KY Sen: Rand Paul Loses 6 Points, Conway Gains 7

Here’s a poll result that runs counter to the media’s GOP-ascendant narrative, so you probably won’t hear about it on television. In the latest Bluegrass Poll from Kentucky, Democrat Jack Conway has pulled up within two points of Christian libertarian tea-party Republican Rand Paul:

The poll shows that Conway, the state’s attorney general, is now appealing to voters who say they are neutral on the tea party — Paul’s base of support.

And Conway is building a significant lead among women, who earlier were almost evenly split between the two candidates.

According to the poll, Paul leads Conway 49 percent to 47 percent, with 4 percent undecided. That lead is well within the poll’s 4 percentage point margin of error…

The previous Bluegrass poll, released the first week of September, showed Paul leading Conway 55 percent to 40 percent.

Another fact that gets lost in the coverage of the Conway-Paul race is that they are running to succeed Sen. Jim Bunning, whose right-wing views are so extreme that he might as well be a tea bagger. In that sense, if Conway wins the seat, it will be a double pick-up for the Dems.

Dems Building Firewall in California? Brown, Boxer Leading – U.S. House Generic Poll Gives Dems 13 Point Advantage Statewide

In the race for California governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, the state’s attorney general and former governor, has led billionaire former eBay executive Meg Whitman slightly in three out of four recent polls and the fourth was a tie. In the Senate race, Democrat Barbara Boxer has seen her lead over the Republican candidate, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, grow incrementally in three recent polls.

Results from the new Los Angeles Times/USC poll out today show that, in the race for governor, Brown is ahead by 5 points, 49 percent to 44 percent. Whitman has spent $120 million of her money on her campaign, so far, while Brown has only spent what amounts to a fraction of that.

While generic polls on House races nationwide show the parties even or Republicans a few points ahead, in California Dems lead in the generic by 13 points, with 51 percent for Democrats and 38 percent for Republicans.

The same poll found that Boxer’s lead over Fiorina appears to be expanding when compared with other recent polls. In the Times poll, Boxer is ahead by 8 points, 51 percent to 43 percent. (Boxer’s 51 percent represents the first time any of the four candidates for the two big offices has been over 50 percent in the past few weeks.)

A SurveyUSA poll [PDF] conducted on Sept. 19 for a consortium of local TV news channels statewide, including KABC in Los Angeles, found Brown with 46 percent and Whitman with 43 percent.

The same poll put Boxer at 49 percent and Fiorina at 43 percent — the same result Fiorina received in the new Times poll. (This was a reversal from the previous SurveyUSA poll, which had Fiorina in the lead 48-46.)

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NV Sen: Angle Says Woman Attacked at Event by Tea Bagger Thug Was Asking for It

If you’re just tuning into the story about the fracas at a Harry Reid-Sharron Angle campaign event in Nevada Thursday night, here’s how the local NBC station reported the incident:

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CA Sen: Fiorina’s Sexist Ad Attacking Boxer – Would GOP Be Outraged if a Male Lawmaker Asked a General to Call Him Senator?

Really, Carly, is this all you’ve got?

Fiorina, the disgraced HP executive who is running against Sen. Barbara Boxer in California, has released a new ad that she hopes will turn one of the GOP’s pet peeves about Boxer into a firestorm of controversy:

A week after her rival, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, aired spots attacking her tenure as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, Fiorina’s first general election ad uses campaign footage from a well-known exchange between Boxer and Army Corps of Engineers Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh at a hearing more than a year ago [in June 2009] of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, which Boxer chairs.

In the brief clip used by Fiorina’s team, Boxer has interrupted Walsh after he’s addressed her as ‘Ma’am’: “You know, do me a favor. Could you say ‘Senator’ instead of ‘Ma’am’? It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it,” Boxer says to Walsh.

Yeah, how dare Sen. Boxer ask to be addressed by her proper title? Who does she think she is?

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Christine O’Donnell Says Govt ‘Czars’ Are Unconstitutional – Is She Really That Stupid?

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“Article 1, Section 9 says no title of nobility should granted by the United States, there you go. I would say to President Obama that czar is a title of nobility and therefore unconstitutional.”

Delaware GOP-tea party candidate Christine O’Donnnell, who appears not to know that “czar” is not an official title or that Reagan had a “drug czar” to oversee Nancy’s pet project, the “war on drugs,” or that George W. Bush had 32 czars on his staff.

CA Gov: Brown Gives Voters a Dose of Reality, Contrasts Whitman’s Platinum Plated Bombast

It’s probably because I’m numb from the constant barrage of Meg Whitman ads — and I don’t mean to oversell it — but this new ad from Jerry Brown is, I have to say it, refreshing. Here’s the transcript:

Our state is in a real mess. And I’m not going to give you any phony plans or snappy slogans that don’t go anywhere. We have to make some tough decisions. We have to live within our means, we’ve got to take the power from the state capital and move it down to the local level, closer to the people. And no new taxes without voter approval. We’ve got to pull together not as Republicans or as Democrats, but as Californians first. And at this stage in my life, I’m prepared to do exactly that.

Confusing Tea Baggers with the Facts Again: Like Murkowski, O’Donnell Ran Write-In Campaign in 2006

Tea baggers hurling the “sore loser” insult at Sen. Lisa Murkowski for announcing she will be a write-in candidate this fall should remember 2006, according to NPR’s “Political Junkie” Ken Rudin. That was the year Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell did the same thing.

An e-mail from the Tea Party Express on Sunday said that by waging her write-in effort, Murkowski “showed utter contempt for the people of Alaska who rejected her candidacy in the Republican primary.”

O’Donnell was the “sore loser” in 2006

Levi Russell, the communications director of the TPE, added, “Senator Murkowski is a sore loser. Not all the hanging chads in the world can undo the fact that she lost…

Chuck DeVore, the conservative California assemblyman who lost the GOP Senate primary this year, had this to say on Friday: “Blatantly disrespecting voters in Alaska, Murkowski decided that primary results didn’t matter.”

Amy Kremer, the chairman of the Tea Party Express, said this… “She was fired by the people of Alaska. They said it was time for her to go…”

And Sarah Palin, a Murkowski foe whose backing for the ultimate primary winner, Joe Miller, was seen as crucial, Tweeted this: “Primary voters spoke. Listen to the people, respect their will; w/a 40-pt incumbent lead & $2.8 million war chest, voters chose Joe instead.”

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Verbatim

What happened in my particular race, you had the Tea Party Express, this California-based group, come in at the last minute in a campaign, run a mudslinging, smear — just a terrible, terrible campaign, with lies and fabrications and mischaracterization.They came in, they dumped $600,000 into a small market here in Alaska, and they absolutely clearly influenced the outcome of that election … I don’t think that it’s particularly helpful [for Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)] to undercut fellow Republicans, but as I say, it’s his prerogative … I think that he has made people uncomfortable. I think that he has kind of rattled the cages. Whether it advances to a full-on civil war, I don’t know.

– Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) on CNN’s “State of the Union,” on Sunday.