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12:19 PM PT: OH-Sen: Does anyone else think Republican Josh Mandel is just crazy stressed these days? From a new half-interview he did with Canton-area radio host Ron Ponder (audio and transcript below):
Ponder: Joe Aquilino I believe you pronounce his name, a former campaign aide, was named Director of Debt Management, paid $90,000, had no experience in finance and you sent him to a beginner's course in the subject. How do you answer those charges?
Mandel: Well first of all, Ron, I thought I was going on the Ron Ponder show, not the Sherrod Brown campaign show.
Ponder: I'm asking you questions that people have asked you, and I'm just trying to get answers. I'll do the same thing with Senator Sherrod Brown, so don't accuse me of being a lackey for Sherrod Brown. I'm just asking you questions that my listeners want to know.
Mandel: Hey, I'm not accusing you Ron, I'm just telling you what it sounds like.…
Ponder: Now the Democrats are accusing you of the same thing, and I'm just asking you to answer the question about the salaries and the folks you've hired. I'm just asking you that question.
Mandel: Bunch of hogwash Ron, it's a bunch of hogwash. It's Sherrod Brown trying to distract from the record.
Ponder: Josh, is Michael Lord, is Michael Lord your former campaign manager, getting $100,000 from your office, is it yes or no?
Mandel: Ron we have qualified financial professionals in our office...
Ponder: Josh, is it yes or no?
Mandel: Sherrod Brown's the only candidate, the only candidate in this race, his transition director...
Ponder: Josh, just answer the question.
(After receiving no answers)
Ponder: Hang up on this dude, man.
12:46 PM PT: CA-09: This news does not seem very bueno for Dem Rep. Jerry McNerney. A week-old internal taken by the Tarrance Group for Republican Ricky Gill and the NRCC finds McNerney trailing Gill, 45-46. There aren't any sanity checks provided (like presidential toplines), so it's hard to know what to make of these numbers. However, if there's any good news here, it's that the race has barely budged since late July, even according to Tarrance: Back then, they had McNerney up 47-45. (A McNerney internal from earlier that same month put him ahead 49-33.) We haven't yet seen any response to this latest survey from McNerney, but keep any eye out.
1:46 PM PT: Still more Senate polls:
• CA-Sen: Dianne Feinstein (D-inc): 54 (55), Elizabeth Emken (R): 35 (37); Obama 53-39 (57-35)
• MA-Sen (Rasmussen): Elizabeth Warren (D): 49 (48), Scott Brown (R-inc): 47 (48)
• NM-Sen (Rasmussen): Martin Heinrich (D): 52 (52), Heather Wilson (R): 39 (39); Obama 54-43 (51-40)
• PA-Sen (Rasmussen): Bob Casey (D-inc): 49 (49), Bob Smith (R): 45 (42); Obama 51-46 (51-39)
1:58 PM PT: ND-Sen: Shira Toeplitz has an interesting piece on North Dakota's so-called "man camps," temporary trailer camps which house untold thousands of mostly male workers who toil in the booming oil fields in the western part of the state. Because North Dakota has the most lax voting requirements in the nation—there's no registration; you just show up on election day with proof that you've resided in the state for 30 days—and because the expected voter pool is so small (perhaps 350,000), both parties are making a play for support among the inhabitants of the "man camps." And while you'd expect such folks to lean GOP, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp has one edge: Her campaign HQ is located in the western ND city of Mandan, while Rick Berg's home base is situated in Fargo, all the way on the state's eastern border with Minnesota. A good read.
2:12 PM PT: House: Very cool: The Cook Political Report has just re-published their Partisan Voting Index for the country's new congressional districts. This means that they've actually gone back and crunched the 2004 Bush-Kerry results according to the new lines as well, so that you can see how the last two presidential elections played out under the 2012 set of districts. (Our Obama-McCain data is, as ever, here). In addition to the raw data, Dave Wasserman also offers some extended analysis about how redistricting has affected the landscape in general, including how the so-called "median district"—the one which gets you to a theoretical majority of 218 seats in the House—has shifted rightward. That median seat is now R+3, or three points more Republican than the national average, after sitting at R+2 for the prior decade and R+1 in the 1990s, making the Democrats' task of retaking the lower chamber tougher than ever.
2:53 PM PT: OH-06: Democrat Charlie Wilson is responding to GOP Rep. Bill Johnson's recent internal with one of his own, from Anzalone Liszt. Wilson's poll has him up 49-43 over Johnson, an improvement from a 46-all tie in the first half of September. But there's a bit of a red flag: Though it's not mentioned in the memo, Roll Call's Shira Toeplitz says that Romney's up just 48-47 in Wilson's survey. That seems too optimistic, given that McCain won here by 8. Of course, Johnson's poll had the same problem in reverse: He was up 8 while Romney was up 14. So either the district is a lot redder or a lot bluer this time around... or the truth lies somewhere in between.
3:45 PM PT: IL-08: Well, as you know, We Ask America (despite their best efforts to conceal it) is the polling arm of the conservative Illinois Manufacturers' Association—an affiliation I wouldn't necessarily have such a problem with except, well, for their efforts to conceal it. So I'm always left wondering whether to trust their polling, which did a pretty decent job of House races in Illinois last cycle but has also offered some seriously questionable numbers in various races this year. Anyhow, they somehow have GOP Rep. Joe Walsh up 48-45 over Democrat Tammy Duckworth in a one-day robopoll, the first time he's ever led in any survey. I don't think I believe it, but I do believe Duckworth isn't manhandling Walsh in quite the way many of us had hoped and expected.
4:04 PM PT: MA-06, NH-01, -02: So who's getting the shaft here? Or alternately, who's the DCCC feeling particularly good about? Shira Toeplitz says the D-Trip's cut back $650K worth of TV time in the Boston media market for the week of Oct. 23-29. That potentially covers three races: the GOP-held NH-01 and NH-02, and the Dem-held MA-06. In all three cases, it's possible to believe either scenario, though these days, I'm more inclined to believe the former rather than the latter.
4:04 PM PT: FL-18: The House Majority PAC is out with yet another ad attacking GOP Rep. Allen West in Florida's 18th, but they don't appear to be upping their overall investment. (Their press releases have been holding steady at $1.5 million for a couple of weeks.) The SEIU is also getting into the mix with this new spot, backed by a $160K buy over two weeks.
4:04 PM PT: NV-04: HMP is also coming into Nevada's 4th, a district where Republicans have remained much more competitive than a lot of Democrats probably imagined it would. They have a new ad targeting Danny Tarkanian as "part of a six-figure buy."
4:10 PM PT: FL-Sen, MO-Sen: The DSCC's making a few new ad buys, and most notable among them are in Florida, where they're throwing doesn against Connie Mack for the first time ($618K), and Missouri, where they're back on the air against Todd Akin ($748K). More details on the other buys (in a wide array of competitive races) at the link.
4:13 PM PT: IA-04: The Humane Society really has it in for GOP Rep. Steve King: They've been hectoring him with a few ads so far, but now they're going big with a $366K buy, much larger than any prior expenditure. Here's their new ad, attacking him on a variety of animal-related issues (like voting against a ban on taking kids to dog fighting rings).
4:15 PM PT: FL-02, UT-04: Here's another believer in Al Lawson's chances: Patriot Majority USA, which is following the DCCC's lead and tossing in $118K in an effort to unseat GOP Rep. Steve Southerland. They're also not giving up on Dem Rep. Jim in UT-04, throwing another $170K on the pile to help him as well.
4:20 PM PT: CFIF: The Center for Individual Freedom, a conservative non-profit at least partly funded by Karl Rove's Crossroads organization, has now made good on the $1.9 million in TV ad reservations the Huffington Post reported on last month. They're targeting Democrats in __ races: IA-03, KY-06, NV-04, NY-21, NY-24, and UT-04. The buys range from $104K (Kentucky) to $464K (Nevada).
4:24 PM PT: NRCC: The NRCC must be feeling quite good about its September haul, seeing as it released its fundraising figures a full 10 days early. They took in $12.4 million for the month, leaving them with $29.5 million in the bank. I hope it's not a worrying sign that, per Roll Call, the DCCC "declined tonight to release its fundraising numbers for last month."
4:24 PM PT: PA-06: Manan Trivedi (D): $433K raised.