WEDNESDAY’S CAMPAIGN ROUND-UP…. 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.
* National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas) wants the party’s base to be more tolerant of moderate candidates. The Texas senator said conservatives “have to yield to the world as it is and not necessarily how they wish it would be.” That’s not going to go over well.
* Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who switched parties yesterday, will “refund campaign contributions to any donors who ask for their money back.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wants its money back.
* In a big setback for his Senate campaign, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) lost the support of two prominent Florida Republicans who’d already endorsed his candidacy. Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) withdrew their endorsements yesterday, and when asked why, one cryptically replied, “He knows why.”
* On a related note, it looks increasingly as if the “Florida Republican Party organization is now in the midst of a civil war, with the latest shoe to drop being that embattled party chairman Jim Greer has called for a special executive committee meeting, in response to a request that he be ousted as chairman.”
* A year before the midterms, a survey from Public Policy Polling suggests Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is not particularly vulnerable.
* A Republican pollster finds a very competitive GOP field in next year’s gubernatorial race in South Carolina. The leading candidates — state Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer — are currently tied at 22% each.
* Former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton (R), running for the Senate in Colorado next year, is still working to curry favor with right-wing activists, no matter how extreme they are.
* And in Arizona, former Rep. J.D. Hayworth has not yet launched a primary campaign against Sen. John McCain, but in light of the possibility, the two camps are already going at it.
