The 2010 Midterm Elections: What's Happening in the Hot Races

The Labor Day weekend is the traditional starting point for general election campaigns, and races for the House, Senate and governors' seats are moving into high gear, particularly now that nearly all of the primary contests are settled. There's one more big round of primaries to go on Sept. 14.

You can track how the campaigns are going at Politics Daily's Poll Watch.

Here's a wrap-up of what's happening in some of those races:

Colorado

In Scrambled Governor's Race, Tancredo Vows He's There to Stay

The Republican campaign for governor in Colorado has so far been a contest of Mutually Assured Destruction with a healthy dose of self-destruction.

First, former Rep. Scott McInnis, the front-runner in the GOP primary, found himself bedeviled by disclosures of plagiarism in a public policy paper he had written. The GOP establishment then begged the winner of the primary, businessman Dan Maes, to drop out after reports he had misrepresented the law-enforcement work he did while a cop in Kansas.

Former Republican congressman and anti-illegal immigration firebrand Tom Tancredo had warned both before the primary to drop out because they couldn't win, or he would run as a third-party candidate (something that polls clearly indicated would split the GOP vote and hand the governorship to Democrat John Hickenlooper).

On Friday, Maes refused to drop out and the secretary of state certified him as the Republican nominee.

That prompted a new round of questions for Tancredo about whether he'd stay in the race, which produced what perhaps may turn out to be the most memorable quote on that side of the campaign:

"I don't care if [the Republicans] bring back Abraham Lincoln to run," Tancredo said, according to The Denver Post. "From this moment on, I'm never going to answer this question again. I'm here to stay."

Wisconsin

Newcomer Ron Johnson Expected to Breeze Through GOP Senate Primary

Plastics manufacturer and political newcomer Ron Johnson already has the Wisconsin state GOP's endorsement to run against Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold, but he still needs to win a Sept. 14 primary -- something he is expected to do easily against two barely known and very underfinanced candidates.

Feingold, seeking his fourth term, had at one time been considered a shoo-in for re-election, especially after former Gov. Tommy Thompson decided not to challenge him.

But Feingold now finds himself in a likely dogfight with Johnson. The two have been statistically tied in six Rasmussen Reports polls dating to late May. The New York Times says that Feingold's polls show him in "an unexpectedly tough race" against a challenger who so far has already spent three times as much as he has.

Johnson's remaining challengers for the GOP nomination are businessman Dave Westlake and late entry Stephen Finn, whose campaign site says he has "worked steadily in the construction industry, specifically plumbing" although the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in a roundup on the GOP race on Sunday, said Finn has "been mostly unemployed since early 2009, and he is on the verge of losing his south side Milwaukee home to foreclosure."

The Journal Sentinel says Westlake has been campaigning as a "hard-line conservative and self-described constitutional purist" and says Johnson is not ready for prime-time.

A profile of Johnson last May by conservative columnist George Will said Johnson described Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" as his "foundational book." Will says Johnson "gets much of his meat from The Wall Street Journal's opinion pages."

South Carolina

Seniority May Hurt, Not Help, 14-Term Democrat John Spratt

After 28 years in Washington, Democratic Rep. John Spratt has risen to be chairman of the House Budget Committee -- and, instead of voters seeing that as a boon for the state, it may turn out to be an albatross around his neck, according to a look at his re-election campaign by The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper.

Spratt's incumbency in past years would have pointed to an easy return to the House. But The State says that his Republican opponent, state Sen. Michael Mulvaney, has been able to tap into "the palpable anger over the long economic downturn and the loss of jobs, paired with deep skepticism over bank bailouts, federal stimulus spending and health care reform."

The national GOP has targeted the north-central South Carolina district, which includes the suburbs of Charlotte, as a key race. Democratic leaders are nervous enough about it that The New York Times reported Sunday it may be one of the districts where national leaders redirect campaign money to contests where they have a better chance of holding seats. CQ Politics rates the race as a toss-up.

Isaac Wood, who tracks House races at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, told The State that normally, "the cachet of carrying the title of congressional chair is good for any election," but Woods said that this year, "If there is one committee I would not want to be chairman of, it would be budget."

The Crystal Ball website, run by the Center's Larry Sabato, also considers the race a toss-up.

Kentucky

Rand Paul Takes Big Lead in Senate Race

Republican nominee and Tea Party favorite Rand Paul has opened up a 15-point lead over Democrat Jack Conway in Kentucky's Senate race, according to a SurveyUSA poll conducted Aug. 30-Sept. 1 for The Louisville Journal-Courier and WHAS11.

Paul leads Conway, the state's attorney general, by 55 percent to 40 percent, with 5 percent undecided.

Paul is getting far more support from fellow Republicans than Conway is from Democrats and, in a state where some political writers have said many Democrats resemble Republicans, Paul is also attracting a healthy share of voters from that party.

While 82 percent of Republicans support Paul, only 64 percent of Democrats are backing Conway. Paul is taking almost a third of the Democratic vote.

Paul leads by 56 percent to 34 percent among independents (10 percent of the sample), with 10 percent undecided.

Paul predictably pulls in 80 percent of the votes of self-described conservatives (46 percent of the sample) while Conway leads by 58 percent to 38 percent among moderates (36 percent of the sample).

Paul holds better than a 2-to-1 lead among male voters while the two candidates divide the women's vote.

Democratic campaign consultant Danny Briscoe told the Courier-Journal that the numbers were "awful" for Conway and that, "I just think it's a Republican year in Kentucky."

Illinois

GOP's Bill Brady Out in Front of Democrat Pat Quinn in Governor's Race

Republican state Sen. Bill Brady is leading Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois' gubernatorial race by 37 percent to 32 percent, with 19 percent undecided, according to a Chicago Tribune/WGN-TV poll published Sunday.

There are three minor party candidates in the race. Scott Lee Cohen, who withdrew as the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in February after disclosures that he had engaged in domestic abuse and failed to pay back taxes and child support, has re-emerged as an independent. The millionaire pawnbroker, who has money to invest in his own campaign, polled 4 percent.

Green Party candidate Rich Whitney and Libertarian Lex Green each had 2 percent.

The poll found, as have others, that while Brady is not well known around the state, that disadvantage is offset by Quinn's high disapproval ratings from voters.

The Tribune said "a telling sign" for Quinn is that 70 percent of voters don't believe he has done enough to curb corruption despite his efforts to portray himself as someone who restored trust in government after the ouster of his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich.

Ohio

Republicans Poised to Sweep State Races Including Senate and Governor

Republican candidates have jumped out to double-digit leads in both the governor's and Senate races, according to a Columbus Dispatch poll conducted Aug. 25 -Sept. 3.

In the gubernatorial contest, former Republican Rep. John Kasich leads Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland by 49 percent to 37 percent, with 4 percent preferring some other candidate and 10 percent undecided.

For the Senate seat being vacated by the GOP's George Voinovich, former Bush cabinet member and congressman Rob Portman leads Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher by 50 percent to 37 percent, with 3 percent preferring another choice and 9 percent undecided.

The margin of error is 2.2 points.

The Dispatch poll found that "the supporters of every statewide GOP candidate (including such posts as attorney general and secretary of state) are two to three times as likely as those who are backing the Democratic candidate to say they are more enthused than usual for this year's election."

A sweep of those offices could "return Ohio to the all-Republican rule that the state experienced from 1995 through 2006," the paper said.

Read all of Politics Daily's political coverage at the 2010 Elections Round-Up