Senate races

The National Republican Senatorial Committee didn't back Ken Buck in Colorado's Republican Senate primary but they are backing him now.

One of Buck's major criticisms of his primary opponent, former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton, was that she was the party's establishment pick.

Now that the primary is finished, Buck campaign spokesman Owen Loftus said the campaign is happy to accept the NRSC's help in the general election contest against Sen. Michael Bennet (D). 

"The problem that we had is that they were stepping into the primary and we thought that was a choice for Colorado voters to make," Loftus said. "If they want to help us, we'd certainly accept it."

NRSC Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) has already spoken with Buck about the general election and the committee is expected to be fully engaged.

The NRSC expects that Bennet will be dragged down by his ties to President Obama. NRSC press secretary Amber Marchand said with Buck as the party's nominee "we're confident this is a great potential pick-up opportunity for Republicans in the fall."

The DSCC, meanwhile, is already painting Buck as a right-wing extremist who "wants to impose a radical agenda on Coloradans."

Norton was the favorite of Washington Republicans and she got financial help from the NRSC, something that energized many of Buck's supporters who saw Washington as trying to dictate the Republican nominee. 

Her defeat Tuesday continued the trend of party-backed candidates losing primary contests that has played out in several Senate primaries this cycle, most notably in Utah, Kentucky and Nevada.

— This post was updated at 12:20 p.m.

Sen. Michael Bennet, whom the president supported, said it was too soon to say if Obama should campaign with him.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed Republicans for holding up immigration reform.

Prosecutor Ken Buck eked out a win in Colorado's Republican Senate primary after an attack-filled race.

President Obama and former President Clinton found themselves backing rival candidates in the Colorado Senate Democratic primary — and the results proved a rare blemish on Clinton's record of backing successful candidates this cycle.

Obama made it clear early on he supported Sen. Michael Bennet's (D-Colo.) election to a full term, but that didn't stop Clinton from endorsing Bennet's primary rival, Andrew Romanoff.
 
The Romanoff campaign used the endorsement in a fundraising pitch at the end of June.

"I first met Andrew Romanoff in 1992, when he was a student at the Kennedy School of Government and I was a candidate for president," Clinton said in the Romanoff campaign e-mail. "Four years later, I was running for a second term, and he had just been elected to his first — as one of Colorado's representatives on the Democratic National Committee."

Romanoff also backed then-Sen. Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential race.
 
With less than 24 hours before the vote, Clinton recorded a robo-call asking supporters to vote for Romanoff "because he's got really good ideas on the economy."

The White House supported Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wins his primary by eight percent.

In Connecticut, former WWE CEO Linda McMahon, who spent millions on the race, won the nomination by a large margin.

Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul denied Tuesday that he once kidnapped a fellow student in college and attempted to force her to smoke marijuana.

The anecdote was reported by Jason Zengerle in GQ this week.

"I think I would remember if I kidnapped someone, and I don't remember. And I absolutely deny kidnapping anyone ever," Paul told Fox News's "Your World with Neil Cavuto."

He continued:

"No, I was never involved with kidnapping, no I was never involved with forcibly drugging people. … Do we live in an era where people can come forward anonymously and accuse you of things and then all of a sudden I am supposed to spend the rest of the campaign defending myself against anonymous accusers who say I kidnapped them? The story just borders on ridiculous."

Paul also threatened to sue GQ for publishing the story.

"I think they deserve a lawsuit," he said. "The problem is: In our country, they make it almost impossible for politicians to win anything. … We used to have journalistic ethics in this country. … It's so ridiculous I don’t know where to start."

--Cross-posted from the Blog Briefing Room.

Senate candidate Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) missed his own campaign rally, featuring former President Clinton, in order to vote for a state-aid bill in the House.

Sestak, a two-term lawmaker, was in D.C. for the vote, instead of at the campaign rally in Scranton, reports NBC's First Read. 

The rally with Clinton was scheduled last week, before Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) recalled lawmakers to Washington to vote on a $26 aid package to states. The Senate passed the bill last week, which provides $16 billion in Medicaid funding and $10 billion to prevent teacher layoffs.

Sestak taped a message for the crowd in Scranton, and then Clinton, along with Sestak's wife and daughter, took the stage.

Sestak faces a tough general election campaign against Republican Pat Toomey. Sestak became the party's nominee after defeating Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in the May primary.

West Virginia Senate candidate John Raese (R) has hired long-time GOP strategist Jim Dornan as his campaign manager.

"With just 19 days until the Republican primary and less than three months to the general election, I needed someone who can hit the ground running. Jim is that person," Raese said in a statement.

Dornan has managed campaigns for former Reps. J.C. Watts (R-Okla.) and George Nethercutt (R-Wash.), as well as the infamous Senate campaign of former Florida Rep. Katherine Harris (R).

He also has Capitol Hill experience, having worked for six members during the course of his career.

Raese made it clear he plans to run a campaign on national issues.

"This campaign will be about who will go to the Senate and stop the radical Obama agenda of the government running everything," he said.

He's up against Gov. Joe Manchin (D) in the race to fill the remainder of the late Sen. Robert Byrd's (D) term. A recent Rasmussen poll has Manchin ahead of Raese 51 percent to 35 percent.