House races

NEW ORLEANS — Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) planned to follow his Election Day routine early Saturday and go door knocking in a precinct in Jefferson Parish — a tradition he’s carried over since his days running for the House. 

Saturday is Louisiana’s primary vote, and Vitter is facing several challengers, including former Louisiana Supreme Court Justice Chet Traylor (R). But in a sign of how confident he is of a positive result, Vitter doesn’t have a public primary night party planned.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senate candidate Charlie Melancon has a full day of campaigning planned. He’s making several stops in the New Orleans area before his election night party in the Crescent City.

The Republican primary in Melancon's House district, the third, is also being watched to see whether Hunt Downer, Jeff Landry or Kristian Magar emerges to face Ravi Sangisetty (D) in November. Candidates need to break 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff in Louisiana.

In the 2nd district, Democrats Eugene Green, Gary Johnson, Juan LaFonta and Cedric Richmond are vying to take on Rep. Ahn "Joseph" Cao (R-La.) in November. This primary could also head to a runoff.

With rain lashing New Orleans, Democratic turnout is expected to be low in the southern part of the state.

NEW ORLEANS — Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao (R) wants voters to judge him on how much federal money he's directed to his district.

The Democratic campaign chief said Friday "reports of the House Democrats' demise are greatly exaggerated.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) slammed Fox News host Glenn Beck's planned rally in the nation's capital this weekend as "blatantly political."

The head of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also predicted that "outrageous rhetoric on the right" will prove a turnoff to swing voters this fall. 

Beck and the organizers of this weekend's "Restoring Honor" rally are billing it as a "non-political" event. 

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is among the planned speakers and Tea Party activists and organizers have helped put the event together.

"Let's call it what it is," Van Hollen said of the rally during an appearance at the National Press Club Friday. "It's a blatant political effort." 

The Democratic campaign chief said for the past 15 months, Beck and other conservative talk hosts have offered nothing more than "a constant tirade against the president, against Democratic efforts to get the economy turned around." 

Van Hollen predicted "Americans are going to be turned off by just the outrageous rhetoric on the right," ahead of November, much of which he characterized as "conspiracy theories, rants."  

He said while it fires up a certain portion of the electorate, he called it "a turnoff to the sensible center." 

The congressman predicted Friday that Democrats will retain their majority in the House this fall.

The Republican challenging Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-S.D.) has a lengthy list of traffic violations, including two arrest warrants.

An internal poll from the campaign of Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) appears to actually offer some good news for a Democrat in a competitive district this fall. The poll gives Kissell a 17-point lead over Republican challenger Harold Johnson. 

The numbers come from Kissell's pollster, Anzalone Liszt Research, and have him at 49 percent of the vote to Johnson's 32 percent. Third-party candidate Thomas Hill is polling at 7 percent. 

The Kissell campaign is taking the internal numbers as welcome news, given that election handicapper Charlie Cook rates the district a "toss-up" ahead of November. 

Johnson endured a nasty GOP primary earlier this spring, and North Carolina's 8th district was notably absent from the list of districts the National Republican Congressional Committee reserved TV time in earlier this month. 

The 2010 playing field of competitive House races is rapidly expanding, Rep. Kevin McCarthy argued Thursday, saying there are increasing signs that Democrats are in "panic mode" about their party's prospects in November. 

On a conference call with reporters, the California Republican said recent polling favoring Republicans in districts that many Democrats didn't expect to be competitive this cycle has Democratic incumbents running scared.  

"Races that people never thought would be in play, will be in play now," McCarthy said. 

The result, he argued, is "panic mode inside the Democratic Party from the incumbents themselves."  

McCarthy, who heads up recruiting for the National Republican Congressional Committee, is fresh off a campaign swing through nine House districts last week. He predicted Republicans would be competitive in all of them this fall.

He talked up Republican challengers to Rep. Heath Shuler (D-N.C.) and candidates in open-seat races in Tennessee and Kansas. In recent days, Republicans have touted internal polling in districts that earlier this cycle were considered a stretch for the party. 

The campaigns of Francisco Canseco (R), who is challenging Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Texas), and Bobby Schilling, who is running against Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.), both claim internals that have their candidate leading.

Party strategists argue that if Republicans can pick off incumbents like that this November, it could mean a very large GOP wave.

Democrats are dismissing such claims as Republican hubris and expressing confidence that they will retain the majority in the House this November, at least publicly. 

DCCC press secretary Ryan Rudominer fired back Thursday, "The only one in panic mode is Kevin McCarthy who is worried about ginning up enough attention for his self serving book. The bottomline is that the NRCC now faces some tough decisions about which of their many candidates with anemic fundraising can’t cut it and have to be abandoned." 

Rudominer said voters will have clear choice in November and predicted voters will "reject Republicans’ agenda of unpaid tax cuts for the wealthy that add billions to the deficit, privatizing Social Security and Medicare, removing the new checks on Wall Street, and tax breaks for companies that ship American jobs overseas." 

DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has repeated the mantra in recent days that the party will not lose its majority and has aggressively gone after Republicans on jobs and economic policy.

-Updated at 5:38 p.m. 

The Democrat vying to succeed retiring Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) released her first TV ad of the campaign Thursday, which focuses on her would-be Congressional paycheck.

In the 30-second ad, state Sen. Julie Lassa (D) says she’ll fight to cut Congress’s pay by 10 percent until they lower unemployment. She doesn’t say by how much unemployment should be lowered.

She also says she won’t accept a pay raise until the budget is balanced (members automatically receive pay raises unless they vote to freeze the increase, as they recently did for 2010-11).

According to the Lassa camp, it's a major buy that will be seen by a "majority" of voters in the seventh district. It's airing on broadcast and was produced by Tom King and Murphy Putnam. 

The National Republican Congressional Committee was quick to claim that Lassa accepted a pay increase during her time in the state Legislature. 

"In the state Senate, Lassa accepted a taxpayer-funded raise when 60,000 Wisconsinites lost their jobs," Tom Erickson, an NRCC spokesman, said in a statement. "If Lassa would take a bonus while thousands of Badger Staters were given pink slips, how can Wisconsin families trust this career politician to stand up for them?"

The Lassa camp disputed the claim, saying that she returned the salary increase.

"While Julie Lassa is voluntarily giving back 3 percent of her salary to taxpayers, Sean Duffy has consistently received taxpayer funded pay raises in his seven years in office," Haley Morris, a spokeswoman for Lassa, said in a statement.

Lassa, who's already been hit by TV ads by outside groups, faces Republican Sean Duffy in November.

--Updated at 12:13 p.m. and 1:33 p.m. and 8:18 p.m.

A major union this week waded into the grudge match brewing in Michigan's seventh district between Rep. Mark Schauer (D) and his 2008 foe, Tim Walberg.

The freshman Democrat took the seat from Walberg last cycle after the Republican had held it for a single term. Walberg is now running to get it back, but Schauer's labor allies are closing ranks around him.

The American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees spent $750,000 on a TV ad called "Burned Dignity" that went up on Monday in the Grand Rapids-Kalamazoo-Battle Creek media markets.

 The ad notes that Walberg skipped the vote on the auto industry bailout but "sided with big oil and hedge funds — gave them tax loopholes."

"Haven't we been burned badly enough?," the announcer says in the spot.

In 2008, Schauer beat Walberg by about 7,500 votes.