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9:00 AM PT: ME-Gov: It's not exactly straight from the horse's mouth, but GOP Gov. Paul LePage reportedly announced at a fundraiser on Tuesday night that he "fully intends" to run for a second term. That's just a paraphrase, though, since members of the media were not allowed into the event, so LePage may still be hedging, for all we know. And dragging things out like this seems remarkably foolish, since it just allows the press to keep writing pieces about how uncommitted you seem, and it makes supporters wonder how committed they should remain. But hey, if LePage wants to screw up his already dicey chances at re-election, far be it from me to complain.
9:24 AM PT: AZ-02: Former Air Force Col. Martha McSally has filed paperwork for a rematch against Dem Rep. Ron Barber, who narrowly defeated her last year. It's a pretty expected move, given how much the GOP loves her and how well she did in 2012, though a few months ago, McSally did claim that she was "being strongly recruited" to run for statewide office. But this race definitely makes the most sense for her, and assuming she follows through with a formal campaign launch, it'll be one of the GOP's top pickup opportunities in 2014.
9:41 AM PT: KY-Sen: Nothing in this Politico piece about Alison Lundergan Grimes's feeble campaign launch does anything to make me feel better about how uninspiring it's all been, but I want to stress that there isn't a single voter who is going to make up his or her mind based on what happened. Rather, it's a question of what, if anything, it says about how well-run Grimes's campaign is, and how prepared she is for prime-time. And the fact that she still has no website, no way to accept donations, and no way for people to even volunteer to get her elected is simply not a positive sign.
Grimes's camp, though, is making a hard-to-believe claim that her rocky rollout was intentional. The idea here is that by playing hard to get, she was able to squeeze maximal concessions out of stakeholders (such as the DSCC), but it also meant she couldn't prepare a slick introductory event because she had to do her utmost to make it seem like she wouldn't run until the very last second. That's pretty bizarre, but it also sounds like utter bullshit, particularly given this statement:
A Grimes' adviser, Jonathan Hurst, explained it would violated federal election law to launch a campaign website and take more than $5000 in donations before filing for the race with the U.S. Senate clerk.
That's very distressing, because this is just emphatically not how the law works. So either Grimes is woefully misinformed about basic campaign finance laws, or she's trying to snow reporters into believing this cockamamie story about how she
had to launch willy-nilly because the mean old Senate clerk made her. And in any event, none of this is any reason why, as of this writing, she still has no website—not even a splash page. Come on!
9:57 AM PT: TX-Sen: PPP has some Texas miscellany, which includes the state's snoozer of a Senate race next year. NRSC chair John Cornyn is up anywhere from 7 to 13 points on the four Democrats PPP tested in its gubernatorial portion, but one odd wrinkle is that San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro fares the worst here (losing 50-37), even though he performed the best against Gov. Rick Perry (trailing 50-43). There are other numbers on the VRA, same-sex marriage, background checks, and more at the link.
10:28 AM PT: FL Ballot: Activists in Florida are forging ahead with plans to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot next year that would reverse an amendment passed just five years ago banning same-sex marriage in the state. They need at least 680,000 signatures just to put the measure before voters, but the bigger problem is that Florida law requires constitutional amendments to garner 60 percent of the vote statewide in order to succeed. That's an exceptionally high hurdle, especially since Nate Silver projects that Florida is probably still shy of simple majority support for marriage equality.
10:59 AM PT: Congress: Pretty funny: Mother Jones goes a bit BuzzFeed and selects the five biggest bros and five biggest hipsters in Congress. Of course, we already knew who the undisputed top hipster is in the House, but click through for the rest.
11:08 AM PT: WV-02: Former U.S. International Trade Commissioner Charlotte Lane, who previously had only received Great Mentioner treatment, tells Abby Livingston that she's gearing up for a run and expects to file paperwork this week. She'd join a fairly busy GOP field that already includes former Delegate Larry Faircloth, former Maryland GOP chair Alex Mooney, and possibly former state Sen. Steve Harrison, who says he is "leaning heavily toward running."
Meanwhile, on the Dem side, Livingston reveals that former state party chair Nick Casey's big second quarter haul was heavily financed out of his own pockets. Casey announced that he raised "nearly half a million" bucks, but it turns out that $300,000 was self-funded. This was something the DKE staff privately suspected, just given the unexpected size of Casey's take, and it's always something to be on the lookout for.
11:15 AM PT: P.S. Local reporter Ryan Alessi has a detailed writeup of Grimes's meeting with supporters that preceded her press announcement, featuring on-the-record quotes from several who were in attendance, some of whom described the event as "unorthodox" and "surreal."
1:21 PM PT: 2Q Fundraising:
• ME-Gov: Rep. Mike Michaud (D): $300K raised (in 17 days); Eliot Cutler (I): $430K (since Jan. 1); Gov. Paul LePage (R): declined to release numbers
• MT-Sen: Rep. Steve Daines (R): $415,000 raised (Daines is not a declared candidate)
• SD-Sen: Mike Rounds (R): $600K raised
• VA-Sen: Sen. Mark Warner (D): $1.4 mil raised