Today’s installment of campaign-related news items that won’t necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* Over the weekend, Ron Paul won the straw poll at the religious right’s Values Voters Summit, thanks to a last-day influx of Paul supporters to help skew the results. Herman Cain was second with 16%, and Rick Santorum was third with 16%.
* The latest WMUR Granite State Poll in New Hampshire shows Mitt Romney continuing to enjoy a comfortable lead in the state, out in front with 37% support. Herman Cain is a distant second with 12%, and no other candidate is in double digits.
* Speaking of New Hampshire, Jon Huntsman is in the Granite State, delivering a “major” foreign policy speech. Among other things, Huntsman will say he supports a pre-emptive military strike on Iran to prevent the country from having nuclear arms.
* In Massachusetts, the latest Western New England University poll shows Sen. Scott Brown (R) leading Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren by five, 47% to 42%, thanks to a big lead among independents. The same poll found Warren’s career as a Harvard professor is unlikely to hurt her campaign.
* The latest evidence that Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is moving in the wrong direction is the closing of her campaign headquarters in a D.C. suburb. Bachmann’s new headquarters has apparently been relocated to Iowa.
* Rick Santorum will continue to struggle to persuade his party’s establishment that he’s a credible candidate so long as his fundraising remains weak.
* In Indiana, FreedomWorks is rallying behind Richard Mourdock in his GOP primary campaign against incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar (R).
* And in New Jersey, the most recent Fairleigh Dickinson poll shows incumbent Sen. Bob Menendez (D) with very large leads over his GOP challengers, though he is slightly below the 50% threshold.
