Senate:
• MI-Sen: Gary Glenn, a bonafide teabagger and one-time head of the American Family Association of Michigan, says that he, too, may enter the GOP Senate primary, a race filled with all kinds of nuttiness at this point. A diarist at Pam's House Blend also notes that Glenn "[s]pearheaded the anti-gay amendment Prop 2 in 2004."
House:
• AZ-06: It's not clear to me how much this matters but infamous Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio just endorsed GOP ex-Rep. Matt Salmon, who is seeking his old House seat back, now that Jeff Flake is running for Senate.
• FL-25: I'm sure it's just a typo, but according to the Miami Herald, the FBI and IRS have begun a second criminal investigation of freshman Rep. David Rivera, "examining undisclosed payments from a Miami gambling enterprise to a company tied to the Republican congressman." The full story is actually quite lengthy and full of details, and this brief summary really makes it sound much less interesting than it actually is, so click through if you want the complete picture.
• NY-09: Watch as "the Turn" squirms: Republican Bob Turner is obviously praying for election day to come around before he has to actually answer any questions, but I don't think that's going to work out very well for him. Kudos to the folks at Politicker, who are still pressing Turner on whether he supports Ryan's Curse (something we noted he was being squiggly on last week). He's still refusing to say, which is pretty insane, seeing as he doesn't have to face a GOP primary. And props as well to Colin Campbell, who has also tried (with equal un-success) to get a yes-or-no statement out of Turner on "Cut, Cap and Balance."
• PA-06: Oh goody: A day after Manan Trivedi said he'd seek a rematch against GOP Rep. Jim Gerlach, self-funding newspaperman Doug Pike, the guy Trivedi edged out in the Dem primary, said he's thinking about trying again, too. Those of you who have been around a while will recall that Doug Pike's campaign manager, Andrew Eldredge-Martin, sockpuppeted both the Swing State Project and Daily Kos back in 2009, posting disparaging remarks about Trivedi under the pretense that he was just an ordinary civilian. Eldredge-Martin never apologized (after being given the opportunity to do so), and nor did Pike — until after he had the temerity to ask this community to add him to our Orange to Blue fundraising list. If I believed Pike was the better progressive or better candidate, I'd be inclined to put this in the past. But nothing I've seen suggests as much, and I'm definitely pulling for Trivedi again.
• PA-11: After saying last month that he was looking at the race, Wilkes-Barre attorney Bill Vinsko just formally announced a challenge to GOP freshman Lou Barletta. Interestingly, Vinsko is also chairman of "a wholesale pharmacy… which aims to supply seniors with lower-cost prescription drugs."
• TX-14: Republican state Rep. Larry Taylor, who briefly explored a run for Ron Paul's now-open seat, says he will not enter the race.
Other Races:
• OH SB5: SoS Jon Husted just confirmed that the referendum to repeal SB5 will be placed on this November's ballot. Petitioners collected 915,456 valid signatures but needed just 231,147.
• WI Recall (PDF): Get your day started off right with some good news: A new Mellman Group poll (taken for the Wisconsin Democratic Party, I believe) shows Dem Rep. Fred Clark leading GOP Sen. Luther Olsen 50-44 among likely voters. Click the link — it's not just the usual one-page polling memo. It actually lists quite a few questions and even includes some demographic information. While they asked their party ID question differently, adding things up, you get 36R, 30D, 33I, which is pretty similar to the 34R, 29D, 37I sample that PPP found for us when they polled this district in March.
Meanwhile, We Are Wisconsin is opening up a nice new line of attack against Alberta Darling that also dovetails with a much broader progressive concern that has recently come to the fore. It turns out that Darling submitted an amendment to the state budget that would have given big tax breaks for Big Tobacco and made it easier for them to market smokeless tobacco products to kids. Most amazingly, it was vetoed by Scott Walker himself, as a threat to public health. Where did Darling get this idea? From Philip Morris, which wrote her a $1,000 check, and from ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed group that passes around "model" legislation they want to see get adopted everywhere. ALEC has lately come under a lot of scrutiny; if you'd like to learn more, I suggest checking out the Exposing ALEC Daily Kos group.
And on the ad front, We Are Wisconsin clearly figured out a good theme, because now they're hitting it again. They've taken that Luther Olsen ad that everyone liked so much and just subbed in Sheila Harsdorf. If you didn't get to see the original, watch below. It's a good one:
WAW has several more ads out as well. The first one, targeting Randy Hopper, has some particularly good visuals. There's also one going after Luther Olsen and another spot taking on Alberta Darling. So that's four new ads, aimed at four different Republican state Senators, all in one day. I like it.Grab Bag:
• Americans United: Via Politico, Americans United for Change and the SEIU are running ads hitting four GOPers for "recklessly risking default" over the debt ceiling. The targets: Sean Duffy (WI-07), Chip Cravaack (MN-08), Richard Hanna (NY-24), and Dave Camp (MI-04). You can see the Duffy spot below:
• DCCC: A very odd press release from the DCCC touts their recruiting successes so far… and I call it odd both because of its inclusions and omissions. The D-Trip seems to have cast its net as widely as possible, listing candidates several of little account, and even some candidates they probably have no love for. But at the same time, they also fail to mention the two most prolific fundraisers our side has produced so far this cycle: Lois Frankel and Patrick Murphy, both running in FL-22 against Allen West. Frankel and Murphy are #1 and #2, respectively, in cash-on-hand among all Dem challengers. And since I know some of you won't click on the link, yes, this release lists plenty of people in races with contested primaries, including all four declared candidates in CT-05. (And note they also failed to mention Frankel [UPDATE: or Murphy] in a similar March press release• Governors: Unsurprising, but visually arresting nonetheless: Nate Silver uses data from a site called "OnTheIssues.org" to come up with something resembling the PVI-Voting Pattern Index, but for governors instead. Among Republicans, he shows that there is no longer any correlation between a state's political leanings and a governor's. (There's a pretty clear one among Dems.) They simply are all arch-conservatives. And it seems to be showing up in approval ratings. Of those governors who have been tested since April 1 of this year, only 3 of the 14 most popular are Republicans, while only three of the remaining (i.e., bottom) 17 are Democrats.
• House: Voters (and especially Democrats) say they are "inclined to look around for someone else to vote for" for Congress at a 22-year high. Click the link for a great chart.
• Kashmir: Yeah, "Kashmir" is not your usual lead-in link at Daily Kos Elections, but this isn't your usual story, either. A Pakistani-American group called the Kashmiri American Council has been working with several members of Congress under the guise of restarting peace talks over the territory at the center of a long-running dispute between India and Pakistan. It turns out that the group is actually funded by the Pakistani military and appears to have illegally funneled foreign money to number of U.S. campaign accounts, including those of Reps. Joe Pitts, Dan Burton, Jim Moran, and Dennis Kucinich, among others. According to the Washington Post, the recipients are largely saying they'll return the money or donate it to charity. It seems doubtful that anyone knew they were getting tainted cash, so it's hard to say what, if any, kind of legs this story will have. But who knows where it might lead.