Senate races

Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) leads Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) by 29 points in a new poll.

On Thursday, Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-La.) will finally get his chance to come face to face with BP CEO Tony Hayward.

"I get five minutes," Melancon, a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told MSNBC Wednesday night. "I haven't exactly figured out what I want to ask him."

The Democratic Senate candidate reiterated that he thought Hayward "should go," but said he didn't plan to tell him to resign at the hearing, which is being conducted by the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Melancon, who's challenging Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), has tried to position himself as both a critic of BP and a proponent of lifting President Barack Obama's deepwater oil-drilling moratorium.

But he's walking a fine line. On Tuesday, for instance, he missed the chance to question oil executives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil and BP at an Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.

The South Carolina State Election Commission will not investigate Democrat Alvin Greene’s controversial victory in last week’s Senate primary.

The South Carolina State Election Commission will not investigate Democrat Alvin Greene’s controversial victory in last week’s Senate primary.

"The state election commission sees no reason to initiate an investigation into our voting system," Chris Whitmire, a spokesman for the commission, told The Ballot Box. "We have full confidence in the reliability and accuracy of the state's voting system, and we have nothing to indicate there was any voting system failure on June 8th. The system has performed accurately and consistently."

Greene won the June 8 primary with 58 percent of the vote, defeating Vic Rawl, a Charleston County councilman, by more than 30,000 votes.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) has called Greene a "plant" and repeatedly called for an investigation into his win.

Despite making several TV appearances to talk about Greene's victory, Clyburn hasn't contacted the commission, according to Whitmire.

"We've had no contact from the candidates in the U.S. Senate race and no contact from Congressman Clyburn," he said.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has asked state Attorney General Henry McMaster to investigate whether Greene "accepted an inducement" to run. The group also complained to the Federal Election Commission, noting Greene hasn't filed the proper paperwork.

On Tuesday, Rawl said he also planned to file a "protest" against Greene's win.

Rawl will meet with the state Democratic Party's executive committee Thursday where he's expected to call for a new election based on supposed irregularities in the voting machines.

If the state party calls for a new election, the SEC would seek legal advice to help determine the manner in which any new primary would be conducted, Whitmire said. It's unclear when the vote would take place.

Regardless of the outcome of the meeting, South Carolina has another round of voting coming up on June 22, when the Republican gubernatorial primary and several others will go to a runoff.

--Updated at 5:59 p.m.

Some senators can be hesitant about donating to the campaigns of challengers to the chamber's leaders.

Not so with GOP Whip Jon Kyl (Ariz.). He's among a handful of senior Republicans who plan to donate to the campaign of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle — the Republican challenger to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Kyl told The Hill he has no trepidation about going after Reid. He endorsed and campaigned for Angle's opponent Sue Lowden in Nevada's Republican Senate primary. 



Asked if he plans to donate to Angle's campaign, Kyl pointed to former Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer's (N.Y.) financial support of former Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Jim Pederson during Kyl's re-election in 2006.



"I will support every Republican nominee financially in this coming election for the Senate," Kyl said. "I just ran for re-election in 2006, and my good friends on the Democratic side of the aisle had no trepidations about pouring a lot of money into my opponent's campaign."



Kyl said he got the last laugh, recalling a post-election conversation with Schumer.



"After the campaign, I was able to go to Sen. Schumer and say 'Why did you waste so much money?'"



In 2008, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) was a Democratic target and several Democratic senators and senatorial candidates contributed to his Democratic challenger, Bruce Lunsford.

Those donors included: Reid, Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), Russ Feingold (Wis.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Robert Menendez (N.J.), Jack Reed (R.I.), Blanche Lincoln (Ark.), Robert Casey (Pa.), Mark Warner (Va.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Byron Dorgan (N.D.), John Kerry (Mass.), Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), and Sherrod Brown (Ohio).

The Tea Party Express is backing attorney Joe Miller in his primary challenge to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).

The group also said it's committing significant financial resources to the race. 

"The total expenditures by the Tea Party Express in Alaska are expected to reach well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars," the group said in a statement. The Tea Party Express called Miller's campaign "its top priority between now and the August 24th Alaska primary," and said it plans to "launch a wave of TV and radio ads supporting Miller and opposing Murkowski in the coming weeks." 

The political undercurrent there is the bad blood between former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a favorite of the Tea Party Express, and the Murkowskis. Palin defeated former Gov. Frank Murkowski in a 2006 primary and has been highly critical of his daughter, Sen. Lisa Murkowski. There was speculation Palin might challenge Murkowski, but she endorsed Miller in early June. 

The Tea Party Express has made its presence known in several primaries this cycle. It spent more than half a million dollars backing Republican Sharron Angle in Nevada in her successful bid for the GOP nomination. The group also backed Republican Rand Paul in his race for the Kentucky Senate nomination over the party's favored candidate. And the group was influential in defeating Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah) in the Utah nominating process. 

Several GOP centrists are undecided about whether to donate to Sharron Angle, who is challenging Sen. Harry Reid.

Five competitive primaries this summer will test the ability of the party’s favorite candidates to make it to November.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has committed its "full resources" to help Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle (R) win in November, according to Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), NRSC chairman.

"I have made it clear that Sharron and her campaign will have the full resources and support from the NRSC and from my Republican colleagues in order to ensure her victory against Harry Reid this November," he said in a statement. "I look forward to welcoming her into our ranks next year."

Angle didn't receive any contributions in 2010 from sitting members, according to her Federal Election Commission filings.

Cornyn met with Angle earlier on Tuesday as part of her first trip to Washington since claiming a surprise victory in last week's Senate primary. The Texan said Angle was in the process of "assembling a strong general election campaign team."

During the primary, she ran a grassroots effort with little campaign infrastructure. Angle will face Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in November.

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has a 37-point lead over Democratic rival Alvin Greene, according to a Rasmussen poll out Tuesday. 

The poll has DeMint ahead of Greene 58 percent to 21 percent among likely voters. Nine percent of respondents preferred someone else and 13 percent were undecided. 

For Greene, whose primary win stunned observers, the numbers are rough by every measure. Only 50 percent of Democrats polled said they support Greene, and his favorability numbers stand at 20 percent favorable versus 51 percent unfavorable.

Former state lawmaker Vic Rawl, who lost to Greene in the primary, has appealed to the state Democratic Party to review last Tuesday's results, and state Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler has asked Greene to step aside. The party is scheduled to meet Thursday to discuss their nominee.

The Rawl campaign said election experts who looked into the voting at the campaign's behest found irregularities in the results, and Democrats in the state are now pointing the finger at possible voting machine malfunction.

DeMint was not expected to lose his seat no matter who won the Democratic nomination.