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."
"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."
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.
With an anti-incumbent mood still festering, Colorado Democrats might be better off nominating former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff instead of Sen. Michael Bennet, according to a new survey commissioned by American Crossroads.
Public Opinion Strategies conducted the survey for the conservative activist group, which is headed by former Republication National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan. It polled 13 states with Cook Report-defined competitive Senate races in an identical fashion to the methodology used in the NPR poll from June.
The troubling news for Bennet — and other Democratic incumbents — is that only 42 percent of the Colorado voters polled approve of him, and 44 percent disapprove. Moreover, asked whether they wanted to elect a new person or reelect their incumbent, just 34 percent would vote for their incumbent, while 55 percent prefer a new person.
The survey also found Democratic Sens. Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Patty
Murray (Wash.) and Harry Reid (Nev.) face similar headwinds. "While some of
the Democratic candidates in these 13 Battleground Senate states
may survive, given the way the electorate is moving against them, most
of them will not," pollster Glen Bolger wrote in the survey memo.
Asked to rate a match-up between a "Democrat" and a "Republican" — because there were no clear primary front-runners — Colorado respondents favored the Republican by a 47-to-40 percent margin. Republicans Ken Buck and Jane Norton are competing for the GOP nod.
The poll, conducted Aug. 2-5, has a margin of error of 2.72 percent.
Will Connecticut Senate candidate Linda McMahon (R) be able to put the WWE behind her after Tuesday's primary?
For now, it seems she can't escape questions about her family business. She was again asked about wrestling's dark side during an interview with ABC's Bill Weir that aired on "Nightline" Monday.
Weir cited one WWE storyline in which McMahon's daughter entered the arena as the crowd chanted, "Slut, slut, slut."
"As a mother, was there ever a time when you were sorta creeped out by your own product?" Weir asked.
It's a "soap opera," she said. "So sure, there are storylines that are better than others."
Weir noted the broadcasts of WWE matches now carry a parental guidance rating as opposed to a mature rating and asked if that had anything to do with her run for Senate.
"My political ambitions had nothing to do with that," she shot back. "The evolution of moving to PG was already under way before I even thought about entering the political arena. … It's good business."
Weir tried to continue to press her on the wrestling business, but McMahon directed the conversation back to politics.
"We can talk about WWE until tomorrow," she said, adding that's not what voters care about.
"They are concerned about the issues of the day," she said. "They’re not concerned about soap-opera storylines."
The ranks of independent voters are growing in Florida, a state hosting one of this cycle's marquee Senate races with Gov. Charlie Crist running as an independent.
New voter registration stats from the state show Democrats still maintain their voter registration advantage in Florida, but for a second straight year, independent voters have increased.
The current make-up of the state's electorate is 41 percent Democrat, 36 percent Republican and just more than 19 percent unaffiliated.
Still, Democrats have seen gains among Hispanic voters, one of the state's crucial and growing constituencies.
Ahead of the 2008 election, Hispanics registered as Democrats numbered 513,252 voters. As of the end of July, that number was 542,384.
Republicans lost some 4,000 Hispanic registrants over that same period, according to the new figures.
The state will have a three-way race for Senate this fall between Crist (I), Marco Rubio (R) and either Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) or self-funder Jeff Greene (D).
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