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12:17 PM PT: Joe Donnelly is conducting a press conference right now (over Richard Mourdock's rape remarks, of course). You can watch a livestream here.
12:21 PM PT: P.S. Big Dog Alert! Bill Clinton is coming up to Waterbury, CT on Sunday to headline a rally for Murphy. If you'd like tickets, you can sign up at the link.
12:44 PM PT: MO-Sen: Turns out Todd Akin is a repeat offender:
Congressman Todd Akin was arrested at least three times in the 1980s during anti-abortion protests, not just the one time he has publicly acknowledged.
Akin's previously undisclosed arrests, in 1985, were for criminal trespass and resisting arrest at abortion clinic protests in St. Louis and Illinois.
And that one arrest Akin did disclose?
He said at that time that the campaign would later release more information about the arrest. But a campaign official later told reporters that no more information would be forthcoming.
What ever happened to those "three strikes and you're out" laws that Republicans are so fond of?
1:15 PM PT (David Jarman): WA-Gov: This is pretty unexpected... the first poll in many months to have Republican Rob McKenna leading the Washington gubernatorial race, and it's from Elway, who've been pretty volatile this cycle but were the first pollster to find Jay Inslee leading this summer. Elway puts McKenna up 47-45 (down from a 3-pt Inslee lead in September). On the one hand, there does seem to be a general tightening in the race according to other pollsters too... but on the other hand, this sample also finds much more conservative numbers on the ballot measures and other downballot races than other pollsters have been finding, too, which suggests a GOP-friendly sample.
To be specific, same-sex marriage is passing only 49-45 in this sample, while marijuana legalization is passing only 48-44. (Other recent polls have given these topics double-digit support.) In the statewide races, Dem Bob Ferguson leads the AG race 38-36, Dem Brad Owen leads the LG race 42-32, Dem Troy Kelley (whom the memo spells "Kelly") leads the Auditor race 34-29, and the SoS race is a flat-out tie at 34-34.
1:18 PM PT: IL-10: Democrat Brad Schneider is taking a very interesting tack in his latest ad: It features nothing but clips of President Lyndon Johnson praising Medicare, back when it was first signed into law in 1965. Said LBJ:
"No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years. There are men and women in pain who will now find ease—who will now look up to see the light of hope."
Toward the end, titles appear on screen which read: "Bob Dold and the Republicans / Voted to end the Medicare Guarantee / Costing seniors $6,400 a year." I suspect this could be a very effective spot, since older voters who rely on Medicare may remember Johnson fondly over this signature achievement.
1:38 PM PT: GA-12: Dem Rep. John Barrow could put on a clinic for Republicans on how to make an effective ad complaining about earmarks. The visuals are good throughout (and Barrow has just the right sense of humor), plus you know I'm always a sucker for anti-NYC rhetoric in campaign commercials: As ballerinas pirouette down an open road, Barrow says he "voted to get rid of funding for the ballet in New York City, too. Georgia tax dollars for that?" He also says that he voted against something called "the Perfect Christmas Tree Project" because (pointing to a stubby little shrub with a smile) "all Christmas trees are perfect."
On the merits, though, it sounds like Barrow's just being a dick, because it looks like this "Perfect Christmas Tree" project is actually an effort to help economically depressed Mitchell County in of western North Carolina by promoting small businesses which make handmade Christmas products. Indeed, GOP Rep. Patrick McHenry (whose old district included Mitchell) supported the cause, and even former First Lady Laura Bush invited these artisans to decorate two White House Christmas trees back in 2006.
2:13 PM PT: NV-Sen (PPP): Shelley Berkley (D): 44 (44), Dean Heller (R-inc): 44 (47), David VanderBeek (L): 7 (4); Obama 51-47 (51-47).
2:51 PM PT: ND-Sen, -AL: Never-heard-of-`em-before pollster Pharos Research has a new survey out on all the statewide races in North Dakota. (The Hill describes Pharos's principle, Steve Lachtman, as a "former Gallup pollster.") Pharos suffers from the terrible tick of reporting numbers in decimals places (all the way to the hundredths, sigh), but if you can get past that, Democrat Heidi Heitkamp is up 49-48 in the Senate race over Rick BErg. Obama trails by a somewhat optimistic 49-39 margin, though the president's number is probably more important than Romney's. For the state's open at-large House seat, Democrat Pam Gulleson trails Kevin Cramer 54-42. The governor's race is not competitive in the slightest.
Wanna see something weird, though? Trolling through Pharos's website, I found half a dozen other quasi-unreleased polls, of FL, IN, MT, NE, ND, OH, PA, and San Diego, plus a national poll, too. Check out my colleague Steve Singiser's Wednesday night Polling Wrap for a full run-down of all these numbers.
2:57 PM PT: ME-Sen (Pre-General): Angus King (I): $387K raised.
2:59 PM PT: AZ-Sen: Just as Indiana's remaining hot, so is Arizona. The NRSC is spending at least $2.3 million in the final two weeks of the campaign on both broadcast and cable TV in Phoenix and Tucson, to help shore up GOP Rep. Jeff Flake against Rich Carmona's surprise insurgent campaign.
3:01 PM PT: Majority PAC: The Dem-aligned Majority PAC is out with four new Senate ads, including that expected spot in Pennsylvania, where they are unexpectedly coming to Dem Sen. Bob Casey's aid. (The commercial attacks Republican Tom Smith for wanting to get rid of the Dept. of Education.) The other three are in IN, ND, and NV. Click through for links to all the ads.
3:09 PM PT: And for the Dems, AFSCME just jumped in with a $1.2 million anti-Flake buy.
3:58 PM PT: Reshuffling Roundup:
• FL-02: Florida's 2nd continues to surprise. House Majority PAC is airing a new ad attacking GOP Rep. Steve Southerland (on cutting education and Medicare), which they say will "run for a week in both Panama City and Tallahassee as part of a $275,000 buy." The D-Trip is also back with another spot, also going after Southerland on Medicare. And Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform is coming in large here, too, with a $504K buy targeting Democrat Al Lawson.
• FL-10: Looks like Dems definitely aren't giving up on Val Demings, despite certain claims about secret GOP polls looking good in this district. The DCCC is out with a new ad attacking GOP Rep. Daniel Webster (for being "too cozy with lobbyists"), on the heels of a new poll we cited the other day that had Webster up just 2 points. And as we also mentioned, John Boehner's third-party spending groups are shelling out a monster $1.2 million here. Perhaps Webster's in need of a bailout?
• OH-16: Holy smokes. This is amazing news, but somewhat hard to interpret. GOP Rep. Jim Renacci, locked in a tight member-vs.-member re-election battle with Dem Rep. Betty Sutton in a district hand-carved for him, is cancelling all of his remaining broadcast television ad reservations—worth <$850K—and will instead "maintain a small amount of commercials on cable channels." Renacci is making the unlikely argument that voters have reached a saturation point in terms of ads and that further advertising won't be effective, but as a Sutton spokesman says, "By that logic, Mitt Romney would pull his ads, too." A good point, but is it really possible that the D-Trip's claim that Renacci's "given up" is accurate? That would be an extraordinary admission of defeat with two weeks still on the calendar.
• ATR: Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform just dropped an eye-popping IE report, detailing over $3 million worth of expenditures targeting Democrats in just seven House races: CA-52 ($484K), CO-03 ($392K), FL-02 ($504K), GA-12 ($404K), NY-21 ($264K), OH-06 ($1 mil) & PA-12 ($457K). (There're also some mailers against ND-Sen's Heidi Heitkamp.)
4:11 PM PT: WI-Sen: Tammy Baldwin didn't waste any time in responding to Republican Tommy Thompson's desperate 9/11-themed attack ad. Baldwin's new spot is quite good, and I think Tommy's going to regret opening up this door. The narrator begins by pointing to all the Congressional roll calls where Baldwin did, in fact, vote to honor 9/11 vicitms, then lays Tommy out with a serious body blow:
"And Tommy Thompson? He got a government contract to provide health care to 9/11 first responders. But Tommy took advantage, leaving them without the care they were promised. Tommy Thompson personally made over $3 million off the deal. Tommy Thompson should be ashamed."