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George Soros donating $2 million to super PACs.

Liberal donors are planning to inject over $100 million of outside money into grassroots organizing, voter registration, and voter turnout, instead of trying to match Republicans in advertising this election cycle. Famed businessman George Soros will donate to $1 million to America Votes, a group that coordinates political activity for left-leaning causes, and $1 million to another super PAC focusing on research. Conservative super PACs are expected to spend $300 million on the 2012 election. "The idea that we're going to engage in an arms race on advertising with the Republicans is not appealing to many liberal donors," one expert said.

Read it at The New York Times

How he can beat Romney on economy.

President Obama has an advantage over Romney in the polls in a majority of categories, from foreign policy to health care, but he’s behind the GOP candidate on what is arguably the most crucial one: the economy. If he plays his cards right in the fall, he can reverse the current poll numbers, argues Michael Tomasky. Specifically, he has to use the Bain Capital card to prove that Romney worked for the 1 percent. Sometimes Romney helped workers, other times he hurt them—but nearly every time, the Bain CEO and his wealthy investors came out on top. Here’s a debate that, if argued right, could turn the middle class off Romney—and be Obama’s tipping point on the economy.

Read it at The Daily Beast

Did Elizabeth Warren, who is 1/32 Cherokee, obtain a Harvard professorship with help from her “minority” status? Jesse Singal on the question dominating the Massachusetts Senate race.

If you want a prime example of how a seemingly forgettable controversy can tell you all you need to know about a political campaign, you could do worse than the debate over Cherokee ancestry now roiling the Senate race in Massachusetts.

The imbroglio kicked off after the Boston Herald reported that Harvard Law School had listed Elizabeth Warren, who is seeking to unseat Republican Scott Brown, as a minority professor to deflect criticism that it lacked diverse faculty. Brown’s campaign pounced, and it has since been reported that Warren, one of the driving intellectual forces behind the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is one 32nd Cherokee.

While few appear to think the issue will have staying power, it does point to two important aspects of the campaign: many Massachusetts voters have a better sense of who Brown is—he won the seat held by Ted Kennedy until his death and has since taken mostly moderate positions in the Senate—than who Warren is. And it’s vital for the Brown campaign to find an effective way to paint her in a negative light, given the uphill battle it faces to hold on to what was long referred to as “Teddy’s seat.”

“She is still being defined as a person,” said Marty Linsky, a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, “and the question is whether this glitch will stick as part of the definition of who she is.”

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Gets 21 of 24 delegates.

Despite Mitt Romney's unofficial position as the GOP’s nominee for president, underdog Ron Paul won the majority of delegates at the Maine Republican Convention, it was ruled Sunday. The voters elected 21 of Paul's supporters to the 24 delegate positions. Paul is the last remaining GOP candidate to face Romney, whose aides say they're not worried about the latecomer's victory in Romney securing the nomination. Paul finished second to Romney in a non-binding caucus in Maine in February in a result that was debated because of weather that stopped some constituents from participating.

Read it at Boston

The kids who came out for the president in force in 2008 are abandoning him in shocking numbers, according to a new poll. Mark McKinnon on how he can win them back.

It’s no surprise President Obama officially kicked off his reelection campaign on two college campuses Saturday. You’re supposed to apply pressure at the site of bleeding. And the president’s support among young voters is bleeding away.

Though their elders vote at higher rates, the millennial generation, aged 18 to 29, represented almost one in six votes in the 2008 presidential election. And they voted for Obama over Sen. John McCain by a 2–1 margin.

While others in the media are focused on the upward trend in the president’s approval ratings over the last four months in this age group, as shown in the latest survey of young Americans’ attitudes toward politics and public service from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, there are troubling signs for the campaigns and the country embedded more deeply in the numbers.

A snapshot comparison of the college-age subset of millennials from this point in the 2012 election year versus the same point in the 2008 campaign (when only 18- to 24-year-olds were surveyed) should worry Team Obama.

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9 states will likely determine election.

A handful of deeply purple states—including Colorado, Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin—that have been transformed by the economic turmoil of recent years will be key to this year’s presidential election, according to an analysis done by The New York Times. President Obama officially kicked off his campaign with stops in two of those states, Ohio and Virginia, with rallies Saturday. All 9 of the states supported Obama in the 2008 election, but voters may take out their financial frustrations at the polls. Romney’s campaign will likely try to capitalize on these anxieties, taking aim at slow growth even in states that have seen an uptick in employment.

Read it at The New York Times

The president is constantly raising money these days. Daniel Stone reports on the White House decision to court wealthy donors as a way of avoiding super PACs.

In his first term, President Obama has so far held 132 fundraising events, including two back to back Wednesday night at the tony W Hotel in Washington. More than a few conservative pundits have noted that the number of pocket-padding evenings eclipses more than the president’s five predecessors combined during their first terms.

President Barack Obama disembarks from Air Force One at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York before attending campaign events. Being constantly on the road for his reelection invites attack for any president. The cost of operating Air Force One–about $179,000 per hour–hasn’t helped his image with cost-cutting lawmakers in Congress, either. (Jewel Samad, AFP / Getty Images)

Yet the money hasn’t come easy. Whether or not he’s skirting the responsibilities of his day job, being constantly on the road for his reelection invites attack for any president. The cost of operating Air Force One–about $179,000 per hour–hasn’t helped his image with cost-cutting lawmakers in Congress, either. A Fox Business Network segment last week dubbed Obama the “fundraiser-in-chief” and accused him of avoiding his official duties. Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus earlier published an op-ed alleging that Obama’s governing strategy was “reelection comes first.”

But The Daily Beast has learned that the aggressive fundraising schedule was the Obama team’s compromise to be able to compete with big conservative money going primarily to super PACs.

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Brendan Smialowski, AFP / Getty Images

Official start to his reelection bid.

They’re off! The Obama campaigning machine officially launched its reelection campaign Saturday as the president held his first rallies of the season at colleges in Columbus, Ohio, and Richmond, Va. Obama’s new campaign slogan, “Forward,” aims to highlight his progress and future goals for the economy, while taking a swipe at Romney policies that move backward. “I believe in you. I’m asking you to keep believing in me,” the president said to thunderous applause in Ohio. Romney has already jabbed back, telling a crowd in Virginia, “It’s like, forward, what? Over the cliff?”

Read it at USA Today

Susan Walsh / AP Photo

Could hurt Obama’s reelection.

The number of black and Hispanic registered voters has taken an enormous decline since four years ago and has the Obama campaign scrambling to sign up voters. The number of black voters dropped 7 percent, while Hispanic voters fell 5 percent, the first time it has dropped in almost 40 years. The decrease is being attributed to the struggling economy, which made it necessary for many to relocate in search of jobs. The strong turnout for Obama among the two groups is credited with helping him secure the presidency in 2008, and massive voter-registration pushes are starting across the country. That push is made more complicated by new legislation passed in eight states that require voters to show state-issued photo ID cards.

Read it at The Washington Post

Ben Jacobs talks to a former leader of the corporate-lobbying organization about its increasingly partisan bent.

The American Legislative Exchange Council, the controversial group that helped craft “stand your ground” legislation as well as raft of business-friendly local laws, has become increasingly partisan as its leadership has been taken over by “two or three or four people,” according to one of the last Democrats to chair the organization.

“The year I was national chairman was kind of a very frustrating year for me. The executive director [then Lori Roman] did not follow what I expected her to do. I didn’t have a lot of support from the board,” said Dolores Mertz, a now-retired Iowa state representative who was the group’s national chairman in 2007. “[Roman] told me that she didn’t like Democrats and she wasn’t going to work with them.”

“I am concerned about the lobbying that’s going on, especially with their 501(c)3 status,” said Mertz, referring to the part of the tax code ALEC falls under, which requires the group to be nonprofit and bars it from spending significant money on lobbying. The last four chairmen of the group, which appoints a new state legislator to the role each year, have been Republicans, as have 28 of its 33 chairs since its founding in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, the conservative co-founder of the Heritage Foundation and other right-wing projects.

ALEC’s membership is made up of both legislators and private-sector representatives (mostly lobbyists). For model legislation to gain the group’s blessing, it must first be approved by a majority of both the lawmakers and the business members on a task force considering it. Critics, mostly on the left, have long called the group a vehicle for corporate interests to lobby state legislators and shape laws that benefit their interests. These complaints have been amplified in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, as big backers including Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble, and McDonald’s have dropped their support as public attention has focused on the powerful but traditionally low-profile organization.

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Jewel Samad, AFP / Getty Images

"Day of shame for the Obama administration."

Mitt Romney called the U.S.'s handling in the blind Chinese dissident situation "a day of shame for the Obama administration." Speaking in Portsmouth, Va., on Thursday, Romney charged that the State Department "willingly or unwittingly communicated to Chen [Guangchen] an implicit threat to his family, and also probably sped up, or may have sped up the process of his decision to leave the embassy because they wanted to move on to a series of discussions that Mr. Geithner and our secretary of state are planning to have with China."

Read it at CBS News

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Still no word on whether he'll endorse Mitt.

Unlike his former fellow castmembers on the defunct reality show GOP Debates, Rick Santorum is in no rush to endorse presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney. He already made this clear once, but he reinforced this stance Thursday when, after Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich threw their support behind their former opponent, Santorum endorsed Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning for the state's Republican Senate nomination. Bruning is up against former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey who once said Santorum was "Latin for a--hole."

Read it at Politico

barackobama.com/life-of-julia

Denounces Romney’s.

The Obama campaign’s website has a new feature called “The Life of Julia,” which is a step-by-step guide to how the Obama administration's policies help American women at every age. From enrolling in the Head Start program at age 3 to having her health care covered by her parents’ insurance plan until age 26 to retiring with monthly Social Security benefits at age 67, each stage of Julia’s life includes an example of how the Obama administration will make her life better and how a President Mitt Romney would make her life worse.

Read it at Life of Julia

Says bigotry is on both sides.

Republican Missouri lawmaker Zach Wyatt never let his own homosexuality stop him from blocking bills to prevent bullying and discrimination. But, apparently, a state bill aimed at banning students from discussing their sexuality in public schools went too far. Wyatt penned an op-ed in The Kirksville Daily Express coming out both as a gay man and as an opponent of the "Don't Say Gay" bill. "I am not the first or last Republican to come out. I have just gotten tired of the bigotry being shown on both sides of the aisle on gay issues," he wrote. "Being gay has never been a Republican or Democratic issue, and it should never be."

Read it at The American Prospect

Spent $4.3 million on other outlets.

MSNBC's First Read takes note of the fact that, among the $4.3 million just spent on advertisements in nine swing states, the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future hasn't put any money into Hispanic media. Through mid-May, the Obama campaign will have spent $730,000 total on ad buys on outlets in Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami that specifically target Hispanic voters.

Read it at MSNBC First Read

Majority of ads so far attack an opponent.

Negative ads have painted the 2012 election cycle more than previous races. A new study by the Wesleyan Media Project finds that 70 percent of the ads aired during the current presidential race have been negative—attacking a particular candidate by name. At this same point in the 2008 presidential race, only 9.1 percent of the ads had been negative. The amount of money spent by independent groups on advertising has also soared from $21.11 million in 2008 to $83.87 million in 2012. Republican groups have spent more on advertising than Democractic groups have, the majority of general election ads so far having been directed at the Obama campaign.

Read it at Huffington Post

Elizabeth Warren: I'm Qualified for My Job

Alex Wong / Getty Images

Challenges Brown's accusations.

Elizabeth Warren emphasized her Native American roots in law directories in hopes of networking with "people like me"—not to get ahead as a minority, she clarified this week. The revelation of Warren's minority status elicited suggestions from her opponent Scott Brown's campaign that Warren didn't get her position at Harvard based on her merits. "All I can say is, I busted my tail as a teacher. I am qualified for my job," she insisted Wednesday. At a separate event at the same time, Brown refused to give up on the issue, insisting, "I think that she needs to answer the questions that are still lingering out there that's for sure."

Read it at Boston Globe

Wants them on his side for the election.

Mitt and Ann Romney had a private meeting Wednesday with several members of the conservative media in what appears to have been an effort to start the general election with a clean Etch a Sketch, so to speak, despite whatever animosity might have existed between them during the primary. One attendee said, "the basic message I got is, the primary's over and we want you on our side and working with the campaign." Another said the meeting was "sort of an olive branch to conservative media."

Read it at Huffington Post

Mocks Obama's 2008 catchphrase.

The RNC and its presumptive presidential nominee are breaking out a new slogan that mocks the one President Obama campaigned on in 2008. "Hype and Blame" is the Republican version of "Hope and Change," which aims to call out Obama for broken promises. "Obama has no record to run on so he's out on the trail resorting to the same tactics he campaigned against in 2008. He has a littany of broken promises so what does he do? Lay blame, make excuses, run on gimmicks and engage in divisive politics," said the RNC's press secretary.

Read it at CNN Political Ticker

The Oklahoma Republican isn’t exactly enthused about Mitt and the federal government’s trajectory toward fiscal ‘Armageddon’—and he’s not afraid to sound off. By Lloyd Grove.

When Sen. Tom Coburn claims he’s not a careerist, the Oklahoma Republican is more credible than most Washington politicians.

Since he arrived in the House in 1995 (and served only three terms, as promised, and took a four-year hiatus before running for Senate in 2004), Coburn has become a one-man cottage industry of impolitic candor.

He’s given to trumpeting his utter revulsion for legislative sausage making, to berating his colleagues for manipulating the public while punting on the real problems facing the country, and to slapping the media for lazily rewriting his own press releases (!) without independently checking the facts.

Coburn can’t even bring himself to take a victory lap over the Senate’s passage last week of his long-proposed spending cap on out of town meetings for federal agencies—a reaction to the recent bad publicity over the General Service Administration’s profligate boondoggles. “Yeah, but they wouldn’t give us a recorded vote,” Coburn says sourly, “And that means Harry [Reid, the Senate Majority Leader] plans on taking it out when it goes to conference.”

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