• MO-Sen: Sarah Steelman continues to rack up support from the GOP’s far-right, as she girds for a possible GOP primary showdown against ex-Sen. Jim Talent. Steelman met with Jim DeMint, the Senate’s de facto kingmaker of the tea party set, and those involved expect DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund to back Steelman shortly (which would be his first endorsement of the 2012 cycle).

• PA-Sen: Moran gets brain? Perhaps sensing the steep uphill climb of a challenge against the Casey name brand in Pennsylvania in a presidential year, random rich guy John Moran has done an about-face on a threatened possible Senate run that first emerged last week. Another central Pennsylvanian, though, state Sen. Jake Corman, seems to be interested in taking on Bob Casey Jr.

• UT-Sen: In case there was any doubt about Orrin Hatch running again — in his 70s and facing a likely difficult primary/convention — well, he is. He released a statement this morning saying “I intend to run, and I intend to win.” That comes in the face of the formation of a new leadership PAC by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, which would likely point to stepped-up fundraising efforts in the face of a intra-party challenge. (Hatch is sitting on $2.32 million CoH, while Chaffetz has $179K. If the targeted audience isn’t all Utahns but a few thousand nuts at the state convention, though, money is less of an issue.)

• IN-Gov: Soon-to-be-ex-Sen. Evan Bayh is issuing something of a timeline regarding whether or not he runs for his old job as Governor again in 2012. Bayh says he’ll make a decision by the end of the year, and is saying it’s a “possibility but [not] a probability.” (Rep. Baron Hill and Evansville mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel are other fallback options.)There’s no timeline, though, from Rep. Mike Pence, who probably would be the strongest candidate the GOP could put forth, but seems more interested in going straight for the Presidency. One GOPer who isn’t waiting for Pence’s decision is Lt. Gov. Becky Skillman, who has moved forward on fundraising although she hasn’t officially declared anything. Soon-to-be-Rep. Todd Rokita warns not to underestimate Skillman.

• MN-Gov: This is kind of a moot point in view of his concession this morning, but in case you’re wondering what suddenly motivated Tom Emmer to drop his challenge to Mark Dayton and move on, this was probably the last straw: yesterday the Minnesota Supreme Court denied his petition asking for all counties to perform a reconciliation of number of voters with number of ballots cast. With the recount already done, the reconciliation would have been the only practical way of even stringing this thing out for a while longer, let alone finding an extra 9,000 votes.

• MO-Gov: In marked contrast to the recent PPP poll giving Jay Nixon a clear edge, Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (now looking more like a candidate than ever) is pointing to an internal poll by American Viewpoint taken way back in late September that gives him a 47-38 lead over Nixon. The poll finds Nixon still popular, though, with 51% approval.

• ND-Gov: Today was the first day on the job for North Dakota’s new Governor, ex-Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple, who took over as John Hoeven resigned in order to join the Senate soon. Hoeven is the first-ever North Dakota Governor to resign voluntarily. Taking over as Lt. Gov. is ex-US Attorney Drew Wrigley. Dalrymple will be watched carefully as to what happens in 2012: he could either run for election to a full term, or move over to a Senate run against Kent Conrad.

• MN-08: Newly-elected Rep. Chip Cravaack will have one of the tougher re-elects of any of the new House Republicans (he’s in a D+3 district that includes the Dem stronghold of Duluth), but one of the bigger-name Dems in the district is saying he won’t be the challenger. State Sen. Tom Bakk (one of the 5,589,358,587,568,120 people who ran for the DFL gubernatorial nomination this year) is staying where he is, especially since he’s about to become minority leader.

• GA-St. House: One more D-to-R party switcher to report, and it’s a fairly big name within the confines of the Georgia legislature: Doug McKillip, who was previously #2 among Democrats. Interestingly, he’s not from a dark-red rural district but represents the college town of Athens, and he says he’ll be better able to agitate for the University’s needs from within the majority… although, that, of course, would depend on getting re-elected again from that (presumably blue) district.

• Colorado: What looked like a hotly contested race on the Democratic side of the Senate race (thanks to a mixed bag of poll results, including an Andrew Romanoff lead according to SurveyUSA) turned into a fairly comfortable win for Michael Bennet in the end. Propped up by Obama and DSCC help, and weathering a last-minute patented hit job from the New York Times, Bennet won 54-46. Maybe this’ll help put to sleep two memes that are getting very very tiresome: that it’s an “anti-incumbent year,” and that Obama endorsees all lose. Bennet will face off against Ken Buck, who defeated Jane Norton in the GOP primary 52-48. Polls haven’t been conclusive in terms of whether Dems should have wanted to face off against Buck or Norton. Buck gets lumped in with Sharron Angle and Rand Paul because of his teabagger proclivities, but he’s considerably more skilled than they are; nevertheless, he still seems gaffe-prone and irritable, so I’ll take him.

Dan Maes won the GOP gubernatorial nod, 51-49. The only way things could have gone better for Dems in the GOP gubernatorial race would be if Maes’ margin had been small enough to force a recount. The risk here was that irreparably-damaged Scott McInnis would win and then, being a good GOP team player, promptly drop out, allowing a better Republican (Jane Norton?) to take his place, which would then drive Tom Tancredo out of his indie bid. Maes has vowed to fight on, though, and his underwhelming presence is likely to keep Tancredo in the race, meaning not one but two guys not just spewing the crazy, but splitting the crazy vote and ensuring Gov. John Hickenlooper.

Finally, in Colorado, the GOP House primaries were uneventful wins for establishment candidates, with Ryan Frazier beating Lang Sias 64-36 in CO-07 and Scott Tipton beating Bob McConnell (Sarah Palin’s other losing endorsee yesterday) winning 56-44 in CO-03.

• Connecticut: Probably the biggest surprise of the night was the 58-42 victory by former Stamford mayor Dan Malloy over Ned Lamont in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, seeing as how Lamont had led all polls (although polls did capture a late and rapid Malloy surge). The lesson here mostly boils down to one more race where the organizational power of the local political establishment was able to overcome the money of a rich outsider, but there’s one other story here that Dem message-setters will hopefully notice. Judging by when polls saw the race tigthen, the wheels seemed to come off Lamont’s campaign with a late round of attack ads that focused on layoffs at Lamont’s company. Taking not just that but the air war in the PA-12 special in mind (where Mark Critz won in large measure by hammering Tim Burns over outsourcing), it really seems like, despite this year’s overarching CW, voters will go for a “career politician” over a self-described job-creating outsider businessman, once it’s made clear that said businessman’s interest in jobs only extends as far as his own bottom line.

Malloy will face a flawed Tom Foley in November, and based on general election polling recently should be considered a slight favorite. Foley won the GOP primary narrowly over Lt. Governor Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel 42-39-19. Also, for the GOP, Linda McMahon unsurprisingly won the GOP primary in the face of Rob Simmons’ half-assed comeback-type-thing. Simmons and Paulist economist Peter Schiff did keep her under 50% though: 49-28-23. McMahon faces Richard Blumenthal in November, who already launched his first TV ad this morning, shirking a no-doubt-tempting smackdown in favor of… what’s that thing that McMahon doesn’t have… oh, yeah. Dignity. The three GOP House primaries led to expected victories for Janet Peckinpaugh in CT-02 (43-38 over Daria Novak), Dan Debicella in CT-04 (60-24 over Rob Merkle), and Sam Caligiuri in CT-05 (40-32-28 over Justin Bernier and Mark Greenberg).

• Georgia: The main event in Georgia was the GOP gubernatorial runoff, and hoo boy, did it live up to its billing. The two candidates finished in recount territory at 50-50, with Nathan Deal leading Karen Handel by 2,500 votes. Unfortunately, Handel just conceded this morning rather than following through with the recount, so Dem nominee Roy Barnes doesn’t get to spend weeks watching them keep fighting it out. Pundits will no doubt focus on the proxy war aspects of the battle (“Huck beats Palin!”), but the outcome seems to have more to do with Deal consolidating conservative votes outside the Atlanta area, where Handel’s anti-corruption, anti-good-ol’-boyism message may have fallen flat.

We also had outcomes in three GOP House primaries, one to determine the nominee in a Likely Dem race, and the others to determine who’s the next Rep. in dark-red districts. In GA-07, establishment-backed former John Linder CoS Rob Woodall beat teabagging radio talker Jody Hice, 56-44. In GA-09, Rep. Tom Graves won his fourth (and probably final) faceoff against Lee Hawkins, 55-45. And in GA-12, Ray McKinney beat Carl Smith 62-38 for the right to take on Rep. John Barrow. If you want to argue that this year’s crop of Republican candidates is radioactive, you don’t need to look any further than McKinney; he’s a nuclear power plant project manager by day.

• Minnesota: Finally, there was only one race worth watching last night in Minnesota, and it turned out to be a barnburner: the DFL gubernatorial primary. State House speaker (and DFL endorsee) Margaret Anderson Kelliher led most of the night based on her strength in the Twin Cities, but as results trickled in from the rest of the state, ex-Sen. Mark Dayton crept into the lead. In the end, despite having convincing pre-primary poll leads, Dayton won 41-40-18 over Kelliher and Matt Entenza. Dayton pretty clearly benefited not only from his statewide familiarity, but also from picking a running mate from Duluth, where he cleaned up, late in the game. With a 7,000 margin separating them, Kelliher didn’t concede last night… but she did this morning, meaning Dayton faces the increasingly woeful GOP nominee Tom Emmer in November. The most recent spate of polls has given Dayton double-digits advantages in that matchup.

• CO-Sen (D): The Democratic heavyweights are out in this marquee race on our side in Colorado, splitting between appointed incumbent and former Denver Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet and Colorado House speaker Andrew Romanoff. Obama’s recorded a robocall for Bennet, while the Big Dog’s been stumping for Romanoff (who, yes, endorsed Hillary in 2008). While Romanoff’s bid seemed quixotic at first, he’s managed to gain some traction, with the most recent polling in the race offering a split decision, with PPP saying Bennet 49-43 and SurveyUSA saying Romanoff 48-45. Much hay was made about Bennet’s accidental incumbency, and the newest scuttle in the race takes the form of Bennet’s financial dealings while Superintendent. While that news may have broken a little late, Romanoff still has the momentum — but will it be enough? (JMD)

• CO-Sen (R): The Devil Wears Prada! Or, perhaps more appropriately, former Lt. Gov Jane Norton wears high heels, according to her rival, Weld County DA Ken Buck. The two have been duking it out for the conservative mantle. Buck’s been endorsed by GOP would-be kingmaker Jim DeMint and has had some airpower in the form of shady 501(c)(4) group Americans for Job Security; Norton’s earned the endorsements of both John McCain and the star of Saved By The Xenophobia, Jan Brewer. Norton and Buck remain close in polling, with PPP giving Norton a narrow edge at 41-40 and SurveyUSA giving Buck some more breathing room at 50-41. All of this remains in complete flux though, and any result tonight could be rendered moot by a switcheroo with the Governor’s race, should the Colorado GOP somehow manage to cast off their albatross in Scott McInnis. (JMD)

• CO-Gov (R): Former Rep. Scott McInnis was at one time considered a major get for the GOP, and the strength of his candidacy was such that he helped push incumbent Dem Gov. Bill Ritter out of the race after just one term. No more. While some initially dismissed McInnis’s plagiarism scandal as a minor white-collar affair that wouldn’t interest average voters, his transgressions in fact proved unusually potent, leading to his campaign’s utter ruin. Polls now show a dead heat between McInnis (whose fundraising has dried up) and crazy fringer Some Dude Dan Maes (who never raised squat to begin with). The primary may be completely moot, though: Rumors have abounded that if McInnis were to win, he’d step down in favor of a less-damaged candidate. We should probably be rooting for Maes, though, who has explicitly said he’d do no such thing. (D)

• CO-03 (R): Former state Rep. Scott Tipton, who represented a large swath of Southwestern Colorado before running against incumbent Dem. John Salazar in 2006, looked like he would easily earn the right to challenge Salazar a second time, but was held to only 45% at the state nominating against the teabaggish Bob McConnell, who also earned 45%. As a result, the two square off tonight, with McConnell running to Tipton’s right, even boasting a Sarah Palin endorsement. Both candidates have some cash to play with, Tipton having spent $213k and McConnell having spent $132k so far. Given the relative low profile of this race – Salazar bested Tipton with 62% in 2006 and seems to be more entrenched than most vulnerable Dems – the race remains unpredictable. (JMD)

• CO-07 (R): The primary field in this suburban Denver district is also down to two after the convention, with Aurora City Councilman Ryan Frazier having earned 49% and carpetbagging former Democrat Lang Sias having earned 43%. Frazier is winning the money race by quite a distance, $252k to Sias’s $89k cash-on-hand. Sias — who lives in CO-02 and became a Republican in 2007, however, boasts endorsements from both former 7th CD Rep. Bob Beauprez, the one and only Tom Tancredo, and John McCain, who Sias campaigned for (but didn’t vote for). Again, Perlmutter doesn’t seem particularly vulnerable, leading to a lower-profile — and less predictable — race tonight. (JMD)

• CT-Gov (D): Connecticut Democrats are hungry for a win this November — which would be their first gubernatorial win since William O’Neill’s re-election in 1986 — but they’ll have to get through a fast-closing primary tonight to see who their nominee will be. ’06 Senate nominee and Lieberman primary-slayer Ned Lamont is facing off against former 14-year Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy, and this race looks like it’s going down to the wire. After lagging in the polls behind Lamont for months, Malloy has used some well-timed punches to turn Lamont’s business experience against him, releasing TV ads criticizing Lamont for layoffs at his telecommunications company. The latest Q-poll shows that Lamont’s lead has eroded to a mere three points — certainly not a margin to bet the farm on tonight. (JL)

• CT-Gov (R): While technically this one is a three-way decision, the only candidates with a shot at winning the Republican nomination tonight are ex-Ambassador Tom Foley and Lt. Gov. Michael Fedele. Like Lamont, Foley has used his personal fortune to catapult himself to an early lead. Fedele has had a rough time keeping pace, highlighted by his failures to secure endorsements from Gov. Jodi Rell and the state GOP convention. Still, Fedele has swung back at Foley with TV ads drawing attention to layoffs at one of Foley’s textile factories in Georgia. The latest Q-Poll shows some juice for Fedele, but he still lags behind Foley by 38-30. (JL)

• CT-Sen (R): Little Bobby Simmons announced that he was taking his ball and going home, but it turns out that he was just lingering behind the bleachers until he could muster up the courage to take another at-bat. The results aren’t pretty: a 50-28 lead for controversial WWE Queen Linda McMahon in the latest Q-Poll. Next! (JL)

• CT-02 (R): Now this one’s getting down in the weeds, but Republicans are trying to prod as many Dem-held seats for potential weakness as possible. The crop of candidates going up against two-term Rep. Joe Courtney, however, leaves much to be desired. After their most well-funded recruit, former Hebron Board of Finance vice chairman Matthew Daly, dropped out in May, Republicans are picking between former TV anchorwoman Janet Peckinpaugh, former State Department official Daria Novak, and farmer/attorney Douglas Dubitsky. Peckinpaugh, the most “hyped” of the trio, failed to raise more than $50K for her campaign, and her candidacy drew early fire for her most recent employment stint as a shill for a now-defunct mortgage company in deceptive, TV news-like ads. As much success as Republicans have had in expanding the map this year, this race stacks up as a glaring recruiting failure. (JL)

• CT-04 (R): State Sen. Dan Debicella is the clear front-runner in the race to take on Rep. Jim Himes. He faces a couple of Some Dudes who, as befits their Some Dude status, haven’t raised squat: Rick Torres and Rob Merkle. (A more credible opponent, Tom Herrmann, dropped out in June after petition fraud meant he couldn’t qualify for the ballot.) Debicella won his party’s backing at the state convention earlier this year. (D)

• CT-05 (R): Though the 5th district would seem to be a tougher GOP target than the 4th, the Republican primary here has attracted quite a bit more money, and a larger number of credible candidates. Another state senator, Sam Caligiuri, is also the presumed front-runner here, having won 70% of the delegate vote at his party’s nominating convention. But Afghanistan vet Justin Bernier, who was running in this race (and got some favorable notice) before Caligiuri dropped down from the senate contest last November, has raised a creditable sum and hasn’t given up. Like many others in his position, though, it seems he’s had a chip on his shoulder ever since Caligiuri hopped into the race, and that’s usually not very appealing. Wealthy businessman Mark Greenberg actually leads the money race, with over a million raised (most of that from his own pockets), but most of the media attention devoted to this contest has seemed to focus on the Caligiuri-Bernier matchup. The winner, whomever he may be, gets to challenge sophomore Rep. (and all-time SSP hero) Chris Murphy in the fall. (D)

• GA-Gov (R): The big ticket race in Georgia is the Republican gubernatorial runoff, between Karen Handel, the former SoS who finished a dominant first in the primary, and Nathan Deal, the former U.S. Rep. who was second. The Beltway media tends to emphasize that this is a proxy fight between possible presidential candidates (with Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney backing Handel, and Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee backing Deal), but the important post-primary endorsements here may have been the NRA, and third-place finisher state Sen. Eric Johnson (who has a strong base in the Savannah area), which both seemed to have consolidate conservative and rural Johnson and John Oxendine votes behind Deal. With that, Deal has pulled into a polling tie with Handel, promising a down-to-the-wire race tonight. (C)

• GA-07 (R): With the surprising third-place finish of state Rep. Clay Cox (who’d had the backing of the Club for Growth and many local endorsers), meaning he’s not in the runoff, it’s anybody’s guess as to who has the upper hand tonight in the Republican runoff in the dark-red open seat 7th and be the district’s next Rep. (Actually, this part of Atlanta’s northern suburbs is going through a lot of demographic change that will be beneficial to Democrats in the long run, but this isn’t going to be the year to capitalize on that.) John Linder’s former CoS, Rob Woodall, faces off against radio talk show host Jody Hice. (C)

• GA-09 (R): Few candidates are as well acquainted with each other as newly-minted Rep. Tom Graves and former state Sen. Lee Hawkins, who, thanks to a special election, special election runoff, and primary, are now poised to face each other for the fourth time this year. Graves has won the first three rounds, and barely missed winning the primary outright (with 49% of the vote), so it would be a pretty monumental turnaround for Hawkins to finally win it, on the time it really counts (as November will be of little import in this dark-red district). Maybe having been in Congress for five months is enough to give Graves the unacceptable taint of incumbency, though. The county to watch is Hall, where Hawkins has his geographic base and which tends to report late. (C)

• GA-12 (R): Democratic Rep. John Barrow — who overcame his main challenge this year, a challenge from the left from former state Sen. Regina Thomas, in the primary — will be watching with some interest tonight to see who his Republican opponent will be: nuclear power plant project manager Ray McKinney, or former fire chief of the small town of Thunderbolt, Carl Smith? Neither one is particularly well-funded or has an imposing profile, but this race could be competitive if the Republican wave is particularly large. (C)

• MN-Gov (D): Minnesota Democrats will finally have a chance to participate in some real democracy today, rather than having their gubernatorial nominee chosen for them by a bunch of elites at a party convention. State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher did in fact win the endorsement of state delegates, but former Sen. Mark Dayton and former state Rep. Matt Entenza forged on with primary challenges regardless. It was probably a wise move for the wealthy Dayton, seeing as recent polls have all shown him to be in first place, with MAK in second and Entenza (who also has access to family money) in third. While this race may not wind up being very exciting, in a low turnout three-way with one woman and two men, the outcome could be unexpected. (D)

Quinnipiac (8/3-8, likely voters, 7/28-8/2 in parens):

Tom Foley (R): 38 (41)

Mike Fedele (R): 30 (26)

Oz Griebel (R): 17 (13)

Undecided: 14 (21)

(MoE: 3.8%)

Ned Lamont (D): 45 (45)

Dan Malloy (D): 42 (40)

Undecided: 12 (14)

(MoE: 4.6%)

Quinnipiac finds some major movement for both Lt. Gov. Mike Fedele and Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy in the Republican and Democratic gubernatorial primaries, respectively. That’s the power of well-timed attack ads at work, and it should make for an exciting evening tomorrow night.

General election numbers (7/28-8/2, registered voters, 7/7-13 in parens):

Ned Lamont (D): 48 (49)

Michael Fedele (R): 33 (27)

Undecided: 14 (19)

Ned Lamont (D): 46 (45)

Tom Foley (R): 33 (33)

Undecided: 17 (17)

Ned Lamont (D): 50 (49)

Oz Greibel (R): 27 (25)

Undecided: 19 (21)

Dan Malloy (D): 47 (39)

Michael Fedele (R): 30 (26)

Undecided: 18 (20)

Dan Malloy (D): 46 (44)

Tom Foley (R): 31 (33)

Undecided: 16 (19)

Dan Malloy (D): 50 (51)

Oz Greibel (R): 25 (25)

Undecided: 18 (21)

(MoE: ±2.7%)

The boys in blue still look pretty good, but we’ll see how the shape of this race will change once Quinnipiac adjusts to a likely voter screen.

Finally, we’ve got some numbers from the on again/off again GOP Senate primary (8/3-8, likely voters, 7/28-8/2 in parens). And don’t call it a comeback…

Linda McMahon (R): 50 (47)

Rob Simmons (R): 28 (30)

Peter Schiff (R) : 15 (14)

Undecided: 7 (8)

(MoE: ±3.8%)

…because it ain’t. A Rob Simmons victory tomorrow night would either be an epic polling fail or a spectacular late-game change of heart in the GOP electorate.

The final piece — Senatorial general election numbers (7/28-8/2, registered voters, 7/7-13 in parens):

Richard Blumenthal (D): 50 (54)

Linda McMahon (R): 40 (37)

Undecided: 7 (7)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 55 (55)

Rob Simmons (R): 35 (35)

Undecided: 7 (9)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 57 (58)

Peter Schiff (R): 30 (31)

Undecided: 9 (9)

(MoE: ±2.7%)

• 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%

Quinnipiac (7/7-13, likely primary voters, no trend lines):

Tom Foley (R): 48

Mike Fedele (R): 13

Oz Griebel (R): 7

Undecided: 32

(MoE: 3.4%)

Ned Lamont (D): 46

Dan Malloy (D): 37

Undecided: 16

(MoE: 3.8%)

Since Quinnipiac has shifted for the first time to a likely primary voter model away from merely registered voters, I’m leaving out any trend lines (though you can see their last primary poll here). However, Quinnipiac also tested the primaries without a likely voter screen, which resulted in a 43-9 lead for Foley over Fedele and a 46-26 lead for Ned Lamont over Stamford Mayor Dan Malloy.

Lamont is also looking pretty good in the general election — and so is Dan Malloy (registered voters, 1/14-19 in parens):

Ned Lamont (D): 49 (41)

Michael Fedele (R): 27 (32)

Undecided: 19 (23)

Ned Lamont (D): 45 (38)

Tom Foley (R): 33 (36)

Undecided: 17 (21)

Ned Lamont (D): 49

Oz Greibel (R): 25

Undecided: 21

Dan Malloy (D): 49 (37)

Michael Fedele (R): 26 (31)

Undecided: 20 (27)

Dan Malloy (D): 44 (37)

Tom Foley (R): 33 (33)

Undecided: 19 (24)

Dan Malloy (D): 51

Oz Greibel (R): 25

Undecided: 21

(MoE: ±2.7%)

The Republicans in this race are still generally very unknown (nearly 60% of registered voters haven’t heard enough about Foley, a former US Ambassador, to form an opinion of him, and nearly 80% feel the same about Fedele, the current Lt. Governor), but Lamont and Malloy are starting off in fairly good shape, approval-wise. Lamont has a 49-21 favorable rating, indicating he’s been able to shake off any baggage he may have accumulated from his big-spending ’06 campaign, and Malloy is looking sharp, too, at 41-11. Not a bad place to be at all.

• KY-Sen: The Louisville Courier-Journal has something of a compendium of Rand Paul’s Greatest Hits, selecting the dodgiest bits from his public appearances from the last decade. While the whole thing’s worth a look, the highlight most likely to attract the most attention is his criticisms of the current health care system and how it “keeps patients from negotiating lower prices with their doctors.” Bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack bwack…

• LA-Sen: A key David Vitter aide has resigned after his long rap sheet was revealed, perhaps most significantly that he pled guilty in 2008 to charges associated with a “knife-wielding altercation” with an ex-girlfriend, as well as that he’s still wanted on an open warrant in Baton Rouge on DWI charges. Perhaps most disturbingly, this was an aide that Vitter had been assigned to “oversee women’s issues.”

• MO-Sen: I’ll bet you’d forgotten that Roy Blunt had a teabagging primary challenger, in the form of state Sen. Roy Purgason (I had). Well, Purgason wants you to know that, despite complete silence from the DeMint/RedState/CfG/FreedomWorks axis, he’s still hanging in there; he just rolled out an endorsement from one of his Senate colleagues, Matt Bartle.

• NV-Sen: Well, this doesn’t look good for John Ensign. Staffers, in depositions, have told the Senate Ethics Committee that, yes, they knew that the one-year lobbying ban was being broken when they helped set up former Ensign staffer and cuckolded husband Doug Hampton with a cushy lobbying gig.

• NY-Sen-B: After Quinnipiac didn’t even bother polling him this week, Joe DioGuardi (who holds the Conservative ballot line and its trying to petition into the GOP primary) wants you to know he’s still in this thing. He released an internal poll from the ubiquitous POS showing that he’s within 11 points of Kirsten Gillibrand (49-38), and, more plausibly, that he has a big edge in the GOP primary, at 21 against Bruce Blakeman’s 7 and David Malpass at 3.

• OR-Sen: Rasmussen has been working hard to convince people that there just might be a competitive race in Oregon for Ron Wyden, against little-known law professor Jim Huffman. Looking to head that off at the pass, Wyden rolled out an internal poll today from Grove Insight that should be a bucket of cold water for the Huffman camp: Wyden leads 53-23.

• CA-Gov: I’m not sure how much of this is Politico just, as is its wont, looking for drama where there isn’t much, and how much of this is genuine discontent. But they have an article today about an increasing sense among Dem insiders of wondering when Jerry Brown is going to drop the Zen approach and, if not attack Meg Whitman, at least work on some of the infrastructural aspects of the campaign.

• CT-Gov: Ned Lamont got a key labor endorsement, from the state’s largest teachers’ union, the Connecticut Education Association. Lamont and Dan Malloy have split the endorsements from the various trade unions. Meanwhile, on the GOP side, Tom Foley got an endorsement that may help him with that all-important demographic bloc of Massachusetts expatriates; ex-Gov. William Weld gave Foley his backing.

• MI-Gov: Peter Hoekstra got an endorsement from his next-door neighbor in the House, outgoing (and considerably more moderate) Rep. Vern Ehlers, who had earlier said he wouldn’t endorse but qualified that by saying “If there is an exceptional candidate that appears to be lagging” he’d endorse. Hoekstra in fact does seem to be lagging, facing a seeming surge from AG Mike Cox in the GOP gubernatorial primary.

• MN-Gov: This seems odd; when she pulled the plug on her campaign after the DFL convention, Ramsey Co. DA Susan Gaertner said she didn’t want to get in the way of the historic prospect of a female governor and didn’t want to be a spoiler for Margaret Anderson Kelliher. So what did she do today? She endorsed Matt Entenza in the DFL primary instead.

• NM-Gov (pdf): Magellan (a Republican pollster, but one who’ve started releasing a lot of polls where they don’t have a candidate) is out with a poll of the New Mexico governor’s race, and like several other pollsters are finding the Diane Denish/Susana Martinez race to be in tossup territory. They find the Republican Martinez leading Denish 44-43. There’s a huge gender gap here: women support Denish 48-36, while men support Martinez 53-36. One other item from the crosstabs, which either casts some doubt on the findings or else is the key to why Martinez may win this: while Martinez is losing in Albuquerque-based NM-01, she’s actually winning in NM-03 (45-41), the most liberal of the state’s three districts but also the most-heavily Latino.

• AL-07: Local African-American organizations (the same ones who threw their backing to Ron Sparks in the gubernatorial primary) seem split on what do to in the runoff in the 7th. The Alabama New South Coalition (who’d backed Earl Hilliard Jr. in the primary) has now endorsed Terri Sewell, while the Alabama Democratic Conference is backing Shelia Smoot.

• OH-05: Rep. Bob Latta languishes as one of the GOP’s most obscure back-benchers, but he’s in the news because of two different things that happened at a town hall meeting. First, he went birther-agnostic at the meeting in response to a participant’s questions, only to try to walk that back later when talking to a reporter. And second, he didn’t immediately respond to another participant’s suggestion that the President be “shot in the head.”

• OK-02: State Sen. Jim Wilson is challenging Rep. Dan Boren in the Democratic primary in the 2nd; he’s out with an internal poll from Lake Research with a dismal topline (Boren leads 62-17) but with better numbers on the “informed ballot.” The topline numbers aren’t that different from Boren‘s own internal poll released last week. Still, between Boren releasing an internal, airing an anti-Wilson ad, and rolling out an endorsement from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it’s clear Boren is taking the threat seriously.

• Census: The Census Bureau is out this week with its 2009 population estimates of the nation’s cities, the last estimate it’ll provide before releasing the numbers from the actual 2010 count. Perhaps most notably, they found the population of New York City is up another 45,000 over the last year. NYC’s growth over the last decade accounts for two-thirds of the state’s population growth over the last decade; as we’ve discussed before, this means that in the next round of redistricting (Congressional, but especially legislative) the city is going to continue to gain strength at the expense of dwindling Upstate.

• CT-Sen, CT-Gov: Leftover from last Friday is the most recent Quinnipiac poll of Connecticut. Without much changing from their previous poll other than some within-the-margin-of-error gains for Linda McMahon, the poll is very digestible. Richard Blumenthal leads McMahon 55-35 (instead of 56-31 in late May), leads Rob Simmons (who has “suspended” his campaign) 54-33, and leads Peter Schiff 56-29. McMahon leads Simmons and Schiff in the GOP primary 45-29-13. They also included gubernatorial primaries (but not the general): for the Dems, Ned Lamont leads Dan Malloy 39-22, while for the GOP Tom Foley leads Michael Fedele and Oz Griebel 39-12-2.

• IL-Sen: With a growing sense that many Illinois residents would prefer to vote for neither Mark Kirk nor Alexi Giannoulias, a new right-winger with money to burn looks like he’s daring to go where Patrick Hughes didn’t. Mike Niecestro says he’s a “disgusted Republican who has had it with the people the party throws at us,” and differentiates himself from Kirk on cap-and-trade and immigration. Just another random teabagger who’s all talk and no $$$? No, Niecestro says he already has the 25,000 signatures he needs to qualify before the June 21 deadline, and also has $1 million of his own money ready to go, along with another $100K he’s raised elsewhere. Even if he winds up pulling in only a few percent off Kirk’s right flank, that could be what that Giannoulias needs to squeak by in what otherwise looks to be a close race.

• NV-Sen: Jon Scott Ashjian is turning into something of the white whale for the Nevada GOP. Even though his candidate lost the primary, Dan Burdish, former political director for Sue Lowden, is still filing complaints with the SoS’s office to get Ashjian off the ballot. It doesn’t look like it’ll go anywhere, though; Ashjian himself has qualified for the ballot, easily meeting the low 250-vote signature hurdle even though the “Tea Party” didn’t meet the signature requirements for its own ballot line. Of course, competing right-wing third party the Independent American Party is still trying to get Ashjian off the ballot too, and now the teabaggers in general have turned on Ashjian (who never really had much support from them in the first place) since one of their own, Sharron Angle, managed to snare the GOP nod.

• NY-Sen, NY-Sen-B (pdf): Siena has yet another poll out of both the Senate races in New York. There’s still very little of interest to report. Kirsten Gillibrand leads Bruce Blakeman 48-27, David Malpass 49-24, and Joe DioGuardi 47-29. DioGuardi leads the GOP primary over Blakeman and Malpass, 21-7-3. Chuck Schumer leads Jay Townsend 60-26 and Gary Berntsen 59-27. Townsend leads Berntsen in the other GOP primary, 20-15.

• SC-Sen: Vic Rawl, who lost the Democratic nomination to the baffling Alvin Greene last week, is now formally contesting the results of the election. The state party’s 92-member executive committee will meet on Thursday to hear evidence, but it’s unlikely they’ll do anything, as there’s no precedent in South Carolina for throwing out a primary election’s results.

• WA-Sen: The state GOP convention was over the weekend in Washington; unlike, say, Utah or Connecticut, there’s nothing at stake here, but the general sense in terms of signage, applause, and the like, was that the party’s activist base is pretty jazzed about Sarah Palin-endorsed Clint Didier, and much more tepid about Dino Rossi than they were in 2008, when he was a more apt vehicle for their resentments. A straw poll at a Patriot Coalition event associated with the convention (a subset of a subset of the most hardcore base, so take with much salt) gave Didier a 99-12 edge over Rossi.

• AL-Gov: Artur Davis isn’t giving up on being a douchebag just because he lost the gubernatorial nomination; he said he isn’t sure how Ron Sparks is going to be able to win the uphill fight in the general election, and that Sparks will need something “broader than bingo” to win. Also, this is a very strange time to be making any major staff changes, let alone plunging into what Reid Wilson is describing as “turmoil:” fresh off the triumph of (probably) making the GOP gubernatorial runoff against Bradley Byrne, Robert Bentley just sacked his campaign manager, communications director, and new media director. Bentley is bringing in members of the Mike Huckabee camp to take over (with Huckabee son-in-law Bryan Sanders the new CM), but it seems like his small-time help didn’t get demoted, but instead rudely shown the door by the new bosses.

• CO-Gov: Businessman Joe Gesundheit Schadenfreude Weltschmerz Gschwendtner has pulled the plug on his Republican gubernatorial bid, without endorsing anybody else. He wasn’t able to round up enough signatures to qualify, which is odd, considering that people only need to be able to spell their own names, not his.

• FL-Gov: With his once-clear path to the GOP nomination suddenly looking to be on life support, Bill McCollum got some help from a key GOP establishment figure: Mitt Romney. Romney will appear at two Sunshine State fundraisers today, handing out endorsements like candy to a number of other Republicans in better position too.

• IA-Gov: You may recall that, in the wake of Terry Branstad’s closer-than-expected victory over social conservative Bob vander Plaats, we lamented that the Dems didn’t try any Gray Davis-style meddling in the primary to get the more-conservative, less-electable guy over the top. Well, it turns out they did try a little of that; the Dems launched an independent expenditure committee called “Iowans for Responsible Government” that ran ads on Fox News and sent direct mail attacking Branstad for tax hikes and putting his face on a liberal Mt. Rushmore next to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Nancy Pelosi. While it didn’t seal the deal, it may have contributed to the underwhelming showing by Branstad.

• MI-Gov: AG Mike Cox won the endorsement of Michigan Right to Life, a big endorsement that will help him as he fights for the social conservative vote in the GOP primary with Rep. Peter Hoekstra. Cox might be the Republican we most want to face out of the GOP field; Rasmussen joined the crowd today in finding that he polls the weakest against either Democrat.

• NY-Gov (pdf): Siena also polled the gubernatorial race; again, nothing noteworthy here, other than Andrew Cuomo having lost a few points since last time. Cuomo leads Rick Lazio 60-24, and leads Carl Paladino 65-23. Party-endorsed Lazio leads Paladino (assuming he can successfully petition onto the ballot) in the GOP primary, 45-18. Meanwhile, the race may get slightly more interesting as gadflyish New York city councilor Charles Barron seems to be moving forward on his quixotic plans to create a whole third party (New York Freedom Democratic Party) for a challenge to the left, mostly to protest Cuomo putting together an all-white ticket.

• OH-Gov: Incumbent Dem Ted Strickland won the NRA endorsement today, instead of GOP ex-Rep. John Kasich. That may seem a surprise, but Strickland has a lifetime “A” rating from the NRA while Kasich was always an unusually anti-gun Republican.

• GA-12: The Hill details how Rep. John Barrow’s fundraising from fellow Dems has fallen way off this year, perhaps an indication of blowback over his “no” vote on HCR. He’s only gotten money directly from five Democratic colleagues and five others’ PACs, compared with 53 in 2006 and 22 in 2008. (An alternative explanation, of course, is that he’s in no major trouble in the general election this year and that money may be more needed elsewhere.) Barrow still has the AFL-CIO’s endorsement, and about a 20:1 CoH advantage over primary challenger Regina Thomas. Speaking of one of his minor GOP opponents, Carl Smith, the fire chief of the small town of Thunderbolt, has a less-appealing resume now that he just got canned by his city council, which opted to stop paying for a fire department and return to an all-volunteer operation.

• IN-03: The Indiana state GOP met over the weekend to pick a nominee to fill the spot left behind by the resigned Rep. Mark Souder. It wasn’t much of a surprise: they picked state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, an up-and-comer who gave Dan Coats a challenge in the GOP Senate primary. Stutzman won on the second ballot, with state Rep. Randy Borror a distant second. It was a double pick: Stutzman will be replace Souder as the GOP candidate in the general election, and also will be the GOP’s candidate in the special election that will also be held on Election Day in November (which, assuming he wins, will allow him to serve in the post-election lame duck session).

• NC-02: Rep. Bob Etheridge, usually one of the more low-key members of the House, had an embarrassing flip-out in front of two GOP trackers/college students asking him if he “supported the Obama agenda,” grabbing one of them and his camera. Etheridge subsequently issued a statement apologizing.

• Polltopia: PPP is soliciting opinions on where the poll next, both multiple-choice and open-ended. Let ’em know what burning questions you’d like answered.

• CA-Sen, CA-Gov: There’s one more poll in California, courtesy of Capitol Weekly (done for them by Republican pollster Probolsky Research). They’ve polled a few times before, but they’re calling this a “tracking poll,” suggesting they’ll be putting out more numbers as we count down to the June 8 primary. At any rate, there aren’t any surprises here: they too see the Carly Fiorina surge on the Senate side: she’s at 40, compared with Tom Campbell’s 25 and Chuck DeVore’s 13. In the Governor’s race, Meg Whitman leads Steve Poizner 54-24.

The big news here, though, is that Campbell, after saying he was going dark earlier this week, apparently pulled together enough last-minute contributions for a final TV ad. His closing argument is all about electability, centering around the recent LA Times/USC poll that gave him a lead over Barbara Boxer while Fiorina trailed. A candidate making a calm, logical pitch based on quantifiable data, instead of throwing together a mish-mash of fearmongering, jingoism, and meaningless buzzwords? I think Campbell might be running in the wrong party’s primary for that kind of thing to work. Fiorina, for her part, may have some backtracking to do after her deriding Boxer’s push on climate legislation as worrying about “the weather.” Back in October, before Campbell’s entry forced herself to recast herself as a conservative, she had lots of praise for cap and trade.

• KY-Sen: Rush disses Rand Paul! No, it’s not Rush Limbaugh; it’s just plain Rush, the pioneer 70s Canadian prog-rockers. They’ve told Paul to stop using Rush’s music at his rallies and in his web ads, citing copyright violations inasmuch as Paul has simply chosen his own Free Will and not asked them for, y’know, permission. The Paul campaign has used “The Spirit of Radio” pre-rallies (and here’s how big a Rush geek he is: he’s actually quoted that song’s lyrics on the stump). There’s always been a lot of overlap between Rush fans and libertarians, not just because many of Rush’s lyrics lean that way, but also because they both have a core audience of 14-year-old boys.

• NY-Sen-B: The Senate primary, for the right to go against Kirsten Gillibrand, is turning out to be just as much of a clusterf@ck as everything else the NY GOP has done lately. The GOP convention has left them with yet one more contested primary, as Bruce Blakeman and David Malpass split the vote (a weighted 42% for Blakeman and 40% for Malpass), leaving them to fight it out in a primary. They’re still likely to be joined by Joe DioGuardi, who only got 18% (missing the 25% threshold) but who intends to petition his way on to the ballot. Remember that DioGuardi is already on the ballot on the Conservative line, though, so he’s participating in November regardless of whether he gets into, let alone wins, the primary.

• CT-Gov: Here’s one advantage to running against a rich guy in a state with public campaign financing: every time your opponent pulls out more money, more money magically appears for you, too. Dan Malloy has raised $250K in contributions, which opens the door to another $1.25 million from the state, and on top of that, he’s entitled to a $938K bonus to match Ned Lamont’s spending. On the GOP side, Michael Fedele (with a rich guy problem of his own, in the form of Tom Foley) would like to do the same thing, but doesn’t look like he can rustle up $250K in contributions by the deadline.

• AL-05: Parker Griffith apparently isn’t switching back to being a Dem after his party-switching chicanery blew up in his face; he congratulated Mo Brooks at a press conference yesterday and said he’ll vote for him in November. “I was rejected by the constituents, they did not accept me. I appreciate that because that is how America is supposed to work,” said Griffith.

• CA-36: There are some internal polls floating around out there ahead of next week’s primary in the 36th. Jane Harman’s camp has a poll out giving her a 58-17 lead over Marcy Winograd (no word on the pollster, let alone any of the details). Winograd has her own internal, with even less detail: all they’re saying is that Harman is down at 43, although their silence about Winograd’s own number is pretty telling.

• FL-19: The FEC is telling ex-Rep. Robert Wexler to give back an unspecified amount of the contributions he received for the 2010 general election — which makes sense, considering he isn’t a participant. (He left to become president of the Center for Middle East Peace, although ongoing chatter has him on track to become the next Ambassador to Israel.) Unfortunately, that means less cash that he can offload to the> DCCC or other Dems this cycle.

• HI-01: I wasn’t aware that he hadn’t already weighed in in favor of Colleen Hanabusa, since most of the rest of the local old-guard Dem establishment had, but today ex-Rep. and gubernatorial candidate Neil Abercrombie endorsed Hanabusa. He also gave a hat tip to Ed Case for getting out of the way.

• Blogosphere: The New York Times actually got something right! They’re going to be partnering with Nate Silver, bringing a relaunched 538 under the NYT’s online umbrella in August. We’re glad to see that the legacy media are realizing that not only is there serious political journalism (if not scholarship) going on in the blogosphere, but that their last gasp at relevance may be by moving in that direction. Congrats to Nate, too!

Quinnipiac (5/24-25, registered voters, 3/9-15 in parens):

Richard Blumenthal (D): 56 (61)

Linda McMahon (R): 31 (28)

Undecided: 10 (10)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 55 (62)

Rob Simmons (R): 28 (26)

Undecided: 13 (10)

Richard Blumenthal (D): 59 (64)

Peter Schiff (R): 25 (21)

Undecided: 13 (13)

(MoE: ±2.9%)

If Quinnipiac is to believed, it looks like Richard Blumenthal has weathered the storm of his Vietnam flap with remarkable ease, only losing a handful of points off of his ample margins from March. Indeed, Quinnipiac asked a number of specific questions on the issue, finding that, by a margin of 53-35, voters were satisfied with Blumenthal’s explanation of the matter, and that, by a 54-38 margin, voters believe he misspoke rather than lied. A full 61% say that the issue isn’t impacting their preferences in the race one way or the other, while 33% say that it’s made them less likely to vote for Blumenthal. While this flare-up has not been pleasant at all, it certainly starting to look like the weight of the issue has been overstated.

Meanwhile, Quinnipiac also polled the GOP primary. Keep in mind that half of this sample was polled before Simmons pulled the plug on his own campaign:

Rob Simmons (R): 23 (34)

Linda McMahon (R): 49 (44)

Peter Schiff (R): 11 (9)

Undecided: 15 (12)

(MoE: ±6.5%)

And we also have some gubernatorial primaries:

Ned Lamont (D): 41 (28)

Dan Malloy (D): 24 (18)

Undecided: 30 (44)

(MoE: ±5%)

Tom Foley (R): 37 (37)

Mike Fedele (R): 11 (13)

Oz Griebel (R): 5 (7)

(MoE: ±6.5%)