A group of Rand Paul supporters held down and stomped the head of a female MoveOn member just before tonight’s debate. Not ‘assault’ in the BS sense we’ve seen both sides alleging when someone nudges a video tracker, but the real thing.
Late Update: Paul supporters seem to be putting out the word that the woman fell or tripped. But look at the video. It’s hard to reconcile the ‘fell’ storyline with the two or three guys shoving her, the one guy holding her down/attempting a headlock and the other guy stomping on her head.
With some much clatter and noise I wanted to do a quick post focusing our attention on where the action seems to be for the Senate. Four races look to be realistically in doubt: Nevada, Colorado, Illinois and West Virginia. I’m still keeping a close eye on Pennsylvania and Kentucky. But Democrats need to rely on heroic assumptions to figure those as potential wins. Alaska, in theory, is in some question; but it basically seems to be whether the nominated or write-in Republican wins.
So back to our big four races. Of these, Colorado and West Virginia has been trending toward the Democrats — with Colorado still probably ever so slightly leaning GOP and the reverse for West Virginia (note that Nate Silver just nudged both slightly in the Dem direction). Nevada has been trending toward Sharron Angle but by such a narrow margin it’s definitely still in play. And finally there’s Illinois where Kirk has had a consistent but extremely narrow margin. But unlike these other states, the blueness of the state itself might be enough to overcome that very small advantage. And in Illinois, Giannoulias is actually ahead — albeit by a minuscule margin when all four candidates on the ballot are polled. (Compare this graph to this one.)
So there you go: Nevada, Colorado, West Virginia and Illinois.
The top 6 laws tea partiers consider unconstitutional. It’s a pretty impressive list.
The West Virginia Republican Party is fully on board with the voter fraud bamboozlement movement, launching its own anti-voter fraud project for the election, complete with 2,000 signs posted statewide.
Remember, West Virginia has a very tight U.S. Senate race. Ryan Reilly has our report on the effort.
There’s some new video of last’s night incident in which a Moveon.org activist attacked a Rand Paul supporter’s foot with her head (I’m just anticipating the counter-programming here.) There’s no official word on the woman’s condition, but we understand she has left the hospital.
Get ready for the Tea Party constitution. Brian Beutler runs down the top six laws (Social Security, minimum wage, etc.) Tea Partiers say are unconstitutional.
We’ve just updated our numbers. So take a look at our snapshot of where the key races stand one week out. We’ve put together a slide show of the trend graphs, as of today, of all the key races. Take a look.
Carly Fiorina has been hospitalized just a week before the election, according to a statement from her campaign:
Carly learned more than a year and a half ago that she, like millions of women, had breast cancer. After successfully battling cancer, she had reconstructive surgery this summer and remains cancer free today. However, this morning Carly came down with an infection associated with the reconstructive surgery and, as a result, she was admitted to the hospital to receive antibiotics to treat this infection. While this will impact her campaign schedule today, Carly is upbeat and her doctors expect her to make a quick and full recovery and be back out on the campaign trail soon. Carly is looking forward to getting back to her full campaign schedule and to defeating Barbara Boxer on November 2.
Lexington PD on the status of the stomping investigation …
“I think we’re probably going to come up with something later today,” Roberts said, adding that tips have been coming in literally from around the country about who the suspects in the attack might be. “Because it was captured on video, we have a good idea what happened [and] at this point there doesn’t seem to be anything to justify how this incident unfolded.