The Tea Party Express, which spent some $600,000 on Alaska Republican Joe Miller's primary challenge to Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R), says it's preparing to do the same on behalf of Christine O'Donnell (R) in Delaware.

O'Donnell is challenging Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) from the right in the state's Sept. 14 Senate primary, but she has yet to capture the same kind of attention from conservative activists as other Tea Party-backed candidates have this cycle. 

Tea Party Express spokesman Levi Russell said Monday that his organization is already cutting TV and radio ads in Delaware and expects to be on the air by the end of the week. Russell said he hopes to match the support the group offered in GOP primaries in Utah, Nevada and Alaska this year.  

"All of our spending is dependent on the enthusiasm of the Tea Party Express members," Russell said. "It's up to that race and that candidate to capture their imagination."

As to whether O'Donnell has done that to this point, Russell admits "not quite yet." But he expressed confidence that the money will flood in over the coming days.   

"I'm sure we'll be spending six figures in Delaware," Russell predicted. Read more...

Alaska's Libertarian Party over the weekend closed the door on a potential run by Sen. Lisa Murkowski on its ballot line this November. 

Murkowski is still battling Tea Party-backed Joe Miller, who leads her by less than 2,000 votes in the state's Republican primary. Some 24,000 ballots must still be counted. But speculation about a third-party or independent run for Murkowski in November began almost immediately after last Tuesday's primary. 

The vice chairman of the state's Libertarian Party, Harley Brown, told The Hill that a supporter not affiliated with the Murkowski campaign reached out to the party and inquired about the possibility of a Libertarian run for Murkowski, should she end up losing to Miller in the primary.

"We started getting all sorts of calls and people were starting to speculate, so we just decided to put an end to it right away," said Brown. "We unanimously decided that it wouldn't happen." 

The vote was 5-0, according to Brown. 

The midterm election forecast is growing more dire for Democrats as the summer wears on, and that's reflected in The Ballot Box's race ratings for the 2010 elections.

The latest update shows growth in the ranks of the toss-up category on both the House and Senate side.  

Democratic incumbents continue to struggle and general election polling across the country has Republicans running strong against several Senate incumbents. In all, eight Democratic-held Senate seats are now considered toss-ups, while the ranks of Democratic-held House seats in the toss-up category swells to 29.  

One bit of good news for the ruling party in these new rankings — at least one Democratic-held seat has become less competitive ahead of November, shifting from our "toss-up" category to "lean Democratic."

Check out the chart; some of the updates are after the jump:

Attorney Joe Miller said "we are watching the process closely; when we see inappropriate actions taken, we file a complaint."

Rep. Harry Teague (D-N.M.) holds a slim lead over former Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), according to a new poll.

Teague, a first term lawmaker who won the seat when Pearce ran for the Senate, leads the former lawmaker 45 percent to 42 percent, according to an Albuquerque Journal poll. In 2008, Pearce lost a Senate race and is running for his old House seat this cycle.

The poll found 13 percent of voters remain undecided in a district that leans Republican. Among self-described independent voters, Teague has 37 percent to Pearce's 33 percent. Teague is the first Democrat to hold the seat in 28 years.

The poll was conducted Aug. 23-27 by Research and Polling Inc. of Albuquerque and has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 5 percent.

Pollster Brian Sanderoff told the paper that Teague's slight edge is good news for the incumbent, considering the current national political mood.

"Harry Teague surprised the world two years ago when he won in a Republican district," Sanderoff said. "Now we see that he is still hanging in there against a former incumbent in a conservative year in a conservative district. Basically, we have an incumbent running against a former incumbent — both of them are well-known — and the fact that Teague has an ever-so slight lead is encouraging for him."

But he also noted the number of undecided voters means the race could still break either way.
       
The poll also surveyed voters in the first congressional district where Rep. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) is in the lead but Republican candidate Jon Barela is showing some gains.

Heinrich, also a first term lawmaker, led by 6 points — 47 percent to 41 percent.

"The good news for Heinrich is that he's ahead," Sanderoff told the paper. "The bad news is that he is the incumbent, and Jon Barela is just now getting himself known."

In the district, 12 percent of voters said they were undecided.

Among independent voters, Heinrich had 45 percent while Barela had 31 percent.

Sanderoff said that was a good sign for Heinrich because "independents are skewing conservative, and Republican this election cycle. But Heinrich at this point in time is doing well among independents. It will be a key group for him to hold onto."

Both Teague and Heinrich are Republican targets this cycle.

Retired General Wesley Clark is in Illinois to campaign for Democratic Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias.

Clark is the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO and ran for president in 2004.

He's scheduled to appear with Giannoulias at an electric-car recharging station in order to promote the candidate's energy policies and criticize Republican candidate Mark Kirk for backtracking on the cap and trade bill, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. 

But Clark is likely to get asked about Kirk's military record, which has become an issue in the race. 

Kirk, an intelligence officer in the U.S. Naval Reserves, has been accused of embellishing his military record, particularly regarding his service in Kosovo. Clark was an architect of the war there.

Polls have shown the candidates are in a dead heat for the seat once held by President Obama.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist appears to be backtracking again, this time on his position on same-sex marriage. 

In a CNN interview during the weekend, Crist called marriage "a sacred institution, if you will. But I do believe in tolerance. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy, and while I feel that way about marriage, I think if partners want to have the opportunity to live together, I don't have a problem with that."

After the interview aired, Crist's campaign issued a statement reiterating that he doesn't back a Constitutional Amendment banning same-sex marriage. 

The latest clarification from the independent Senate candidate comes after last week's flap over his stance on the recently enacted healthcare law, which was attacked by Crist's opponents, Republican Marco Rubio and Rep. Kendrick Meek (D). 

CNN has the full transcript of Crist's interview here.  

Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) is one of those Democratic incumbents the opposition thinks could be swept up in a GOP wave this fall. But the longtime incumbent and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is more than ready for a strong Republican challenge in 2010.

Skelton faces state legislator Vicky Hartzler (R), who emerged from a competitive GOP primary earlier this month and has the backing of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Skelton is flexing his financial advantage early and has already run three TV ads. The Associated Press's David Leib details how the incumbent is working to define his challenger early and frame the race on his military credentials.

It might seem an odd tactic this year, considering most candidate around the country are focused on the economy or issues such as federal spending, deficits, bailouts, health care and energy policies.

But Skelton's early campaign theme reveals a perceived path toward victory in an election year that otherwise appears to favor Republicans. Skelton, the House Armed Services Committee chairman, wants to keep the political battle on his own turf, over issues on which he has expertise.

...

Missouri's 4th Congressional District — which includes Jefferson City and areas just to the southwest of Boone County — could be one of the dozens of races nationally that determine whether Democrats can keep control of the House. Although the National Republican Congressional Committee is not targeting Skelton with its first wave of TV ad buys, Missouri GOP Executive Director Lloyd Smith said he expects it will do so during its next round of ads.

Until then, Skelton has been laying a foundation for the race with his own TV ads.

His first two ads both featured testimonials — one from the mother of a Marine, the other from an Army veteran — about how much they appreciate Skelton's defense of the troops. The third ad, which began airing Aug. 18, questions Hartzler's support of the military.

The first round of absentee ballots has yet to be counted in Alaska's Republican Senate primary, but the campaign of Tea Party-backed Joe Miller spent the weekend accusing his opponent and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) of setting the stage for a legal challenge should Miller emerge the winner.

Miller holds a lead of fewer than 2,000 votes over Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) after last Tuesday's primary. More than 24,000 ballots must still be counted.

In a letter to the state division of elections Sunday, a lawyer for Miller also made an allegation of potential vote-tampering by an election observer connected to Murkowski.

From the Alaska Dispatch:

In the letter, Miller attorney Thomas Van Flein accuses the observer, who he calls Mike, of accessing the Division of Elections computer database for 20 minutes to "check voter records." That Mike had access to private data was bad enough, Van Flein said in a letter, but the Diebold voter software used by the state is also vulnerable to voter hijacking. Miller cites a a 2007 election security report that said such access could lead to "a large scale election fraud" and could happen in less than a minute of unfettered access.

"Does this not require a hand count of each ballot at this point, or an IT audit to verify that no information was accessed, no software installed and no virus exists in the system?" Van Flein wrote in his letter to elections officials.

Van Flein, also a family lawyer for former Gov. Sarah Palin, said the observer used an iPhone to text while observing the count, claiming that the observer could have been "texting" private voter information. Mike was also observed writing notes by hand about voters, Van Flein said.

As a result, Van Flein is requesting troopers be posted at each regional office until the ballots are counted.

Miller spokesman Randy DeSoto claimed over the weekend that calls were going out to Republican primary voters asking which candidate they cast their absentee ballot for. DeSoto pointed a finger at the NRSC.

"It is definitely not being done by the Joe Miller campaign. It is being done, I believe, by the National Republican Senatorial Committee or someone they contracted with as the beginning of a legal battle to throw out ballots," he told the Anchorage Daily News.

The NRSC and the Murkowski campaign both denied they were phoning voters in the state.

The first round of absentee ballots will be counted Tuesday. According to the state division of elections, more than 7,000 absentees will be tallied in the initial count, with subsequent counts set for Sept. 3 and 8.