TOP OF THE BALLOT TODAY: It's FEC day!; Dems line up Fair Tax hits; Flordia Gov. Charlie Crist (R) leads in the Senate race -- as an independent; and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter (D) creeps up on Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) in Arkansas primary.
FEC reports due today
Happy Tax Day! Or, as campaign nerds like to call it, first-quarter FEC day.
That’s right, today is the last day for congressional candidates to get their reports in. More often than not, the really big reports have already been announced. Today, we deal with those who didn’t feel quite so much urgency to release their numbers early.
One of them is Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D) who released his Senate campaign’s numbers Wednesday evening. Fisher raised just $550,000, which is his lowest to date and less than one-quarter of what Rep. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) raised in the first quarter.
Former New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte (R), meanwhile, announced around midnight that she had outraised Rep. Paul Hodes (D) – albeit slightly – in their Senate contest. While Hodes raised $665,000, Ayotte raised just more than $670,000. The big news in the race, though, might be the $3 million that businessman Bill Binnie (R) has self-funded.
Utah attorney Mike Lee (R) raised $115,000 and self-funded $20,000 in the first quarter for his primary campaign against Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), his campaign told The Hill on Wednesday.
Lee, who got in the race at the start of the first quarter and is seen by insiders as an attractive alternative to Bennett, had $85,000 in the bank at the end of March.
Lee is one of several Republicans hoping to unseat Bennett at the state GOP convention on May 8. If Bennett survives the convention with at least 40 percent of the vote, he and another candidate will go to a June primary.
Another Republican running against Bennett, former congressional candidate Tim Bridgewater, raised $20,000 in the first quarter. But thanks to an additional $30,000 loan (he has now self-funded $300,000 total), he had $258,000 in the bank.
Bennett, activist Cherilyn Eagar and former Rep. Merrill Cook (R-Utah) have yet to announce their totals.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) is leaving the Senate, but he's not going quietly.
Bunning on Wednesday announced that he will support Rand Paul in the GOP primary to take his seat. The move will be seen as a direct affront to the state's other senator, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and the GOP candidate he is more closely tied to, Secretary of State Trey Grayson.
“Kentucky needs a conservative who will say no to bailouts, stop the government takeover of our economy, end wasteful spending, and bring down our national debt," Bunning said. "And Kentucky’s families need a conservative who believes in traditional values and the rights of the unborn. In 2010, there is only one such conservative running for the United States Senate -- Dr. Rand Paul."
Paul has led in the polls and been step-for-step with Grayson on the fundraising front, but he has yet to draw much in the way of establishment support in the race.
Bunning publicly feuded with GOP leadership last year, as McConnell and others waged a campaign to get him to retire in the face of a difficult reelection bid.
The endorsement is also interesting because Grayson has been referred to as Bunning's political protege. And when Grayson got in the race before Bunning's retirement announcement, he said that he had Bunning's blessing to launch a campaign.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) may have avoided a challenge from former Gov. George Pataki (R), but other Republicans aren't shying away from getting in the race.
Economist David Malpass (R) announced his run at City Hall in New York Wednesday.
[Malpass] stood with leading fiscal conservative and magazine publisher Steve Forbes and John Faso, who ran for governor in 2006 on the GOP line. Faso is close with Ed Cox, chairman of the state Republican Party. Malpass charged Gillibrand and fellow N.Y. Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer are ignoring New Yorkers' needs.
Malpass - a Republican who worked for President Reagan, the elder President George Bush and Rudy Giuliani in his 2008 presidential bid - said Gillibrand and Schumer are not sticking up for Wall Street firms in the current debate over financial regulation in Washington. He also criticized them for failing to stand up for Israel or challenge earlier plans to hold a Sept. 11 terror trial in downtown Manhattan.
"They're really in lockstep with the Washington agenda and not the New York agenda," Malpass said on the steps of City Hall.
He also criticized Gillibrand for funding the embattled ACORN.
Businessman Bill Binnie plugged another $1.7 million of his own money into the New Hampshire GOP Senate primary in the first quarter.
The money brings his total investment in the race to nearly $3 million and serves notice that the frontrunner Republican, former state Attorney General Kelly Ayotte, will almost surely be outspent in the primary.
Binnie's campaign also raised $400,000 for the quarter, bringing its total receipts to $2.1 million for the quarter and $3.7 million overall.
Ayotte raised about $1.2 million through the end of the year. She has not released first-quarter totals.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.) has raised close to $3 million for the race, including $655,000 in the first quarter.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) on Wednesday said he still has no political plans in his immediate future, although he passed up a chance to rule out a third run for governor.
A two-term governor of the Hoosier State from 1989 to 1997 and a senator since 1999, Bayh in February announced he won't run for a third senatorial term this year. In a subsequent interview with The Hill, he repeated his retirement pledge and said he had made no decisions on his future although he did not want to become "politically irrelevant."
On Wednesday, Bayh said he still has no political plans and wouldn't rule a gubernatorial bid in or out.
"I loved being governor, but I've got no political plans," he said. "I literally have not decided what I'm going to be doing next year, political or otherwise. I'm going to serve out my term, and we've got important elections in November. But regarding my future plans, my deal with my wife is that she's going to be the first to know."
Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.), who is challenging Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) in the Democratic Senate primary, cited Specter's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement in his pushback against the senator's three new TV ads.
"Pennsylvania workers have lived the effects of Arlen Specter's failed economic policies for 30 years," the Sestak campaign said in a statement. "NAFTA has cost 45,000 Pennsylvanians their jobs. It displaced hundreds of thousands of workers into lower-wage positions, exploded our trade deficit, and dealt a major blow to American manufacturing."
Specter released three TV spots Wednesday that are airing in "various locales across the state," according to his campaign. The ads feature blue-collar workers who say that the Democrat helped them land jobs or protected their pensions. Consultant Chris Mottola produced the spots.
They're the first TV ads of the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic primary.
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