Not that it's the biggest thing he has to worry about right now, but McCain's spot on the Indiana primary ballot faces a challenge after his campaign fell short in the number of signatures required.
Blue Indiana blogger Thomas Cook (and longtime kossack Yoss) writes that, with 500 signatures required in each congressional district:
In the 4th District, they are short.
By my latest count, they turned in 496 signatures for the 4th, and the latest IED report for this morning shows them with only 491.
So this afternoon, I filed a challenge with the Secretary of State's office to keep John McCain off of the ballot. You can check it out here. (I'll have a .pdf version up when I get back to Bloomington this evening.)
Let's be clear here: This is one of the most Republican-friendly districts in one of the most Republican-friendly presidential states. John McCain has been endorsed by Governor Mitch Daniels, Attorney General Steve Carter, state GOP chair Murray Clark, and Secretary of State Todd Rokita.
And despite all of this high-level help, these guys managed to screw up one of the most basic steps that any candidate can take in the state.
The DNC responds (via email):
As astonishing as the McCain campaign's incompetence may be, the audacity of its response is even worse. In order to avoid a major embarrassment, the McCain campaign did what Republicans typically do when confronted with their incompetence: they called in their cronies.
Despite the fact that the McCain campaign clearly failed to qualify for the ballot, Republican Attorney General Steve Carter and Republican Secretary of State Todd Rokita (who recently endorsed McCain) rubberstamped it anyway, trying to sneak McCain onto the ballot. Clearly, the Republican Culture of Corruption is alive and well within the McCain campaign.
Between this and that other McCain story, we've had about as good a preview of Republican governance as you could want: Lack of popular support followed by attempts to manipulate elections, incompetence covered up by cronyism, and politicians in bed with lobbyists in both the legislative and literal senses.