-- McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and Obama national campaign co-chair Eric Holder join Politics Nation to preview a possible general election matchup between two candidates who claim they can expand the map. What states are really in play this November?

-- Mississippi voters head to the polls to pick a new member of Congress. Is this another nail in the GOP's coffin, or can they use a win, even in heavily Republican territory, to start clawing their way back to the top?

-- And a host of top political writers sound off on the less appreciated moments that changed the Democratic primary race. Clinton's driver's license gaffe? Obama's "likable enough" fumble? We'll look back on the craziest sixteen months in American politics we've seen in generations.

All that and a few surprises, we're sure, Saturday morning on Politics Nation, only on XM Radio's POTUS '08. Listen live, Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon Eastern and again at 6:00 p.m. Eastern.

Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers, the Democratic candidate, is performing well, coming just 400 votes away from avoiding the runoff. But recent attempts to link Childers to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi may be reaping results. How does he get around being associated with national Democrats?

Southaven Mayor Greg Davis, the Republican candidate, came in three points behind Childers in the April 22 first round. Some national Republicans complain that he's from the wrong part of the district, but he retains a strong chance at winning on Tuesday, especially after Vice President Dick Cheney shows up for him on Monday:

Check out more coverage of Tuesday's special election in Mississippi here.

The poll, conducted by Research 2000 for DailyKos, surveyed 600 likely voters from 5/5-7 for a margin of error of +/- 4%. Cornyn and his Democratic opponent, State Rep. Rick Noriega.

General Election Matchup
(All / Dem / GOP / Ind / Men / Wom)
Cornyn 48 / 11 / 81 / 45 / 53 / 43
Noriega 44 / 82 / 13 / 45 / 40 / 48

Cornyn is known by a huge majority of Texas voters. 50% say they view him favorably, while 41% say they see him in an unfavorable light. By contrast, just 42% have a favorable view of Noriega, while 31% view him unfavorably.

To become better known, or to reduce Cornyn's margin, Noriega will have to be competitive with Cornyn financially. That could be nearly impossible; Cornyn has raised $9.1 million so far and still has almost $8.7 million in the bank, compared with just $329,000 on hand for Noriega. The Democrat had raised a total of just under $1.5 million before the March 31 FEC deadline.

Noriega still has a big hill to climb come November, but the Research 2000 poll shows at least the possibility that Democrats could seriously expand the playing field this year.

But even though generic congressional ballot questions show Democrats running more than a dozen points ahead of Republicans -- the latest survey, from CBS and the New York Times, had it at 18 points, the same gap as before the 2006 elections -- the NRCC has been reluctant to admit a national problem.

GOP strategists have excused their party's poor performance in previous special elections by blaming flawed candidates. After the loss in Illinois, Boehner reportedly told members at a closed conference meeting that Jim Oberweis, the Republican candidate, lost his home precinct by a four-to-one margin. That statistic was repeated religiously by Republican members and staff in subsequent conversations with the media. The problem, though, is that Oberweis won his home precinct by an approximately three-to-two margin.

After Republican candidate Woody Jenkins lost his special election, the NRCC pointed to the fact that previous polls had shown Democrat Don Cazayoux leading by ten points, and he won by just three after advertising sought to link him to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Nationalizing the race, they said, had closed the gap. Still, Republicans on Capitol Hill said Jenkins, who has a long history in Louisiana politics, had too much baggage.

Even the GOP candidate in neighboring Mississippi is getting in on the act. "Greg Davis [the mayor of Southaven, Mississippi and the party's candidate in that special election] and Woody Jenkins are two completely different candidates," Davis manager Ted Prill told Politics Nation.

But Davis is also being touted as a less than perfect candidate, and sources throughout Washington already have the talking point down: Davis is the mayor of a town in the Memphis suburbs, far away from the district's population center, in Tupelo. Childers' home county is just north of Tupelo, and in the South, several top Republicans pointed out, georaphy matters. If the GOP loses again, they will point to the fact that Davis was simply a candidate from the wrong part of the district.

Fair or not, that's how Republican leaders in Washington are casting their losing candidates, instead of taking blame themselves. It's probably a wise solution, given that a devastating loss in November could lead to both Cole and Boehner's ouster from their leadership posts. "The two offices are positioning themselves to avoid blame or to lay blame," one top Republican leadership aide outside of Cole's and Boehner's office told Politics Nation. "The rest of leadership is just trying to avoid a family fight."

-- The House and Senate are not in session, and the President is in Crawford, Texas, where daughter Jenna will be married this weekend. Looking out the window, we understand that this is just one of those days when no one wants to be in Washington. After next week, Congress takes a Memorial Day recess.

-- Before the sun even rose, Barack Obama's campaign had sent out two emails pointing to new support from super delegates Donald Payne, a member of Congress from New Jersey, and Peter DeFazio, who represents southwest Oregon. That puts Obama at just six super delegates shy of a majority of those votes, according to the latest RCP Delegate Count, and today could very well be the day he finally surpasses what had once looked like an insurmountable lead for Hillary Clinton -- in fact, a lead so big she had hoped it would propel her to the nomination. Her advantage now gone, it's another sign that Democrats have effectively, if not quite actually, chosen their nominee.

-- The super delegates in the bag, the pledged delegates in the bag, the popular vote in hand and the momentum on his side, Obama plans to declare victory after polls close in Kentucky and Oregon on May 20, Politico's Washington Times article yesterday on documents from the Whitewater case came from seemingly nowhere, and last night NBC's David Shuster reported that RNC opposition researchers had 1,200 pages of documents on Clinton, should she have won the nomination. Even though she's not going to be their opponent in November, the RNC can still have a little fun with the notion that the then-First Lady was nearly indicted. Obama's oppo file, by the way, is a pretty hefty 1,000 pages on its own.

-- Out on the trail on his own, John McCain's chances at the electorate uninhibited by an actual Democratic nominee could be coming to an end. He's taking the chance now to shore up that conservative base, aiming a speech yesterday squarely at social conservatives. The address, in Rochester, Michigan, focused on sex trafficking, freedom of religion and child pornography, all battles he said would be a priority in his White House, the New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller. Those are all issues Southern Baptist Convention head Richard Land had urged McCain to speak out on, and later yesterday the religious conservative icon told Bumiller he was "delighted" with the speech.

-- Meanwhile, it's good to have friends in high places, especially when you can exert a little pressure on them. McCain, some Democrats close to negotiations over the Federal Election Commission believe, has been pressuring the White House to get something done, and in recent days President Bush offered three new commission appointees and backed away from demands that one specific Republican be approved, the New York Times' Michael Luo writes. That's because, without a functioning commission, John McCain can't get his publicly financed $84 million for the general election. One Republican who already serves on the panel, David Mason, has been withdrawn, and it's probably just coincidence that Mason has raised questions about McCain's withdrawal from public financing in the primary (Top McCain lawyer Trevor Potter says that's not the case).

-- A spat is brewing between Obama and McCain, and it could provide a serious preview of the larger battles and wars heading into November. In the back and forth over a Hamas spokesman's comments on Obama, McCain has said the group's position is fair game. Obama called that "disappointing" before going a step farther: "For him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination," Obama said of his future rival on CNN yesterday. A biting memo from McCain Consigliari Mark Salter accused Obama of an intentional but "not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue." Ben Smith has the whole memo.

-- A theory about why McCain wins arguments in the mud: Obama the Outsider comes to the general election seeking high-minded discourse and putting himself on a higher plane than those around him. McCain the Reformer comes to the debate not because he's naturally better than all of Washington, but because he's been tarnished by the Keating Five scandal and he not only bounced back but showed he learned something, hence the drive toward the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill. McCain is human; Obama is set up as something more. Bring Obama down, and the fall is all that much harder. McCain, in truth, is harder to bring down because he's been down before.

-- Bad News Of The Day: Thanks to a little-understood provision in the McCain-Feingold bill, Hillary Clinton has just about three months to repay the $11.4 million she has loaned her campaign. After an "election day," as the nominating convention would be, Clinton would be able to recoup just $250,000 from contributors, US News' Bret Schutle writes. That means a loss of about $11.15 million for the Clintons, and that's a tough pill to swallow. And don't forget the millions in debt to vendors, including a plurality of it to Penn, Schoen & Berland. Will conservatives change their minds on McCain-Feingold now that, in the end, it's come around to cause the Clintons some serious headaches?

-- Today On The Trail: Clinton starts her day in Portland with a discussion on health care before flying back to a fundraising dinner for the Kentucky Democratic Party in Louisville. Obama makes stops in Beaverton, where he will talk about the economy, before heading to Albany for a town hall meeting and to Eugene for a rally. Tomorrow morning, Obama will stop in increasingly Democratic Bend, in the center of the state, before heading back to Chicago. McCain spends today in South Carolina raising money; he will talk to the media in Columbia.

The fast-growing Hispanic population in America has also proved a growing political problem for the Republican Party. The GOP's share of the Hispanic vote plummeted after the last Republican Congress's angry debate on immigration reform. That episode, which quickly focused on fence-building and deportations, created a portion of the electorate that now holds the Republican Party in increasing contempt.

Exit polls from the 2004 election show Hispanic voters favored Democratic candidates in Congressional elections by 55%-44% margin. Two years later, that margin more than doubled, with Hispanics favoring Democratic candidates by 62%-37%. In some states, several enforcement-only hardliners lost what had been Republican districts to more moderate Democratic challengers. In Arizona alone, Rep. J.D. Hayworth lost his seat to Democrat Harry Mitchell, while State Senator Gabrielle Giffords, also a Democrat, won an open seat previously held by a senior Republican when she beat an anti-illegal immigration activist.

This year, GOP strategists have warned that their party is in danger of categorically ruling out competing among Hispanic voters for perhaps a generation to come.

At least one state Republican Party is trying to engage Hispanic voters before it's too late. This weekend, the Florida GOP will host a Hispanic Leadership Council Conference featuring keynote addresses from Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Rep. Luis Fortuno of Puerto Rico, and home-state Senator Mel Martinez -- three of the leading Hispanic voices in the party today.

"The Hispanic vote and the African American vote is the future of the Republican Party," Florida party chair Jim Greer says (Mr. Greer held a similar event aimed at African American voters late last year). To get the groups involved, he adds: "We ensure that they have a seat at the table, and wherever [the Republican Party has] failed in the past, we correct that."

It is a help to the GOP that John McCain is the party's standard-bearer in this year's presidential contest. Mr. McCain is far more moderate on immigration issues than most of his primary rivals were, several of whom proposed steps just short of outright deportation of undocumented aliens. And while Mr. McCain has recently backed off his support for a comprehensive approach that would include a guest-worker program, telling conservative voters in his own base that he understands their concerns about rewarding illegal behavior, his legislative and political record could prove more appealing to Hispanic voters, or at least less damaging to the party's chances with those voters, than anything his erstwhile rivals could have offered.

If Mr. Greer's efforts to woo Hispanic voters works (and he says the Hispanic constituency is "critically important" to a successful GOP presidential campaign in Florida), the idea could be exported to other states in time for Congressional elections in 2010. But if others choose the route of ex-Rep. Hayworth and the immigration hardliners, the damage to party's reputation with Hispanic voters could be severe and long lasting.

The twelve-person group is largely made up of Republican members already involved in the NRCC. Along with Boehner and Cole, the other nine members all sit on the NRCC's executive committee, and several have served as lead organizers on major fundraising dinners benefiting the NRCC.

Committee members include Reps. Devin Nunes, Kevin McCarthy and Darrell Issa, of California; Michigan Reps. Thad McCotter, who chairs the Republican Policy Committee, and Candice Miller, who is in charge of candidate recruitment on the executive committee; Virginia Reps. Eric Cantor, the chief deputy whip, and Tom Davis, a former NRCC chair himself; and Reps. Jeb Hensarling, of Texas, John Kline, of Minnesota, and Pat Tiberi, of Ohio.

NRCC chair Cole has come under increasing criticism in recent weeks following his party's special election losses and as the committee continues to face a serious financial shortfall against their Democratic rivals. In a meeting earlier this week, Cole blamed some fellow Republicans who have yet to contribute to the committee and who have not donated to Greg Davis, the mayor of Southaven, Mississippi who is carrying the party's banner in next week's special election to fill Senator Roger Wicker's House seat, according to The Hill.

Childers, the Democratic candidate in Tuesday's special primary runoff election, plans to pump gas at stations in Grenada, Columbus and Tupelo, charging the first fifty drivers at each location just $1.25 a gallon, for up to 10 gallons of gas. According to a state Democratic Party press release, that was the price of gas on March 5, 1997, "the day Republican Greg Davis voted in the state Legislature to increase the state tax on a barrel of oil produced in Mississippi."

The tactic comes from a Democratic challenger in North Carolina's 8th District, who ran one of the more unique races of 2006. Larry Kissell, who lost by only 329 votes to GOP Rep. Robin Hayes, may be best-remembered for the campaign mascot he brought to events -- a goat he named CAFTA to highlight Hayes's vote in support of the issue. But Kissell also sold gas to voters at $1.22 a gallon, the price when Hayes took office in 1998. The move gave Kissell, who was outspent four-to-one, the kind of media attention he needed, though without the DCCC's help he fell just short of an upset.

Childers finds himself in far better position to win the seat than Kissell in 2006. Despite the Republican tilt of the district, Childers led Davis 49%-46% in the April 22 special primary, but was forced to a runoff because he didn't win more than half the votes. Childers is also enjoying strong support from the DCCC, which sees another great opportunity to pick up a Republican seat before the 2008 elections even take place.

-- Kyle Trygstad

Busted a week ago after running a red light in Alexandria, just outside Washington, Fossella's troubles have only mounted in recent days. After originally telling officers he was on the way to take his daughter to the hospital, Fossella later said he was simply going to visit friends, at 12:15 a.m. He was later sprung from jail by a retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, Laura Fay, whose house is just a few miles from where Fossella was pulled over.

Fay divorced, according to The Sleuth, with no children, though she now has a young daughter. The congressman's lead communications expert, who has widely been described as a crisis communicator, has refused to answer questions about whether the girl is Fossella's daughter. Fossella and his wife have three children.

Republican insiders are buzzing at the possibility that Fossella will announce his plans to retire after this Congress, and if he does, the National Republican Congressional Committee will have to add another prime Democratic target to their list of seats to defend. Fossella already trailed in fundraising, with just $248,000 in the bank at the end of March compared with New York City Councilman Domenic Recchia's $325,000, and was likely to face a tough race.

Fossella beat attorney Steve Harrison, who will face Recchia in the state's primary, by a fourteen-point margin in 2006, and his winning percentages have decreased since peaking at 70% in 2002. The district voted for Al Gore over President Bush by eight points in 2000, but favored Bush by ten points in 2004 after his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Democrats may consider a candidate other than Harrison, who has limited fundraising abilities, and Recchia, who represents a city council district in Brooklyn, where the Congressional district takes in just a small piece. But the party has for several cycles coveted the last remaining Republican seat that touches any part of New York City, and should Fossella vacate the position, he will give them their best chance to date.

-- Not much going on today, sort of a lethargic day to match the gunmetal-grey sky in Washington. The Senate continues its work on a bill to reform flood insurance programs, and the House will finish its week today as well. President Bush is at his ranch in Crawford, while Vice President Cheney is meeting employees at a financial institution in Philadelphia before making a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the state of Israel.

-- On the presidential campaign trail, it appears to be all over but the crying. The serious pressure on Hillary Clinton officially kicked off yesterday with a one-time backer, former Senator George McGovern, abandoning Clinton, offering his backing to rival Barack Obama. McGovern is not a super delegate, but some other prominent party leaders who back Obama are super delegates, and McGovern's support for Obama was worth some news. All told, Obama picked up four backers with convention votes yesterday, while Clinton gained two and lost one (to Obama).

-- Clinton has heard calls for her exit before. Had she not won New Hampshire, those calls would have been cacophonous. They began again in the run-up to Super Tuesday, and to primaries in Texas, Ohio and elsewhere. But she's always had the argument that she's still got a chance with the super delegates. But the latest RCP Delegate Count shows Clinton leading among that group by just eleven, and the moment Obama overtakes her can't be more than a few days away. When that happens, the negotiations about how to exit the race will only increase.

-- It's one thing to begin to call for Clinton's ouster. It's quite another to get the candidate to go along with it. Clinton was back on the trail yesterday, having hastily scheduled a campaign stop in West Virginia, and today she takes a long trip from Washington to Charleston to Sioux Falls and tiny Central Point, Oregon, just north of the California border. Clinton held a big fundraiser here in Washington last night with about 1,500 people, and yesterday she met with four super delegates who have yet to decide on a candidate, including Reps. Tim Mahoney, Ciro Rodriguez, Jerry McNerney and Chris Carney, according to Ben Smith. Those aren't the signs of a candidate ready to drop out. Then again, John Edwards didn't act like he would be dropping out in the days before he did.

-- Obama, on the other hand, isn't quite the nominee in waiting, but he's going to start acting like it, the LA Times' Peter Nicholas writes today. Obama will stop by in remaining primary states like West Virginia and Oregon, but he's also going to start hitting events in swing states that will be important in the general election, and that have already held their primaries. The Clinton campaign calls it hubris, but Obama will take more direct aim at John McCain in coming days and weeks, while ignoring the rival he doesn't believe has a shot to win anymore.

-- One key factor Democrats would have to face that McCain might have been able to avoid is starting to look worse for the Arizonan. In 2000, McCain's local paper, the Arizona Republic, went pretty easy on him. This year, Obama faces a tough Chicago media, led by the Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet, while Clinton has to deal with the screaming headlines of the Post and the Daily News and face down the New York Times, one of the few organizations left that sends multiple reporters on the trail. But McCain gets rough treatment this morning from the Republic, which writes that, just maybe, his maverick image isn't all it's cracked up to be. If McCain actually gets a tenacious press on his heels, even if from the hometown paper alone, it might put a new spin on his national image.

-- Obama and McCain are going to do this one a little differently, though. Strategists for both sides have long said that the 2000 and 2004 map will be inoperative; whereas President Bush, John Kerry and Al Gore fought over perhaps a dozen states, McCain and Obama are going to be looking at perhaps twice that many (as McCain chief Rick Davis told us last month). Obama, during his victory speech in North Carolina on Tuesday, promised he would carry the state in November; the state has voted Republican since 1980, the Wall Street Journal writes today.

-- Are new states really in play? Of course every four years campaigns say theirs is the one that can operate a real 50-state strategy (and of course no one ever does), but Republicans are confident that they can make a play for states like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Michigan and the West Coast -- though they're aware that California is monetary black hole, they have yet to decide if it's in play. Democrats, on the other hand, still have high hopes for the Mountain West, states like Colorado and New Mexico, which President Bush won last time around, and some southern states like Virginia, Arkansas and elsewhere. McCain, with his unique appeal to independent and moderate voters, and Obama, with his ability to turn out new voters, are ideally suited to build a map that will thoroughly flummox political scientists for years to come.

-- Deal Of The Day: Clinton has now loaned her campaign a total of $11.4 million, and she's probably added another $10 million or so in unpaid expenses, as Huffington Post's Tom Edsall writes today. Could she be waiting for an Obama offer to help pay down that debt? A graceful withdrawal would vastly improve Clinton's standing in the party, and there may be a future waiting for her in Senate leadership. How Harry Reid and Dick Durbin feel about that, though, is another question.

-- Today On The Trail: Clinton makes stops in Charleston, West Virginia, Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Central Point, Oregon, where she ends her evening after holding a fundraiser in Ashland, just south. Obama is in Washington for the day, a second day off the trail. And John McCain wakes up in New York, fresh off his appearance on the Daily Show, for a major fundraiser.

The DSCC has dropped thousands of dollars on an advertisement of unknown content, the Oregonian's Harry Esteve reported yesterday. Schumer's committee has been pushing State House Speaker Jeff Merkley, without officially endorsing his candidacy, though no one has seen the content of the advertisement. The size of the buy is unknown, but the committee plunked down $44,000 on one station in Portland, leading some to believe it will be a sizable purchase statewide.

Merkley is engaged in a tougher-than-expected primary battle with attorney and activist Steve Novick, who has forced Merkley to the left during primary debates and has criticized the establishment choice for votes he took to support the troops (a vote Novick says backed the war in Iraq) and for being, well, the establishment choice. Both candidates are appealing to heavily liberal Democratic primary voters in advance of the May 20 deadline for voters to mail in their ballots.

Neither candidate was the party's top choice, as several potential gorillas, including former Governor Ted Kulongoski and Rep. Peter DeFazio said no to the race. And despite Merkley's position as head of the State House, Novick has won some key endorsements, from both big unions in the state as well as the Portland Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper. He also got attention when top grunge artists from REM, Pearl Jam, Nirvana, the Decemberists and others endorsed his campaign, a big positive in a hipster city like Portland, from which much of the Democratic vote will come.

If either candidate were to knock off Smith, it would probably qualify as the upset of the year. Merkley and Novick have both raised only a fraction of what Smith had on hand, with $1.37 million and $889,000 pulled in, respectively. Through the end of March, Merkley had $473,000 left in the bank while Novick had $197,000 on hand. Smith, who has spent the past year distancing himself as much as possible from the Bush Administration and has a reputation as a moderate Republican, has $5.16 million on hand to start defining his Democratic opponent immediately after the nomination is decided.

But Schumer, to his credit, is not afraid to get involved in a primary, and this isn't the first time he's waded into a contested primary. Schumer effectively shoved several candidates out of the way to make a hole for ex-Governor Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, and helped push Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez out of the race in New Mexico. Now, in Oregon, national Democrats apparently believe they will be better served with Merkley heading their ticket than with Novick doing so. Perhaps Tom Cole is watching.

Updated: We wrote earlier that the ad specifically backs Merkley. That is not known yet, given that the spot has yet to hit television stations in Oregon. We regret any confusion.

Hagan was not the initial choice of Washington Democrats, who pursued outgoing Governor Mike Easley and several other potential candidates before coalescing around her. But during her time on the trail, Hagan has showed a prolific fundraising ability, raking in a whopping $1.5 million so far. She spent most of that during the primary season, reporting just $317,000 on hand as of the middle of April, but her ability to raise money should keep her at least competitive with Dole.

But Dole has advantages of her own. With $3.15 million in the bank, she starts the general election contest with a huge head start, and Dole is virtually universally known throughout the state. Polls have showed most voters have a favorable opinion of her and say she's doing a good job in office, making Hagan's task that much more difficult.

National Democrats, replete with money to spend on Senate races, might wade in to North Carolina if they see encouraging poll numbers. If Democrats are to have a chance to win a huge Senate majority, they will need to do so on the backs of states like North Carolina, where second-tier contests will be a serious challenge. Dole remains a heavy favorite at the moment, but she will have to pay attention to her state's political winds to make sure she stays that way.

Less than two months after winning a special election to serve out the remaining term of his late grandmother, Rep. Andre Carson held off a seven-candidate field of challengers yesterday to secure his place on the November ballot in Indiana's 7th District. Carson's top challenger, former state Health Commissioner Woody Myers, spent more than $1 million of his own money, but was unable to overcome Carson's advantages; the incumbent won 46% to Myers's 24%. State Reps. David Orentlicher and Carolene Mays finished with 21% and 8%, respectively. In the November general election, Carson will face Republican state Rep. Jon Elrod, whom he defeated 54%-43% in the March special election.

In North Carolina, GOP Reps. Walter Jones and Patrick McHenry yesterday overcame what should be their toughest challenges of this election cycle. Jones, serving his seventh term in the House, became vulnerable to a challenge from the right after becoming outspoken about his opposition to the Iraq war. Representing a district that votes heavily Republican and includes two large Marine Corps bases, Jones was one of only two Republicans to co-sponsor the February 2007 resolution opposing Bush's troop surge. However, Jones held off Onslow County Commissioner Joe McLaughlin, who was not able to raise a large sum of money, defeating him 60%-40%.

McHenry, the youngest member of Congress, is serving his second term in office and represents one of the most conservative districts in the state. He was challenged by Air Force officer Lance Sigmon, but ended up with a comfortable 67%-33% victory. McHenry faced some controversy when video surfaced of him calling a contractor in Iraq a "two-bit security guard." Sigmon used the video in an ad, but the issue apparently was not enough to knock the incumbent off.

-- Kyle Trygstad

Perdue and Moore's Democratic contest had devolved into an expensive exercise in name-calling and insinuations of links to white supremacist groups. The Republican side, while less acrimonious, was no less competitive, with Smith and two more candidates splitting the conservative vote, allowing the moderate McCrory to sneak through.

The Democratic candidate remains the likely favorite come November, and Republican McCrory has history holding him back as well. Several recent Charlotte Mayors, including Harvey Gantt and now-Rep. Sue Myrick, have sought and lost elections for statewide office. And while the state will likely vote heavily for John McCain come November, Democrats have won the governor's mansion in recent presidential years; the GOP has not controlled the executive office since 1993.

Schellinger left his campaign's after-party around midnight, the Indianapolis Star reports, and he will wait until this morning to review results. He had trailed throughout the evening before overtaking Long Thompson late last night, but, as in the presidential contest, late returns from Lake County provided the winning margin, going for Long Thompson with 54% of the vote. Long Thompson spent her final hours on the primary campaign trail in Lake County, the Star reported.

With her victory comes another steep climb before November. The one-time member of Congress, who lost her seat in the 1994 Republican Revolution, will face Daniels; polls have shown either a close race or a Daniels blowout. But Long Thompson spent much of her money winning the primary, while Daniels was able to stockpile his own. Finance reports through the end of March showed Daniels had just under $5.3 million in the bank, while Long Thompson had just $484,000 in reserve a full month before her primary.

Though he remains ahead in most polls, Daniels is not the most popular incumbent. And some outside groups have shown a willingness to get involved on Long Thompson's behalf; she was endorsed by EMILY's List, the prominent Democratic fundraising organization, and received a $100,000 contribution from the Service Employees International Union just two days before the primary. Still, she will likely need all the help she can get to overcome Daniels.