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:
* To understand just how serious women's health and reproductive rights are as a 2012 campaign issue, consider Mitt Romney's new ad, pretending he's a relative moderate, while saying the debt (which his running mate helped create) is more important.
* In Nevada, a new SurveyUSA poll for the Las Vegas Review-Journal shows President Obama leading Romney by three, 48% to 45%. A week ago, the president was ahead by one.
* On the heels of its $170 million haul in September, the Romney campaign has launched a new $12 million ad buy in all nine battleground states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
* Making matters slightly worse for Obama's re-election bid, Karl Rove's attack operation, American Crossroads, is launching an $11 million ad campaign in eight battleground states -- the same as Romney's, sans Wisconsin.
* Rove's Crossroads GPS, meanwhile, is investing another $5 million in attack ads targeting Democratic Senate campaigns in Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
* The race for the presidency at the national level is extremely close, but the race for rural voters is not -- Romney leads the president by 22 points, according to the National Rural Assembly.
* In Connecticut's increasingly interesting U.S. Senate race, a new Siena poll shows Rep. Chris Murphy (D) leading wrestling executive Linda McMahon (R) by only two, 46% to 44%.
* The same Siena poll, by the way, shows Obama leading Romney in Connecticut, 53% to 38%. Some recent polling suggest the Nutmeg State might be more competitive at the presidential level.
