INDIANA: “If Democrats get their way in Indiana, when voters think of Richard Mourdock, they will also think of Ken Buck, the flawed 2010 Senate Republican nominee who squandered a ripe pickup opportunity in Colorado. The comparison has its merits. But there is a big difference between Indiana in 2012 and Colorado in 2010. And there's a case to be made that as bad as his campaign turned out, Buck would have won a state resembling the demographic and political makeup of Indiana – comfortably,” Hotline reports.
MASSACHUSETTS: "Harvard University isn’t the only one of Elizabeth Warren’s employers to have described her as a minority; so did the University of Pennsylvania. According to Penn’s 2005 “Minority Equity Report,” it too identified Warren, who taught there from 1987 to 1995, as a minority," The Washington Post reports.
TEXAS: "Ron Paul is a tough act to follow, and the major Republican candidates running to replace him in Congress are not even trying. It is hard enough to get voters to remember their names — there are nine Republicans running — in an election that is rife with confusion because of a delayed primary date and redrawn boundaries," The Texas Tribune (via The New York Times) writes. "And for all the hero worship Mr. Paul has cultivated among a small but vocal subset of the electorate, nobody is rushing to imitate “Dr. No.”"
WISCONSIN: "The Koch brothers and Big Labor. The tea party and progressives. Teachers, gun owners, environmentalists, abortion-rights advocates, conservative billionaires, the national parties — name the interest group or outside party and chances are they’ve played a role in the June 5 recall campaign against Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker," Politico writes. "Whether it’s the casino mogul who financed Newt Gingrich’s super PAC, the billionaire who bankrolled the Swift Boats ad campaign against John Kerry or President Barack Obama’s reelection arm, in one way or another, everybody who is anybody is involved in what’s become one of the biggest political spectacles in decades. And now it’s come down to a 4-week mad dash to determine not only the Wisconsin governorship but who occupies the commanding heights in the 2012 election."
"A filmmaker released a video Thursday that shows Gov. Scott Walker saying he would use "divide and conquer" as a strategy against unions. Walker made the comments to Beloit billionaire Diane Hendricks, who has since given $510,000 to the governor's campaign - making her Walker's single-largest donor and the largest known donor to a candidate in state history. The filmmaker has done work on Democratic campaigns and gave $100 in 2010 to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker's challenger in the June 5 recall election. In the video shot on Jan. 18, 2011 - shortly before Walker's controversial budget-repair bill was introduced and spawned mass protests - Hendricks asked the governor whether he could make Wisconsin a "completely red state, and work on these unions, and become a right-to-work" state. The Republican donor was referring to right-to-work laws, which prohibit private-sector unions from compelling workers to pay union dues if the workers choose not to belong to the union. Walker replied that his "first step" would be "to divide and conquer" through his budget-adjustment bill, which curtailed most collective bargaining for most public employee unions," The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
