Over the weekend, West Virginia Gov. and Senate candidate Joe Manchin went to town on his Republican opponent, John Raese, over the casting call for ‘hicky’ actors to attack Manchin in one of his ads. Now Manchin has released an ad in which he pulls out a rifle and literally shoots the cap and trade bill supported by many Democrats in Congress. See the ad after the jump … Read More

A bit of campaign trail fun as Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina shoot tequila together and sass it up at a Hispanic event over the weekend.

The NYPD has confirmed that “a black garbage bag full” of C-4 military-grade explosives was found this morning in a cemetery in the middle of Manhattan. The explosives were not set up to detonate.

Interesting point made by Tom Jensen at Public Policy Polling. Actual Republican candidates seem to be running significantly behind the GOP’s generic numbers, suggesting that the more voters see of the actual candidates on offer from the GOP the less they like them. But the key follow-on to that point, as Jensen notes, is that that mainly counts for Senate candidates rather than House challengers. Why? Because it’s really only with Senate campaign coverage that voters really find out much about the candidates.

In jailhouse interviews, the right-wing extremist charged in that Oakland freeway shooting last July says Glenn Beck is more schoolteacher than newscaster: “It was the things he exposed that blew my mind. Beck would never say anything about a conspiracy, would never advocate violence, he’ll never do anything like, of this nature, but he’ll give you every ounce of evidence that you could possibly need.”

Bernard Avishai shares his thoughts on the new citizenship oath for prospective citizens voted out of the Israeli cabinet. In practice, the whole thing applies to exceedingly few people since it’s for people trying to become Israeli citizens and very few of those people are not Jews. In symbolic terms though, as everyone realizes, it’s a very people deal. Check out what Bernie has to say. And I’d also share an observation of my own. Read More

A woman, Ana Padilla, has come forward to say she worked for Nevada’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval while she was an illegal immigrant back in the late 1990s. From the report out of KTVN in Reno …

She told us she had not seen the Sandovals since working for them, until she caught a gubernatorial debate on television. “I was so happy. I told my husband, ‘look, it is Mr. Sandoval.’ I’m going to be in the Republican Party and see if we can help him.”

Ana says she was happy to see another Latino running for office. She says that elation turned to disappointment when she heard Sandoval say he does not support amnesty for illegal immigrants. “In the time I worked with him, he supported me,” said Padilla. “Now he says he does not support Latinos that are already here?”

Ana says she no longer supports anyone in the gubernatorial race. She says she is coming out about this now, because she wants people to know what Sandoval stands for.

The Sandovals says they “do not know this person.” The station says they heard about Padilla’s story when she was a guest on a local Latino radio station.

It’s not clear from the report that Padilla has any proof of her claim, though given the nature of off-the-books cleaning jobs such as this it’s not clear what proof she could have.

The Times has an entertaining and characteristically bizarre piece on the weird world of hasidic/hyper-orthodox Brooklyn Jewish politics that Carl Paladino stumbled into, to his apparent detriment, over the weekend. I only noticed after reading the piece that it was written by my friend and one-time colleague Nick Confessore. My favorite line, right-wing show-boating rabbi, Yehuda Levin, who’s taken on the roll of being … well, Paladino’s rabbi in the world of Brooklyn Jewish politics has the ambition to create “an Orthodox Tea Party.”

That’s wonderful.

We also learn that the Levin’s synagogue “has roughly two dozen members”, which sounds more like a minyan to me than a synagogue.

To learn more about this utterly New York story also check out this piece in The Jewish Week which delves further into just who wrote that speech that Paladino read for the approving black-coated men.

Earlier this decade, West Virginia changed its highway welcome signs from “Wild and Wonderful” to “Open for Business.” The signs have since been changed back, but that probably tells you more about the state than the whole “hicky” actors kerfuffle from last week. And it’s a good way to introduce you to John Raese, the wealthy Republican businessman and perennial candidate trying to knock off Gov. Joe Manchin (D) for the late Robert Byrd’s Senate seat.

Raese has a variety of business interests including a major mining company and a couple of dozen radio stations. But he’s not apologetic about his privileged roots: “I made my money the old-fashioned way, I inherited it. I think that’s a great thing to do. I hope more people in this country have that opportunity as soon as we abolish inheritance tax in this country, which is a key part of my program.”

Eric Kleefeld has the down low on John Raese.

Ron Paul and Lawrence O’Donnell got into a bit last night on MSNBC over whether O’Donnell had violated some pre-interview pledge not to ask Paul about other candidates for public office (i.e., his son Rand). Watch.