Senate races

Washington GOP Senate candidate Dino Rossi said Tuesday he'd favor repealing both healthcare reform and Wall Street reform.

Rossi, who's challenging top Sen. Patty Murray (D) in this fall's elections, said he'd favor repealing the two signature issues Democrats have made into law this year.

"We need to repeal that bill," Rossi said of healthcare reform on ABC News's "Top Line" webcast.

He also said, when pressed, that Wall Street reform legislation signed into law last week by President Obama should be repealed and replaced with different reforms.

"I think we should," he said of repealing the financial reform package. "I think we should put reforms in that actually protect the public."

Democrats have sought to put pressure on top-tier Senate candidates like Rossi to say whether or not they would look to dismantle some of the reforms in those pieces of legislation. They've made the specter of repeal a key part of their election year argument against many GOP candidates.

Republicans including Rossi have, for their part, steadily maintained that for the legislation they would look to repeal, they would want it replaced with new legislation.

Ohio Senate candidate Lee Fisher (D) continues to shed staff.

He’s already on his third campaign manager, and by the end of the week he’ll have his second press secretary of the campaign.

John Collins, who had been the lieutenant governor’s spokesman, is leaving the campaign to go work for Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.

A Fisher campaign source told the paper that the parting was “mutual and amicable.” Collins had been on the job for the past eight months.

Fisher earlier this month lost his research director.

His latest campaign manager, Lynne Bowman, said Collins’s departure was nothing to worry about.

“Ohioans aren’t the least bit concerned about campaign staffing,” Bowman said.

Collins did not respond to a request for comment.

Democratic Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff has sold his Colorado home and loaned his campaign $325,000, according to the Denver Post.

The conservative activist known as Joe the Plumber is airing a TV ad in Missouri calling Rep. Roy Blunt (Mo.) a "pretender" and touting state Sen. Chuck Purgason as the best candidate for the Republican Senate nomination.

Samuel "Joe" Wurzelbacher said he purchased the statewide ad time without Purgason's knowledge and filed appropriate paperwork with the Federal Election Commission, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The ad was originally a YouTube video.



Purgason's campaign hasn't raised enough cash to air its own TV ads.



"I wanted to show that individuals can have some say in what's going on," Wurzelbacher told the Post-Dispatch. "I called and got a couple of people to donate."

The fairytale-themed ad refers to Blunt as a "pretender to the conservative throne."

Wurzelbacher endorsed Purgason earlier this month. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, he has stayed in the political spotlight, criticizing the Obama administration and endorsing conservative candidates in various races. He has also appeared at several Tea Party rallies.


Purgason has billed himself as the "only true conservative" in the GOP primary against Blunt. But the congressman holds a commanding lead — 62 percent to 13 — over his rival, according to a recent Post-Dispatch poll. He's also outraised him by a ratio of nearly 300 to 1.

The winner of the Aug. 3 primary is expected to face Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) in November.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will hold a fundraiser for Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fla.), who’s running for the Democratic nomination in Florida’s Senate race.

The event will take place Monday, Aug. 2, in Washington D.C., according to the Orlando Sentinel. 

The administration officially supports Meek in his primary against billionaire Jeff Greene, but there’s been grumbling that the White House hasn’t done all it can to help the congressman.

Part of the problem could be Gov. Charlie Crist, who’s running as an independent candidate and giving Republican Marco Rubio a tougher race than either Democratic candidate is, according to polls. Crist hasn’t said which party he’ll caucus with if he wins, and both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have appeared in photos with Crist when they were in Florida to assess damage from the fallout of the oil spill in the Gulf.

But the party has helped Meek.

Biden and former President Clinton have hosted fundraisers for the four-term lawmaker, and reports indicate Clinton will return to Florida to campaign for Meek before the Aug. 24 primary.

Greene has spent a little more than $5.5 million of his own money on the race, according to Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports. Meek has raised a little more than $7 million and has about $4 million cash on hand, according to second quarter FEC reports.

And that money has helped Greene make inroads. A St. Petersburg Times poll in May showed Meek leading Greene by 24 points. A Public Policy Polling survey taken last week showed Meek leading Greene by three points.

Meanwhile, Meek has released his first television ad against Greene and it goes negative. The ad criticizes the Greene for "becoming a billionaire on Wall Street while middle-class families lose their homes" and it also points out Greene moved to Florida two years ago. 

Greene has been on the air in Florida since May. Here's Meek's ad, entitled "Meet the real Jeff Greene":

-- This post was updated at 3:53 p.m.

New Hampshire Senate candidate Paul Hodes (D) is using a push poll to undercut former Attorney General Kelly Ayotte’s bid for the Republican Senate nomination, according to a complaint filed Monday.

The New Hampshire Republican Party filed a protest with the attorney general’s office alleging Hodes engaged in “illegal push-polling” to scuttle Ayotte’s candidacy.

The Hodes camp called the complaint “frivolous.”

According to the documents, the polling calls begin with routine questions about the participant’s age, party affiliation and their “favorable/unfavorable” reaction to each of the four major GOP Senate candidates. 

The subject of the call is then asked to name his first choice in the primary. “If the answer is ‘Kelly Ayotte’ the push begins,” the complaint states. “The telemarketer then asks misleading and dishonest questions about Ms. Ayotte that attempt to distort her record and influence the person’s opinion of her candidacy.”

Ryan Williams, a spokesman for the New Hampshire GOP, said anecdotal evidence suggests only Republicans are getting the calls.

“He’s push polling with Republicans, which obviously indicates he’s trying to meddle in our primary,” Williams said.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue on Monday blasted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for moving forward on the Disclose Act, a bill that increases reporting requirements for top campaign donors. 

Donohue argues the legislation infringes upon the First Amendment because it requires donors to state publicly their political positions, which not everyone is comfortable doing.

Republican Ken Buck is now walking back a comment he made after a campaign stop last month aimed at those who question President Obama’s citizenship.

The audio of Buck, which was captured by a Democratic Party tracker, surfaced over the weekend. He said: “Will you tell those dumbasses at the Tea Party to stop asking questions about birth certificates while I’m on the camera.”

The candidate said Monday he regrets using the word, noting that he has been frustrated that questions over the president’s birth certificate have overshadowed larger issues. 

Buck’s Republican primary opponent Jane Norton quickly seized on the comments. Her campaign put out a statement calling Buck “a self-proclaimed tea partier who trashes tea partiers when he thinks no one is looking.”

And Norton is planning a news conference for Monday afternoon to “address Buck’s Tea Party betrayal.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he's "comfortable" in his reelection race against GOP candidate Sharron Angle.

Reid derided Angle's positions on Social Security and other issues as "not in the mainstream" as Election Day in the closely watched race looms fewer than 100 days away.

"I think that what I have seen her say, what I have watched her say, what I have read what she has said — she’s not mainstream for Nevada or probably most any other place in America," Reid said in an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Republicans have made Reid a top target for defeat this fall, as high jobless numbers and a slower recovery plague Nevada's economy. Reid has suffered from low approval ratings over the past year, suggesting that he was low-hanging fruit for a GOP challenger this fall.

But Reid's been making up ground recently against Angle, whose candidacy had been fueled by conservative activists and some within the Tea Party movement. Her conservative support led her to upset former state GOP Chairwoman Sue Lowden in the party's primary to face Reid.

Reid noted his tough approval ratings, but said that he'd campaigned through negative seasons before and that Nevada voters were familiar with his record by this point.

"I have a campaign that’s moving along just fine," he said. "I feel comfortable where we are today."

George W. Bush may not be interested in campaigning this cycle, but his brother seems to be. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is in Louisville, Ky., Monday for a private fundraiser for Senate candidate Rand Paul (R).

Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway’s camp hit Paul for bringing in Bush, but interestingly made no mention of the “Bush agenda,” a popular Democratic epithet, in its attack. Conway’s camp instead sent out a release that contained “a list of things both Jeb and Paul still need to learn about the Commonwealth.” The list included issues such as agriculture and drug enforcement policy, food safety and combating discrimination.

Bush is becoming increasingly active this cycle. Last week, he endorsed New York House candidate Chris Cox (R).