Down-the-ballot: Graves continues gay-baiting, Dole and Udall leading

The race in Missouri's 6th congressional district has become heated surprisingly early. Two weeks after he first aired an ad attacking his opponent's "San Fransisco values" and featuring disco dancing, Sam Graves is at it again, hitting Kay Barnes with an ad linking her to San Fransisco values for the second time. Accusing Barnes of supporting the gay agenda by using colorful pictures (whose production looks rather amateurish), the ad once again juxtaposes the video of a (San Fransisco?) party with footage of Graves walking down a suburban street with his wife and children:


For Graves to air a second ad so soon after the first despite the controversy and the strongly-worded response Barnes unleashed suggests that his campaign has at least some indication that the ad is working or that it is generating talk beneficial to the GOP. As Barnes is the former Mayor of Kansas City, tarnishing her image in the rural parts of the district could be good enough for Republicans to retain this seat.

The rest of the day's congressional news is polling-based, starting with PPP's latest release from North Carolina:

• In the Senate race, Elizabeth Dole has stopped the bleeding and regained minimal ground, as she is ahead 47% to 39% versus 48% to 43% in the previous poll.
  
• In the gubernatorial race, Beverly Perdue is barely ahead of Charlotte Mayor McCrory, 43% to 39%, in what is shaping to be one of the few competitive governor's contests of the year.
  

Despite the small uptick, Dole remains vulnerable as she leads by single-digits and under 50%. More importantly, the race has now caught the DSCC's attention and Democrats know they have the potential to stun Republicans in this state, guaranteeing that they will show attention and resources to Hagan's campaign. However, this poll also points out to the advantage of incumbency and being a better-funded candidate, as Dole has been airing her first ads of the cycle over the past few weeks and the adblitz might be helping her stop Hagan's momentum.

Meanwhile, SUSA released a poll from New Mexico's Senate race that confirms that this is one of the strongest pick-up opportunities for Democrats:

• Tom Udall defeats Heather Wilson 60% to 36% and similarly crushes Steve Pearce 61% to 35%. He has been leading by such margins for months now.
• In the primary that is taking place tomorrow, it is a fight to the finish between the two Republicans, with Wilson at 47% and Pearce at 48%.
  

It's hard to believe that one of those major New Mexico figures will have his or her political career ended tomorrow, when New Mexico Republicans go to the polls to select their nominee and put an end to a very hard-fought and at times brutal race. It's even harder to believe that both GOP House members gave up their seats to run for a Senate seat in which they are trailing so badly. More on tomorrow's primaries tomorrow night.

Finally, we also got two House polls today, an exciting development given those tend to be more rare. Both surveys are internal polls taken for the Democratic candidate, so take them with the appropriate grain of salt:

• In CA-04, a Benenson poll finds toss-up contests in a Republican stronghold that is now an open seat, as Charlie Brown narrowly edges two Republicans, 38% to 34% against Dough Ose and 42% to 40% and Tom McClintock.
  

• In IL-11, another GOP-held open seat that Democrats are looking to pick-up, an Anzalone-Litz poll released by the Halvorson campaign shows her to be leading 43% to 32% against Martin Ozlinga despite the presence of a green party candidate that gets 6% of the vote.
  

IL-11 is one of the Democrats' strongest pick-up opportunities, as the GOP had to settle on Ozlinga after their nominee dropped out after the primary and after a slate of state Senators still refused to jump in the race. Halvorson is one of the DCCC's strongest recruits and that she is so far ahead with a third-party candidate polling so strongly should comfort Democrats. In CA-04, meanwhile, Brown was favored to win the race as long as Rep. Doolittle, hit by corruption scandals, was in the race. But the district is very Republican, and Brown has a tougher shot at the open seat and at getting from 38% and 42% to a majority of the vote. McClintock and Ose are hitting at each other in an ideologically split primary, whose nastiness is one important ray of hope for the Brown campaign.

Down-the-ballot: Yet another GOP recruitment failure, tight races in MS and OR (Update: and NC)

A significant number of down-the-ballot news this morning, but to start with don't forget to check my newly updated Senate rankings. House ratings should follow as quickly as possible. The day's first development concerns NY-13, where Republicans are hitting yet another recruitment wall. Rep. Vito Fossella's decision to retire in November created yet another open seat headache for the GOP in a Democratic-leaning seat in a Democratic-leaning state. It is hardly surprising, then, that potential Republican candidates would be reluctant to attempt a run here.

Yesterday, Staten Island DA Dan Donovan, who was recently re-elected with 68% of the vote in a borough-wide vote that covers a large portion of the NY-13 district, took himself out of the running. Donovan had been heavily courted by the national party and he was the clear favorite to take the Republican spot on the November ballot. Donovan did not cite any specific reasons but his desire to continue working as a DA to complete the tasks he has started.

The road thus just got that much tougher for Republicans to hold on to this seat. They will now turn to state Senator Andrew Lanza but recruiting state senators is not what New York's Republican Party wants to be doing considering that their majority in that chamber -- their last seat of power in the Empire State -- hangs by a thread.

Meanwhile, Republicans are continuing their offensive against Al Franken in Minnesota's Senate race. After Franken's self-induced debacle over taxes, which has already considerably weakened the challenger, the GOP is now doing what we knew they would do sooner or later: Use Franken's comedian past as opposition research material. I am doubtful this kind of attack can work, as shown by Sen. Allen's attempt to use Jim Webb's strangely graphic novels against him in the 2006 campaign. That effort probably backfired, and as long as Franken can portray himself as a credible candidate that ought to be taken seriously, the press will continue marveling at the comedian-to-politician transition. In further news from this race, former Governor Jesse Ventura is now considering jumping in as an independent, in what would obviously make the contest wild and unpredictable.

Furthermore, we got a series of polls from Senate and House races:

• First, Research 2000 polled the Mississippi Senate race and found Senator Wicker leading Ronnie Musgrove 46% to 42%. A DSCC poll a few days ago found Musgrove up 8% and with a better favorability rating.


• Second, the DSCC released yet another internal poll, this one from the Oregon Senate race. It shows Gordon Smith leading Jeff Merkley 45% to 42%, and the poll was taken before the May 20th primary, so any post-primary bounce for Merkley would not be recorded here.


• Update: Third, a conservative institute, the Civitas Group, just released a poll showing Elizabeth Dole ahead by only 2% against Kay Hagan, 45% to 43%. One more proof that the NC-Sen race is much more competitive than was thought just 3 weeks ago.


• Update #2: A Rasmussen poll of the New Hampshire race confirms that Sununu is the most endangered incumbent this cycle, as he continues to trail his challenger Jeanne Shaheen, 50% to 43%.

Both results are satisfactory for Democrats as they confirm that these two races are toss-ups heading into November. The OR numbers are an internal poll but they correspond to the latest Rasmussen poll of the race. Also, MS polls are likely to show very differing results over the next 6 months because the margin would vary widely if you adjust the proportion of white and black voters by just a point or two. If Obama heads the ticket pollsters will have to decide how much to weigh black turnout, and those decisions will impact the numbers that are released.

Finally, two -- rare and very exciting -- new House polls were released:

• In CO-04, an internal poll for the Markey campaign shows Rep. Musgrove leading Democratic challenger Betsy Markey 46% to 42%.

• In MO-06, another race that is on everyone's toss-up list shows reassuring news for GOP incumbent Sam Graves, who leads Kay Barnes, the former Mayor of Kansas City, 49% to 39%. Barnes' support among registered Democrat is (still?) weak.

The Graves campaign attracted a lot of attention last week by hitting Barnes for a fundraising trip she took to San Fransisco with Nancy Pelosi and aired a truly remarkably over-the-top ad that seems to come right out of SNL's ad-parody efforts. The ad is too recent to be said to have have influenced the SUSA poll and it will be interesting to see how it impacts the race. Barnes is already out with a brutal response ad, but here's the original spot: