Senate Race Roundup

The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are in league with the forces of evil.

OR-Sen: A new SUSA poll shows Democrat Jeff Merkley expanding a slim lead over Republican incumbent Gordon Smith.

SurveyUSA. Dates unknown. Likely voters. MoE 4.1% (9/22-23 in parentheses)

Merkley (D) 46 (44)
Smith (R) 41 (42)
Brownlow (I) 7 (8)

If anybody merits an edge at this point it's Merkley, though we still consider this one a tossup.

GA-Sen: Another SurveyUSA poll shows a stabilizing race in Georgia.

SurveyUSA. 10/11-12. Likely voters. MoE 4.1% (9/28-29 in parentheses)

Chambliss (R) 46 (46)
Martin (D) 43 (44)
Buckley (L) 5 (6)

It won't be easy for Martin to win this - no one ever thought it would - but he's clearly within striking distance of the Republican. A DSCC investment in the race may be just the shot in the arm the Martin campaign need to close the gap.

NC-Sen: Elizabeth Dole is getting desperate, or at least running out of cash. Because it seems that the Very Senior Senator is spending her own cash on her reelection bid.

Republican Sen. Elizabeth Dole says she is spending some of her own money on her first re-election bid, trying to offset millions of dollars in negative spending Democrats have used to make the race one of the closest in the country.

Dole and her campaign declined to detail how much she has pledged to her campaign, but the commitment came recently enough that it won't appear in campaign finance reports due this week.

Ouchie. It appears that the DSCC talking points against Dole have seeped into the state consciousness (which is understandable when your ads are as good as theirs have been:

Polls show she’s likely to lose her Senate seat to Democrat Kay Hagan, after doing little during a single six-year term to distinguish herself. (Even the two years she spent as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee ended badly — she presided over the Democratic takeover in 2006.) Though many observers thought Hagan’s campaign was stalled over the summer, national Democrats didn’t give up: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has been hammering Dole with folksy, catchy ads featuring cranky old white guys complaining about her ("What’s happened to the Liddy Dole I knew?" is the tag line) that stand out from the usual political fare. The economic meltdown has been cataclysmic for Republicans everywhere, and now it seems to have helped put Hagan in a position to win.

...

Even rock-ribbed Republican voters said they were giving up on Dole. "I don’t like the other one either, but I don’t have much choice," said Joe Langley, 71, a retiree from Stoneville and a lifelong Republican who’s voting for McCain and — even though he doesn’t like her so much — Hagan. "I’m giving her a shot ... [Dole]’s No. 93 on getting things accomplished." Langley was actually quoting a Hagan ad paid for the by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee; if Hagan wins, she may owe more to DSCC chairman Chuck Schumer than to her own efforts.

Things are looking pretty bad for ol' Liddy, when even rock-ribbed Republicans are spitting out lines from DSCC ads.

KS-Sen: This ad from Jim Slattery is hilarious.

AK-Sen: Ted Stevens, hoisted by his own petard:

OK-Sen: Andrew Rice managed to match Republican Jim Inhofe in Q3 fundraising, despite the blood-red tilt of Oklahoma. From a campaign press release:

As we announced at the end of last week, Senator Rice raised more than $900,000 this quarter -- $923,000 to be exact.

Because Oklahoma's primary is at the end of July, candidates here are required to release their fundraising totals from July 10 to September 30.  Inhofe reported raising $910,000 during this period.  Rice raised $899,000.

That's right.  Andrew Rice was able to match Jim Inhofe, an incumbent senator who's been in Washington for 22 years, almost dollar for dollar.

This is the year to defeat Jim Inhofe, and with your help, we can do it.  As the outlook nationally continues to deteriorate for Republicans, a Democratic advantage is developing in Oklahoma as well.  There's no doubt the momentum is on our side.  Public and internal polling shows the race closing in our favor, and our internal polls show that when people hear our message, we win, and we win by a large margin.