How short did the Romney campaign fall in 2012? If he had moved 429,000 votes in four states, he would have finished with 270 electoral votes — and won the presidency.

SmartMediaGroup.com has a great graphic on which counties a Republican must win, in which counties he (or she) must improve upon Romney’s performance, and in which counties the candidate must narrow the gap:

According to quarterly reports filed by April 15 with the Virginia Public Access Project, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has spent $761,895 on his gubernatorial bid so far.

The category where he has spent the most is “staff/political consultants,” at $481,077. After that is “TV/Radio,” at $75,033, and “Office Rent/Utilities,” at $55,586.

McAuliffe’s largest single expenditure is to the Internal Revenue Service, paying them $125,807. His second-largest was $75,033 to Shorr Johnson Magnus, a Democratic political-media firm based in Philadelphia, and his third-highest expenditure was $50,038 to “Paris Associates LP,” which appears to be an Arlington, Va., property manager.

His campaign’s smallest single expense is $4, spent at the Harris Teeter in Matthews, North Carolina.

So far, Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli has spent $568,659 on his gubernatorial bid. His highest expenditure is also “staff/political consultants,” at $219,715. Second-highest is “Mail/Printing/Postage,” at $114,676, and his third-highest is “fundraising,” at $88,029.

The Cuccinelli campaign’s largest single expenditure was $73,492 to The Printing Express; the second-largest was $40,000 to Advancing Strategies LLC, and the third-highest was to the U.S. Treasury.

On January 23, the Cuccinelli campaign paid $1 to the City of Richmond City Council.

Senator Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat who declared Obamacare a “train wreck” and voted against the Toomey-Manchin background-check proposal, will retire instead of running for reelection in 2014.

I suppose some Democrats will insist Baucus did this because he feared the consequences of opposing gun control and standing with the NRA . . . in Montana.

I’m hearing some GOP pessimism, as they fear Governor Brian Schweitzer will run instead. But Schweitzer will face the same questions as any red-state Democrat: Does he think Obamacare is a “train wreck”? Would he have opposed Toomey-Manchin?

And Schweitzer’s colorful personality may create other complications, with past comments like, “I am not goofy enough to be in the House, and I’m not senile enough to be in the Senate.”

“Schweitzer for Senate 2014: Because senility has finally kicked in.”

Two Republicans have already announced Senate bids: state representative Richard Champion “Champ” Edmunds Jr. and former state senator Corey C. Stapleton.

“He’s raising money from out of state!” has never quite been the devastating attack that campaigns seem to think it is. But in Virginia, there is at least some difference between the two major candidates in where their biggest donors reside.

The Virginia Public Access Project, which collects and organizes state-campaign finance data, allows you to sort the candidates’ donations by which zip code the donor lists as his residence.

So far this year, Republican Ken Cuccinelli has raised $4.3 million; Terry McAuliffe has raised $6.7 million.

Sixteen of Cuccinelli’s top 25 zip codes for fundraising are in Virginia. His top zip code is Washington, D.C., where the Republican Governors Association gave him $1 million on March 29.

His top 20 include Roanoke (two different zip codes), Bristol, Richmond (four different zip codes), McLean (two different zip does), Centreville, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Abingdon (two different zip codes), Herndon, Burke, and Clifton.

Only five of McAuliffe’s top 25 zip codes are in Virginia — three in McLean, one in Richmond, one in Norfolk. His top zip code is a familiar one, 90210, where billionaire Power Rangers producer Haim Saban gave him $250,000. His other top locales include New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Chappaqua, New York, where Bill Clinton donated $100,000 on March 22.

The Washington Post asks Americans how they feel about President George W. Bush today, and the results may surprise his critics:

Days before his second term ended in 2009, Bush’s approval rating among all adults was 33 percent positive and 66 percent negative. The new poll found 47 percent saying they approve and 50 percent saying they disapprove. Among registered voters, his approval rating today is equal to President Obama’s, at 47 percent, according to the latest Post-ABC surveys.

Apparently Douglas Adams was off by a bit; the answer isn’t “42,” it’s “47 percent.”

I wonder how Virginia Democrats feel about their gubernatorial candidate, Terry McAuliffe, taking five-figure checks in 2009 from mogul Donald Trump, who publicly argued that President Obama’s birth certificate may not be authentic.

Donald Trump is just one of many big name donors funding Terry McAuliffe’s campaign to win the Virginia governor’s mansion this fall, according to newly released financial disclosure reports — and he isn’t even among the most generous givers.

The New York real estate magnate cut McAuliffe a check for a whopping $25,000 in late March, but that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the largest single donation in McAuliffe’s report — a $251,000 gift from billionaire media tycoon Haim Saban in January. That check narrowly bested a $250,000 contribution the following month from Steve Bing, another big fish in the entertainment industry.

McAuliffe raised $4.2 million in the first quarter of 2009, and thanks to Virginia’s permissive fundraising laws, more than 80 percent of his cash came from donors who live outside the state.

The campaign of Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and the Virginia GOP have been pretty relentless in demanding McAuliffe release his tax returns for recent years. The latest from the Cuccinelli team:

Last July, the Virginian-Pilot editorial board called on Mitt Romney to release his tax returns to “provide a consistent measure of transparency” and said not doing so suggested he had “something to hide.”

Last Thursday, in the spirit of transparency, Ken Cuccinelli released eight years of returns. So far, the McAuliffe campaign has been mum on whether they intend to follow suit. If McAuliffe decides not to release his returns, at the very least, he should explain his reasoning. As is the case with any important election, voters deserve more information, not less.

More on the tax-return issue to come . . .

The Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt features a look at some utterly inappropriate responses to the Boston bombing, some polling news that probably depressed the folks at the Huffington Post, a graphic for those who don’t want the immigration bill rushed, and then this intriguing new poll result:

Organizing for Action’s Big Talk on Another Gun-Control Vote

After the defeat of the Toomey-Manchin compromise, you’re hearing a lot of gun-control advocates left in a combination of sputtering disbelief and rage. Midday Monday, Organizing for Action — formerly Obama for America — sent out a message that mentioned the “90 percent of Americans support this” statistic twice, concluding, “90 percent of this country is on our side, not theirs. If we all step up, we will be heard. And we will win the next vote.”

So they think there’s going to be another gun vote sometime soon. Say, as we get closer to Election Day 2014, does this vote get easier or harder for red-state Democrats? Do Kay Hagan in North Carolina and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana stay on board? Or do they feel even greater pressure to put daylight between themselves and, say, Mike Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns?

Of course, if you want to pass something like Toomey-Manchin, you have to persuade Democratic senators Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas to switch sides and support the proposal. And in the end, the oft-cited “90 percent” figure clearly doesn’t matter that much to them. A more interesting question is, how do Montanans, Alaskans, North Dakotans, and Arkansans feel? Judging by the votes of those four, the provisions of the Toomey-Manchin proposal weren’t such a slam dunk.

Now USA Today offers a number that demonstrates the wording of the question matters a great deal:

Four months after the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a USA TODAY Poll finds support for a new gun-control law ebbing as prospects for passage on Capitol Hill seem to fade.

Americans are more narrowly divided on the issue than in recent months, and backing for a bill has slipped below 50%, the poll finds. By 49%-45%, those surveyed favor Congress passing a new gun-control law. In an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in early April, 55% had backed a stricter gun law, which was down from 61% in February.

The survey of 1,002 adults was taken Thursday through Sunday by Princeton Survey Research. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points.

Clip and save the big talk from Organizing for Action, by the way. Because after the 2014 Senate primaries are done, when the Democrats’ hopes of retaining the Senate hang on Baucus, Begich and Pryor . . . let’s see how important this vote really is to them. Let’s see if Organizing for Action really is willing to leave these senators alone because of this issue, when they’re neck-and-neck with Republican challengers.

Maybe they’ll prove me wrong. But I’ll bet that as we approach November 2014, Organizing for Action will be sending out a very different message — about how Baucus, Begich and Pryor must be reelected for the sake of the president’s agenda in the next two years.

In an item below, I didn’t capitalize the “G” in the name of Democratic Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald. But as Third Base Politics notices, his campaign is sending out e-mails spelled, “Ed Fitzgerald.”

Apparently this is an enormously big deal to the candidate:

“Effective immediately, regardless of deadlines or emergencies, Ed will no longer sign letters, contracts, documents, etc. that does not have his name spelled properly (Edward FitzGerald),” FitzGerald’s administrative assistant Tanya Hairston wrote. “Additionally, please remember that his last name does have a capital G and should be used accordingly. I have also be informed to please return any documents that does not conform with his instructions to the sender.”

Even in an emergency? Seriously?

So if elected governor, would he not sign a disaster declaration, 11th-hour pardon of a death-row inmate, or key legislation if his name was misspelled? Really?

Re-elect John Kasik Kasich 2014: Because he’s used to having his name misspelled.

Okay, this time, they really mean it: The pain and suffering of Sequester has hit:

Commercial airline flights started backing up and delayed some travelers Monday, a day after air traffic controllers started going on furlough because of government spending cuts.

Good heavens! Why, let’s check on the Federal Aviation Administration web site, to see how terrible and horrible those Sequester delays are . . .

Hm. As of 9:40 a.m., there are 15- to 45-minute general delays at Reagan National, Newark, and Teterboro, and longer delays into LaGuardia. Everywhere else, it’s 15 minutes or less.

In other words, it’s Monday.

Down in South Carolina’s first congressional district, Republican nominee and former governor Mark Sanford is relaunching his campaign with a furiously busy schedule, eager to refocus the race about any topic besides his former marriage, his current fiancée, Jenny Sanford’s accusation of trespassing, or other personal issues.

This weekend his campaign announced “15 in 5” — a series of 15 campaign stops across the district, where he has invited Elizabeth Colbert Busch to “join him and discuss issues jointly with Lowcountry voters.” In news that will surely shock you, Colbert Busch is not expected to appear at this week’s events.

Today’s Sanford events will be at Hay Tire Pros in Mount Pleasant at 11 a.m., Page’s Okra Grill in Mount Pleasant at noon, and Holt Transmission Service in Charleston at 1:30 p.m.

The Charleston Post & Courier notices:

So far, the 1st Congressional District race has featured a little bit of everything — except Republican Mark Sanford and Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch meeting face to face to talk issues.

Only one forum has been set: an April 29 appearance at The Citadel. Other groups, such as the Goose Creek NAACP, are trying to arrange more but with no success to date.

Colbert Busch has not committed to the NAACP’s April 30 forum and was unable to make a South Carolina AARP debate that was to be held April 17. That event was going to be televised, but the April 29 forum is not scheduled to be on TV.

Campaign-related news you may have missed in recent days . . .

OHIO: Democratic Cuyahoga County executive Ed FitzGerald will formally announce he’s running for governor of Ohio this week against incumbent Republican John Kasich. Fitzgerald already has a campaign web site up and running, and is at this point the only Democrat running, something of a surprise. Quite a few Democrats have turned down a race, including former governor Ted Strickland, U.S. representative Tim Ryan, and former U.S. representative Betty Sutton, according to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

MINNESOTA: Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican, announced he will not run against Senator Al Franken in 2014; he said he will focus on running for reelection. No Republicans have announced bids against Franken so far.

NEW MEXICO: State senator Howie Morales, a Democrat, said Friday that he is considering running for governor against Republican governor Susana Martinez. State senator Linda Lopez and state attorney general Gary King are also running on the Democratic side, and there’s some buzz around state senator Tim Keller, last seen lamenting the condition of the state’s economy, taking pride in the state’s $900 million surplus, and complaining about a recent cut in the state’s corporate tax rate. In February, a poll found Martinez enjoying a high approval rating of 64 percent.

CALIFORNIA: Thomas Elias, columnist for the Santa Monica Mercury, says that Republicans are still looking for a top-tier contender to put up against incumbent Jerry Brown in 2014.

It’s almost absurd to think Brown, who has vied with the likes of ex-Gov. Pete Wilson, billionaire Whitman and a sitting attorney general in Evelle Younger, worries much about the Republicans now lining up. If Poizner or some other billionaire capable of writing personal checks to finance a major campaign were to enter the lists, Brown might be given some pause. But right now he looks as secure as any 2014 candidate in America, even though he hasn’t said a word about running.

From the first Morning Jolt of the week:

How Well Is Our FBI Keeping an Eye on Self-Radicalizing Immigrants?

The bombers’ mother may be cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Probably is, in fact. But this . . .

One of the two ethnic Chechens suspected by U.S. officials of being behind the Boston Marathon bombings had been under FBI surveillance for at least three years, his mother said.

Zubeidat Tsarnaeva told the English-language Russia Today state television station in a phone interview, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters, that she believed her sons were innocent and had been framed.

“He (Tamerlan) was ‘controlled’ by the FBI, like, for three to five years,” she said, speaking in English and using the direct English translation of a word in Russian that means monitored.

“They knew what my son was doing, they knew what sites on the Internet he was going to,” she said in what Russia Today described as a call from Makhachkala, where she lives in Russia’s Dagestan region after returning from the United States.

. . . coupled with this . . .

Deceased Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by a foreign government as a “follower of radical Islam and a strong believer” whose personality had changed drastically in just a year, according to the FBI.

As investigators considered possible motives for Monday’s fatal bombings, U.S. authorities acknowledged that an unnamed government had contacted the FBI to say the 26-year-old ethnic Chechen “had changed drastically” since 2010 and was preparing to leave the United States “to join unspecified underground groups,” according to an official statement from the FBI.

U.S. officials have not named the foreign nation, but it is presumed to be Russia. Tsarnaev traveled there in 2012 and stayed for six months.

. . . coupled with this . . .

Department of Homeland Security officials decided in recent months not to grant an application for American citizenship by Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, after a routine background check revealed that he had been interviewed in 2011 by the F.B.I., federal officials said on Saturday.

It had been previously reported that Mr. Tsarnaev’s application might have been held up because of a domestic abuse episode. But the officials said that it was the record of the F.B.I. interview that threw up red flags and halted, at least temporarily, Mr. Tsarnaev’s citizenship application.

Late last year, Homeland Security officials contacted the F.B.I. to learn more about its interview with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, federal law enforcement officials said. The F.B.I. reported its conclusion that he did not present a threat.

At that point, Homeland Security officials did not move to approve the application nor did they deny it, but they left it open for “additional review.”

. . . raises some disturbing questions.

Russia (confirmed) makes its inquiry in 2011; the FBI investigates. Apparently there’s not enough evidence for the FBI to take further action, but “late last year” DHS decides there’s enough suspicion around this guy to delay his citizenship — not enough to deny it — and he’s just left there. Meanwhile, sometime around this time (September 11, 2012) the younger brother gets his citizenship. Then they later decide that whatever they’ve found is sufficient to deny the citizenship . . . but not enough to get him out of the country. (Oh, and somewhere along the line, one or both illegally register to vote.)

For what it’s worth, an unidentified intelligence source tells Jake Tapper that it is “rare” for the “Russians to reach out like that, to ask FBI to look into someone as they did with Tamerlan Tsarnaev.” So obviously, Russia doesn’t ask the FBI to check out every Chechnyan immigrant just out of spite. Tapper also asks a big, big question: Why didn’t the FBI re-interview Tsarnaev after his six months in Russia and Chechnya?

Before we move on to a 844-page immigration-reform bill, whose primary purpose is to say to 11 million people currently in the country illegally, “you can stay and become citizens as long as you do X, Y, and Z,” we need to make sure that our current immigration-law-enforcement institutions are capable of meeting the minimal standard of keeping out those who are here to do us harm. Obviously, this applies to terrorism, but also to the less dramatic crimes that harm Americans — gang membership, drug smuggling and dealing, people smuggling, etc.

We don’t know all the details of the lives of the Boston bombers, but a portrait is starting to take shape.

Presuming what we have seen reported is accurate, this pair came to Kyrgyzstan in 2000-2001 as refugees, and from there into the United States a year later.

The life of an immigrant is rarely easy, but for these two, life seemed to go quite well. They go to good schools and get an education. One went to UMass-Dartmouth. They’re involved in intramural soccer, boxing competitions and tournaments, and the like. One gets U.S. citizenship, and the other becomes a permanent resident on the road to citizenship. At some point, they get registered to vote (illegally for one, or both, depending upon whether they registered to vote before September 11, 2012).

You’re hearing some folks cite these bastards in discussing the immigration bill. While it may be premature, it isn’t insane to look at this horror before us and ask how someone can come to this country, be offered citizenship and then turn around and murder their fellow citizens – a child, a foreign student, a young woman, a cop – in the coldest of blood. Here’s a pair of young men — and who knows, perhaps others — who have every opporunity to assimilate, to live the American dream, to see this country as a home to love…

… and somehow, instead of coming to love the country whose citizenship they sought, instead of appreciating the rare opportunity that luck, fate, and our kind nation has offered, they become the kind of ghouls capable of placing a bomb, filled with nails, next to an eight-year-old boy in the middle of a cheering crowd, and then smiling.

 

Some will say “Islam”, or its radical version, explains their transformation; we’ll know more as we learn more about them.

Of course, only a small fraction of the 11 million illegal immigrants in this country mean us harm (those with ties to gangs, drug cartels, people smugglers, and the like), and perhaps none as coldly and ruthlessly as this pair. But our government chose to give the privilege of citizenship to the man who has effectively shut down the city of Boston today. This week, we have reason for great doubts in our culture’s ability to assimilate those who come here into good Americans, and our government’s ability to examine potential citizens and weed out those who would seek to harm us.

This morning, people are responding in shock at a Buzzfeed report that Djohan and Tamerlan Tsarnaev are registered to vote (complete with screenshots of their voter registration records). People are wondering how the Tsarnaevs could be registered to vote if they were not U.S. citizens.

One report indicates the pair were permanent residents, a legal status that does not permit a person to vote in federal elections:

 Non-U.S. citizens, including permanent residents (green card holders), who vote, or register to vote, in a federal election also can be denied naturalization and/or removed (deported) from the United States. 

There are very few jurisdictions where a non-U.S. citizen may vote in a local election.  However, this web site does not provide information regarding voting qualifications for state and local elections.  You can obtain information regarding voting qualifications in local elections from your local voting authority.  It is important to remember that even if you are allowed to vote in a local election, you are not eligible to vote in a federal election if you are not a U.S. citizen, nor in any other election that requires you to be a U.S. citizen.

A Campaign Spot reader checked the Massachusetts voter database and did not find the name.

The issue may relate to being registered to vote in local elections:

The idea of petitioning to legalize voting for noncitizens in Massachusetts is nothing new. Officials in Amherst, Cambridge and Newton all have approved measures affording local voting rights to noncitizens, but the state Legislature must approve them, something it has not done to date. Cambridge filed a petition in 2004 to allow noncitizens older than the age of 18 to vote in elections for school committee and city council, according to interim city clerk Donna Lopez.

However, the Cambridge Election Commission states, “You may register to vote in Cambridge if you are a US citizen, a resident of Cambridge, and will be at least 18 years old on or before Election Day.”

So the pair should not have been registered to vote… and yet, somehow, they were.

UPDATE: Judicial Watch cites an unnamed source that “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, was rewarded with American Citizenship on September 11, 2012 in Boston.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Peter Baker of the New York Times quotes an unidentified government official who says, “younger Chechen became U.S. citizen last year and the older was in the middle of the process.”

Everybody’s mind is on the quickly-developing manhunt in Massachusetts, but the Morning Jolt will arrive today, keeping an eye on the much-less dramatic political stuff:

Max Baucus: I Can’t Wait to Find The Jerks Who Passed Obamacare and Punish Them!

So this is how Congressional Democrats plan to deal with the coming mess that the implementation of Obamacare will create: pretend they had nothing to do with it, and blame the administration.

Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., scolded Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday over the implementation of President Obama’s health care law. Complaining about confused individuals and small businesses in his state and warning of a coming “train wreck,” at times Baucus sounded more like a Tea Partier than one of the key authors of the legislation that would become known as Obamacare. But his posture during the Finance Committee hearing is also a telling sign that Democrats up for reelection in 2014 are increasingly worried that mangled implementation could put their jobs in jeopardy.

In 2009, five different health care proposals made their way through the relevant committees in the House and Senate. The Finance Committee bill that Baucus authored was the closest to the finished product that Obama signed. Go back and look at Baucus’s bill, and you’ll see most of the law’s key components  there – taxes on insurers, drug companies, medical device manufacturers and high value health care plans; exchanges; the Medicaid expansion; IPAB. Also significant is what wasn’t in the Baucus bill – a public option, which had been a central component of the other proposals circulating through Congress, but was ultimately abandoned.

Rep. Mike Pompeo wrote, in member-to-member letter form, a pretty thorough smack-down of Baucus:

 I was stunned, and also saddened, to read of your complaint that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is doing an insufficient job informing the public about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), otherwise known as Obamacare.  My shock wasn’t because I disagreed: You’re right to say this legislation has led to great uncertainty for hard-working Americans, small business owners, and families.  No, I was shocked because youwrote this bill.  I was saddened because your acknowledgement of the harm caused by PPACA has come so late.

     Unlike you, the American people have opposed this law from the moment it was first introduced in Congress.  How hard was it to see that even the smartest government bureaucrats can’t competently plan something as complicated as America’s health-care sector?

     President Obama’s proposal to rescind the Medicaid disproportionate share hospital payments for 2014 is an admission that this law will not work as written.  The IRS is violating the clear language of this law by planning to spend more than half a trillion dollars and tax millions of employers and individuals without congressional authorization.

     No one in the country bears more responsibility for the complexity of this law than you.  

The next explanation from Baucus will probably be, “It wasn’t me! It was the one-armed man!”

But this illustration from Lachlan Markay says it all:

If this really comes to pass, I will be surprised:

Jon Carson, executive director of Organizing for Action, told the Los Angeles Times / Tribune Washington Bureau on Thursday that the group will train its resources against the 45 senators who opposed the legislation, including Democrats Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Begich of Alaska, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Mark Pryor of Arkansas.

“What is happening right now is the reason that OFA needs to be here: to harness the energy and determination of people,” Carson said. “I think everyone would agree that the American people are on our side on this…. We need to show that the 90% on our side have staying power.”

“This is one of those moments where we have to prove that in the face of a setback we’re not backing down,” he added. “That’s the calculation that some senators were mistaken on…. The consequences they’re going to have to face are a bunch of angry constituents who are going to keep the issue alive.”

Carson said Organizing for Action will also demonstrate support for those who backed the measure, including the Republican co-sponsor, Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania.

“Our volunteers are ready to show Pat Toomey how much they appreciate his leadership,” he said.

The group plans to launch sustained campaigns in which constituents will call and tweet lawmakers, write letters to the editor and hold local events spotlighting their support for gun control. Its next major effort comes Saturday, when supporters are organizing rallies and other events in the states of key senators.

Calls and Tweets, letters to the editor, local rallies with mid-level attendance… eh, most incumbent senators don’t fear those actions, unless they come in overwhelming numbers. One of the big questions is just how many Organizing for Action members reside in Montana, Alaska, and Arkansas.

OpenSecrets.org compiled a sortable, downloadable list of the 1,428 donors who gave more than $250. They list four donors in Alaska, who contributed $1,375; four donors in Arkansas, who contributed $51,500; and three donors in Montana, who contributed $1,250. In Pennsylvania, the group lists 34 donors who contributed $12,888. As you might expect, those are small fractions compared to states like California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland.

As I wrote this morning, the rhetoric of the president and his supporters would suggest that the defeat of Baucus, Begich, and Pryor is a priority. But the real question will be whether any of their fury over yesterday’s vote translates into support for a pro-gun-control primary challenger. The filing deadline for a party candidate in Montana and Arkansas is March 2014; for Alaska the deadline is June 2014.

I am reliably informed that Virginia’s GOP gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, will soon release his tax returns for the past eight years and call for his Democratic counterpart, Terry McAuliffe, to do the same.

In a mirror image of the attack against Mitt Romney last summer, Republicans in Virginia and Washington are ready to point to any delay as a sign that there’s something shady or scandalous in McAuliffe’s tax returns and personal finances. Republicans have a long list of quotes from David Axelrod, DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former White House Press Secreary Robert Gibbs, and other Obama campaign officials demanding the release of Romney’s returns, with some comments insinuating or explicitly stating that failure to release the returns indicates criminal behavior.

McAuliffe may or may not release all those returns; as the Virginia Pilot notes, candidates for governor in this state typically don’t release tax return information partly because the state requires them to submit personal financial disclosure statements that are considered public records. And the returns may not reveal much in terms of wrongdoing, but two figures might be intriguing or cause indigestion for the McAuliffe campaign. First, just how wealthy is McAuliffe? Back in 2009, the disclosure forms revealed “a net worth of at least $5.8 million. But McAuliffe is likely worth considerably more because candidates in Virginia do not have to report the exact value of an investment that tops $250,000.”

Secondly, how much as McAuliffe made from his investment/role with GreenTech Automotive in the past four years?

Here’s the old quote to get the spotlight: last cycle’s head of the Democratic Governors Association:

Then DGA Chairman Martin O’Malley on Romney’s failure to release his tax returns: “His failure to release those is a bit of an implicit admission of…guilt…” (Zeke Miller, “O’Malley: McCain Saw Romney’s Tax Returns And He Chose Palin,” BuzzFeed, 7/13/2012)

The Virginia electorate doesn’t appear to be paying much attention to the early stages of the gubernatorial race. The candidates weren’t dominating the news, even before our news cycle became filled with horrific bombings, big votes on gun control, ricin mailings, exploding fertilizer plants, and so on.

Yet at some point, the voters will tune in, and they’ll see two candidates who they don’t know terribly well. So the candidate who gets his ads up on television first may end up setting the terms of the race. 

Republican Ken Cuccinelli leads Democrat Terry McAuliffe (34%-29%), but more than one-third (38%) of Virginians are undecided in the 2013 Gubernatorial election, according to The Roanoke College Poll. Looking only at currently registered voters, Cuccinelli’s lead grows slightly (35%-27%).

The Roanoke College Poll interviewed 629 Virginia residents between April 8 and April 14 and has a margin of error of +3.9 percent. 

As was the case in January, both candidates are largely unfamiliar to Virginians. A majority of Virginia residents do not know enough about McAuliffe (61%) to have an opinion about him, and 45 percent don’t have an opinion of Cuccinelli. Each figure is only one percent lower than in January. Cuccinelli has improved his favorable/unfavorable split marginally (26% – 24%), while McAuliffe remains the same (10% – 16%). 

Cuccinelli could paint a very negative portrait of McAuliffe, the GreenTech problems, the state’s concerns about the company, and so on… but he’ll need the resources to do it.

Okay, gun control supporters, including President Obama. Let’s see if you’ll put your money where your mouth is.  If you’re so totally convinced by that 90 percent poll figure you keep throwing around, if you’re so utterly certain that your viewpoint represents the will of the American people, let’s see you back pro-gun-control challengers to the three Democrats who voted against the Toomey-Manchin compromise who are up for reelection in 2014: Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, and Mark Begich of Alaska.

Because if you really believe that voting “no” on that proposal is the equivalent to voting for more dead children, you can’t say that it’s an utterly unforgivable act for the Republican senators but an understandable concession to public will for the Democrat senators.

(Well, you can, but that will just reveal that you’re partisan hacks, posturing opportunists who use the emotion of the Newtown horror as a cudgel against your Republican opponents, with no real principled opposition to their position, since it’s acceptable from a Red State Democrat.)

Here’s how Obama tried to thread the needle yesterday:

A  few minutes ago, 90 percent of Democrats in the Senate voted for that idea. But it’s not going to happen, because 90 percent of Republicans in the Senate just voted against that idea…

It came down to politics. They worried that that vocal minority of gun-owners would come after them in future elections. They worried that the gun lobby would spend a lot of money and paint them as anti-Second Amendment. And obviously a lot of Republicans had that fear, but Democrats had that fear, too. And so they caved to the pressure, and they started looking for an excuse, any excuse, to vote no.

If you really think that the only reason to not vote for the bill was shameless politics, you can’t later on tell us that Baucus, Pryor and Begich are good senators who deserve reelection. You can’t come to their states for fundraisers, and you can’t go to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee events where you know the cash will be used to try to keep them in office. You can’t mobilize Organizing for Action to pull out all the stops to keep them in office, because you prefer a ‘D’ who votes for more dead children (your rhetoric, not mine) over an ‘R’ who would cast the same vote.

Of course, there’s almost no chance Obama or the DSCC or OFA will take these steps. Bloomberg’s groups may throw money at pro-gun control challengers, but that’s because they’ve got oodles of money; in all likelihood, they’ll help some no-name gun control advocate go from single-digit support in a Red State Democratic primary to double digits.

What yesterday’s vote demonstrated is that nobody really believes that a vote against the Toomey-Manchin compromise is the moral equivalent to voting for more dead children. And that all of this hyperventilating on camera is empty rhetoric.

From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Spare Us the Usual Partisan Blame Game During Terror Crises, Mr. President

A big reason why no version of any gun control proposal passed the Senate with 60 votes Wednesday was because none, or almost none, of the senators believed it would actually prevent another massacre. Vice President Joe Biden, leading the president’s gun task force, declared, “Nothing we’re going to do is going to fundamentally alter or eliminate the possibility of another mass shooting or guarantee that we will bring gun deaths down to 1,000 a year from what it is now.” (Video here.) I don’t need to rehash it much: the Newtown shooter stole the guns he used; none of the recent massacre perpetrators purchased their firearms at gun shows; most of them hadn’t done anything that would flag them in the instant check system until they pulled the trigger; police ignored the warnings of the Aurora shooter’s psychiatrist, and so on.

When we learned the details about the Newtown shooter, it was painfully clear that no policy, short of banning private gun ownership and forcibly collecting every last firearm in private hands could prevent something like that from happening again. And yet the whole argument for this bill was driven by invoking Newtown every moment possible.

Even my half-hearted cut-Toomey-some-slack argument was based upon the political realities, not the sense that the bill would prevent another awful day. Suburban soccer moms who have marinated in the Oprah-fied feel-don’t-think culture for decades demand “something be done” so incumbents who want to appeal to those soccer moms must appear to be attempting to “do something,” regardless of whether it accomplishes the stated goal. (My cynicism may be appalling, but it does enjoy a lot of supporting evidence and footnotes.)

The White House video of kids begging for gun control, the constant use of the parents of slain children as the primary advocates, the knee-jerk declarations from the likes of Piers Morgan that to disagree with any of the legislative proposals is to desire more dead kindergarteners, all of this represented a particularly ruthless and emotionally manipulative form of politics…

… and then Monday, real life intruded.

Mr. President, we’ve got real problems to worry about, much bigger than whether a feel-good, largely-symbolic measure passes the Senate and you get a political win.  Somebody blew up Boston’s happiest day of the year, dozens maimed, families torn apart, and we don’t know (as of this writing) if it’s one guy or a group or whether he’s got more efforts planned or whether he’ll inspire copycats.

(Dear store clerks: if, in the coming days, somebody wants to buy a pressure-cooker and wants to pay cash, take their picture. And if somebody wants to buy a bunch of pressure cookers all at once, feel free to ask a lot of probing questions.)

Some guy decided to take out his grievances with the government by sending Ricin, either not knowing or caring that his most likely victims would be postal workers and unpaid Capitol Hill interns. Across the country, airport terminals, courthouses, high schools,  train stations, and city halls are getting evacuated every time someone absent-mindedly leaves their bag somewhere.

We don’t have time for your usual let’s-start-messaging-for-the-midterms pep rallies, Mr. President. We have some non-symbolic problems we would like to see resolved. It’s time to stop worrying about wasting crises and start focusing on resolving them.

Perhaps the president was in a particularly foul mood because of this headline:

At Pivotal Point in Presidency, Obama Routed on Gun Control

Ron Fournier’s lead lays out the cynicism of the whole gun control push from the beginning:

Blame the gun lobby. Blame Republicans. Blame a handful of skittish Democrats who gave the GOP cover. Blame the entire band of demagogues who killed the modest attempt to close loopholes in a law requiring background checks for guns.

Blame them, too, for jeopardizing President Obama’s entire legislative agenda. That was the point, anyhow, right?

Look, Mr. President, it’s not like it was a secret that Baucus, Begich, Heitkamp, and Pryor would be the likely swing votes on the Toomey-Manchin proposal. Heitkamp’s not up until 2018. The Huffington Post’s Elise Foley notices, “None of the Dems who voted no on background checks were invited to dinner with Obama.” Mr. President, if you needed them, did you act like you needed them?

Fournier continues:

The defeat raises questions about Obama’s ability to unify congressional Democrats and to mobilize supporters via his nascent Organizing for Action, a first-of-its-kind political machine controlled by the White House. The president will need party unity and grassroots muscle to battle the GOP on immigration, federal spending, climate change and other White House interests.

Coming into the week, Obama’s agenda appeared to be at an important juncture—with guns, immigration, and deficit-reduction talks at various stages of progress. Winning an expansion of the background check, even as bolder gun measures failed, would have given Obama momentum to push the other two items.

Conversely, his rivals may now feel emboldened to block Obama’s entire agenda. In their most cynical moments, Republican leaders privately cheer themselves with the fact that a president’s approval rating usually suffers amid gridlock.

Obama’s team took news of the defeat hard Wednesday, with some advisers predicting that gun regulation won’t be revived. It is hard for them to explain the failure of a measure supported by 90 percent of the public without making the president appear weak.

Kemberlee Kaye: “Political opportunism is not an effective means of governance, as @TheDemocrats learned today. Plus, Constitution and stuff.”

Ace: “Obama showed the passion and anger at his personal defeat that he wasn’t able to manage after the Benghazi slaughter.”

Richard Grenell: “More anger on one’s failed Senate vote than on international terrorism is a sure sign of a large ego.”

King Shamus: “Obama throws a temper tantrum because his permanent campaign couldn’t make it happen. He’s basically admitting his failure as a politician.”

John Ondrasik, also known as the voice of Five for Fighting: “I love how politicians only blame politics when they lose.”

Iowahawk: “Most popular president in history can’t persuade own party to vote for commonsense legislation supported by 90% of voters. Or something.”