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8:36 AM PT: House: The pro-Democratic House Majority PAC has announced a third round of fall ad reservations, totaling $7.4 million. Most are in media markets where HMP has already booked airtime, but a handful are brand-new and potentially cover districts that weren't previously included. (You can find a full list here.) The new possibilities include NE-02 (Omaha); NJ-02, NJ-03, PA-06, and PA-08 (Philadelphia), and VA-10 (Washington, DC), all of which are bolded in the linked spreadsheet.
9:14 AM PT: NH-Sen: UNH: Jeanne Shaheen (D-inc): 50, Scott Brown (R): 38 (April: 45-39 Shaheen).
9:58 AM PT: AL-06: There's not much on tap for the July primary calendar, though we do have a few runoffs in a trio of Southern states. One is in Alabama's open 6th Congressional District, one of the reddest in the nation, where state Rep. Paul DeMarco and former think tank president Gary Palmer are battling it out for the right to succeed retiring Rep. Spencer Bachus. DeMarco led Palmer 33-20 on primary night, but a new poll from Cygnal (which says it's unaffiliated with either campaign or any outside group) gives Palmer a wide 60-29 advantage.
DeMarco's campaign scoffed at the survey but declined to provide contradictory numbers. And as AL.com's Madison Underwood points out, Cygnal correctly predicted DeMarco and Palmer would make the runoff in a pre-primary poll, though they understated DeMarco's eventual margin. So why the change in fortunes? Probably because Palmer's received a big boost from the Club for Growth, which has relentlessly attacked DeMarco after their preferred candidate, surgeon Chad Mathis, failed to make the second round of voting. Regardless, we'll have our answers on Tuesday night.
10:40 AM PT: LA-Sen: Rasmussen: Mary Landrieu (D-inc): 46, Bill Cassidy (R): 43 (January: 44-40 Cassidy).
11:38 AM PT: WATN?: Former Southaven, MS Mayor Greg Davis, who lost an embarrassing special election to Democrat Travis Childers in 2008, then later was revealed to have spent municipal funds at a gay sex shop in Montreal, was just sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison on fraud and embezzlement charges. Press writeups of the sentencing don't mention sex toys, but one charge Davis was convicted on involved his fraudulent purchase of a $46,000 SUV from the city for just $11,000. The DCCC actually attacked Davis over this vehicle in TV ads they ran (uncannily remembered by James L.—see the 19-second mark), so it's gratifying to see this one come home to roost.
12:58 PM PT: WATN?: Todd Akin's returning to public life next week with a new book about his infamous 2012 Senate campaign, and the only thing he's sorry about is the fact that he said he was sorry for making his "legitimate rape" comments in the first place. In the middle of a heated battle for control of the Senate this year, and with impeachment already proving an unwelcome distraction, I'm sure the GOP wishes it had a way of shutting this whole thing down.
1:08 PM PT: GA-Sen: A flurry of polls taken right after the GOP primary found Rep. Jack Kingston with a dominant advantage over businessman David Perdue, but then Perdue dropped an internal that had him up 45-44 two weeks ago, and Kingston never rebutted the results. Now we've got a new InsiderAdvantage survey that shows a similarly tight race, with Kingston ahead 43-41. But bear in mind that InsiderAdvantage was the second-worst firm in Nate Silver's old pollster ratings, better only than the execrable Zogby Interactive, so don't bank on these numbers for much.
1:45 PM PT: FL-Gov: Here's an interesting piece on the various mis-steps GOP Gov. Rick Scott has made lately in his campaign against Charlie Crist—none of them major, but taken together, they suggest his team isn't operating at the top of its game. Most symbolic might be Scott's attempt to ding Crist for, of all things, wearing a Rolex watch, a move that only led to the media reminding voters that Scott's personal fortune, which he's spent liberally on his election efforts, dwarfs Crist's. Click through for more misguided attacks that have backfired on Scott.
1:56 PM PT: NM-02, AR-02: The Blue Dog Coalition (which still hasn't updated its website since February) has endorsed two more Democrats running in red districts: Rocky Lara in NM-02 and Patrick Hays in AR-02. Strangely, they're also trying to claim that their endorsement of Nick Casey in WV-02 is new, too, but the Casey campaign announced that one last month.
2:09 PM PT: Ad Reservations: A number of campaigns and organizations just announced new television airtime reservations or recent ad spending. Here's a roundup:
•
GA-Sen: The Chamber of Commerce reported
spending $780,000 this week on behalf of Rep. Jack Kingston for the July 22 GOP runoff. In total, they've spent $1.4 million on Kingston this cycle.
• Freedom Partners: The Koch-backed organization is booking millions in airtime in six Senate races: Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Hampshire, and North Carolina. Most of the ads are for August, but some start in September and run through Election Day. The total buys aren't clear, but the group is reserving at least $1.2 million in New Hampshire.
• MI-Gov: GOP Gov. Rick Snyder has reserved $5 million in fall ad time while his Democratic challenger, ex-Rep. Mark Schauer, has booked $3.2 million.
• AZ-02: Republican Martha McSally has reportedly reserved $460,000 in the Tucson media market for the "final weeks" of her campaign against Democratic Rep. Ron Barber.
• CA-52: Republican Carl DeMaio is blocking off $1.2 million in airtime in his bid to unseat Democratic Rep. Scott Peters.
2:26 PM PT: NC-06: This is super strange. The Republican State Leadership Committee, which is tasked with helping the GOP win state legislative races, for some bizarre reason funneled $75,000 to a super PAC to help Rockingham County District Attorney Phil Berger, Jr. win a runoff in a safely Republican seat in North Carolina. The reason is pretty simple, though: Berger is the son of state Senate Majority Leader Phil Berger, Sr., who is also the immediate past chair of the RSLC. So just to be clear, a major GOP organization diverted precious resources from its mission to help the offspring of its former leader in a race where nothing is at stake. I'm sure donors are thrilled about that.
3:09 PM PT: Ads:
• AZ-Gov: The very complicated GOP primary for governor in Arizona features a lot of different candidates and outside organizations sniping at a lot of other candidates, with no unified direction in terms of where all the fire is aimed. With that in mind, here's a spot from a group called Better Leaders for Arizona, which features an over-the-top narrator blasting state Treasurer Doug Ducey over a variety of sins, including the failure of lots of franchises when he was CEO of the ice cream chain Cold Stone Creamery. Third parties backing Ducey have been bashing attorney Christine Jones, whose allies are apparently behind Better Leaders.
Meanwhile, Mesa Mayor Scott Smith has another ad touting his record in office.
• TN-03: Republican congressional spawn Weston Wamp harks back all the way to his great-grandmother's entrepreneurial spirit and claims he's followed in her footsteps. Watching a couple of millennials high-five in what's supposed to be an office is probably not winning imagery with the typically older GOP primary electorate.
• TN-04: GOP state Sen. Jim Tracy says too many politicians forget their oath of office right after they make it, another obvious reference to his primary opponent, Rep. Scott DesJarlais.
3:27 PM PT: 2Q Fundraising:
• CO-Sen: Cory Gardner (R): $2.71 million raised, $3.4 million cash-on-hand
• HI-Sen: Brian Schatz (D-inc): $820,000 raised
• MN-Sen: Al Franken (D-inc): $3.3 million raised, $5 million cash-on-hand
• SD-Sen: Mike Rounds (R): $625,000 raised, $775,000 cash-on-hand; Larry Pressler (I): $39,000 raised, $57,000 cash-on-hand
• SC-Gov: Nikki Haley (R-inc): $1 million raised, $4.5 million cash-on-hand
• AZ-01: Ann Kirkpatrick (D-inc): $420,000 raised, $1.3 million cash-on-hand
• AZ-02: Ron Barber (D-inc): $550,000 raised, $1.55 million cash-on-hand
• CA-21: Amanda Renteria (D): $408,000 raised
• CA-31: Pete Aguilar (D): $416,000 raised, $326,000 cash-on-hand
• GA-12: John Barrow (D-inc): $580,000 raised, $1.9 million cash-on-hand
• IA-03: Staci Appel (D): $425,000 raised, $725,000 cash-on-hand
• IL-17: Cheri Bustos (D-inc): $482,000 raised, $1.47 million cash-on-hand
• MI-01: Dan Benishek (R-inc): $487,000 raised, $942,000 cash-on-hand
• NY-18: Nan Hayworth (R): $256,000 raised (plus $500,000 loan)
• NY-23: Tom Reed (R-inc): $660,000 raised, $1.3 million cash-on-hand