Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:<\/p>\n
* Michigan Gov. [tag]Jennifer Granholm[\/tag] (D) is the most vulnerable Dem incumbent governor in the country, but she may finally be fighting herself off the ropes<\/a>. Though several recent polls have shows Amway heir [tag]Dick DeVos[\/tag] (R) ahead in the race, a new poll from the Detroit News shows Granholm back in the lead, 47% to 44%. The paper noted that this is her first lead since February. Another possible asset for Granholm: the poll showed voters have an unfavorable view of Amway by more than a 2-1 margin.<\/p>\n * Ohio’s gubernatorial campaign took another ugly turn thanks to a smear campaign launched by an employee of the state Republican Party. As the Columbus Dispatch noted, [tag]Gary Lankford[\/tag], hired by the Ohio GOP in July as its “social conservative coordinator,” sent an email<\/a> to an undisclosed group of GOP supporters — with instructions to forward it to others — accusing Dem candidate [tag]Ted Strickland[\/tag] and his wife of being gay. The state Republican Party is verbally disavowing the email, but GOP officials “did not distribute a follow-up e-mail or take any other action to repudiate the e-mail.”<\/p>\n * Zogby did two polls<\/a> for Virginia’s Senate race simultaneously, one using the traditional phone method, the other through its controversial online polls. Both showed Sen. [tag]George Allen[\/tag] (R) leading [tag]James Webb[\/tag] (D) by about 10 points. As Taegan Goddard noted<\/a>, “The telephone survey found Allen leading Webb, 47% to 37%. The interactive survey found Allen ahead 52% to 41%.” John Zogby argued Webb’s weak fundraising to date is hurting his chances considerably.<\/p>\n * Sen. Sen. [tag]Jim Bunning[\/tag] (R-Ken.) announced this week that he will run<\/a> for a third term in 2010. Just two years ago, Bunning narrowly defeated<\/a> state Sen. Dan Mongiardo (D), 51% to 49%, in a race that wasn’t supposed to be competitive, following a series of embarrassing incidents<\/a> that suggested Bunning’s mental state had deteriorated.<\/p>\n * And to follow up on an item<\/a> from last week, retired basketball player [tag]Charles Barkley[\/tag], who admitted recently that he “used to be a Republican, before they lost their minds,” is again considering a gubernatorial campaign<\/a>. “Alabama, that’s my home. I’m thinking about running for governor; they need the help,” Barkley said. Considering his change in party affiliation, Barkley’s comments were well received by Joe Turnham, Alabama’s Democratic Party chairman. “I say welcome Charles Barkley. Charles Barkley has been a Horatio Alger story for many people, not only in sports but in business and broadcasting,” Turnham said Wednesday. As the AP noted, Turnham said he plans to contact Barkley and invite him to some events the party has coming up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that wouldn’t generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers: * Michigan Gov. [tag]Jennifer Granholm[\/tag] (D) is the most vulnerable Dem incumbent governor in the country, but she may finally be fighting herself off the ropes. Though several recent polls have shows Amway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8047","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8047\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}