CAMPAIGN OVERNIGHT: Can GOP keep a perfect Senate primary record?

The National Republican Senatorial Committee has quietly helped its preferred candidates win in a series of primaries this cycle — and it’s reserving the right to step into two remaining states, Alaska and Louisiana, where fights still loom.

The NRSC hasn’t officially endorsed in either state, but Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Executive Director Rob Collins made it clear that they’re keeping their options open in both states.

{mosads}”I’ve also said early on in my tenure at NRSC that if the Democrats attempt to choose our nominees we will plot a course that Republicans are responding,” Moran said at the end of a Tuesday afternoon meeting with reporters. “This isn’t particularly directed at Alaska but just generally we have not sat idly as we’ve watched Harry Reid’s efforts to choose whom the Republicans nominate.”

The NRSC has been able to keep fatally flawed conservative candidates from winning any key Senate nominations this cycle, though Democrats say that’s because they’ve been getting behind hard-right candidates that are too conservative for their states. With two tests to go, it looks like the NRSC may be able to manage a clean primary season without any huge missteps.

SENATE SHOWDOWN

CO-SEN (UDALL): Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) called for CIA Director John Brennan’s resignation on Thursday after he admitted the agency had spied on Congress.

IA-SEN (OPEN): Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) will both be in Iowa and attend a fundraiser for state Sen. Joni Ernst (R) this Saturday, helping her as she looks to narrow a fundraising gap against Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa).

HI-SEN (SCHATZ): Rep. Colleen Hanabusa (D-Hawaii) warns that she worries that “Hawaii is becoming more and more like everywhere else and less like the place we’ve always loved,” touting the state’s “pride in our traditions” in a new ad. She’s sought to paint appointed Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) as too mainland, though he also grew up in the state. Schatz’s campaign has spent almost $5 million on the race.

MN-SEN (FRANKEN): The Chamber of Commerce will endorse GOP nominee Mike McFadden in his race against Sen. Al Franken (D), National Journal reports. “I’m honored to have their endorsement. They know Minnesota is a state we can win,” said McFadden ahead of the anticipated Monday nod back in the state. 

MT-SEN (WALSH): Rep. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) is out with a new ad, a positive spot touting his deep ties to the state.

MS-SEN (COCHRAN): Sen Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) is turning to the general election, stumping at the Neshoba County Fair to rally support in his race against former Rep. Travis Childers (D-Miss.). “I will continue to represent all Mississippians, in every part of this state, no matter your skin color or how much money you have,” he told a crowd of around 2,000 people at the popular event.

NV-SEN 2016 (REID): Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) trails Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) in a hypothetical 2016 Senate match-up by 10 points, 53 percent to 43 percent, according to an automated survey from GOP pollster Harper Polling.

SD-SEN (OPEN): Democratic nominee Rick Weiland is touting an internal poll that has him trailing former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds (R) by 34 percent to 24 percent, with former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler (I) pulling 10 percent. The poll was conducted by Democratic firm Clarity Campaign Labs. Most Democrats concede that Rounds is all but a lock to win the seat.

TN-SEN (ALEXANDER): An internal poll for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), provided to The Hill upon request shows the GOP senator in a strong position heading into next Thursday’s primary. Conducted July 27-29 by North Star Opinion Research,  Alexander takes 53 percent over his main competitor, state Rep. Joe Carr, who draws 24 percent. Radiologist George Flinn takes 5 percent in the crowded primary, but pollster Whit Ayres writes in his memo that “Flinn is both better known and better liked than Joe Carr in the western part of the state.” Fifty-nine percent say they approve of the job Alexander, a longtime Tennessee institution, has done in the Senate, while just 32 percent disapprove. 

BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE

DCCC: President Obama has scheduled additional fundraisers for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DCCC is also investing big resources in African-American voter outreach, The Washington Post writes.

AZ-7 (OPEN): The League of Conservation Voters endorsed former state Rep. Ruben Gallego (D) for in the primary for his heavily Democratic district.

MI-3 (AMASH): The Club for Growth is going back up on the air to help Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) ahead of next Tuesday’s primary, pushing it past a half-million dollars spent on the race. Amash has a 20-point lead over businessman Brian Ellis (R) in a new poll from Strategic National, in line with other polling of the race.

MN-6 (NOLAN): The House Majority PAC is attacking local TV stations owned by a conservative activist who has ties to the billionaire Koch brothers for pulling down their ad attacking Minnesota House candidate Stewart Mills.

MI-14 (OPEN): Former Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-Mich.) trails state Rep. Rudy Hobbs (D) in his comeback bid for an open Detroit seat, according to a new poll commissioned for a group backing Hobbs.

TN-3 (FLEISCHMANN): Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) and his challenger Weston Wamp are both out with new ads a week before their bitterly negative primary ends. The incumbent’s ad hits his 27-year-old opponent again, criticizing his firm’s involvement with a company that connects clients to ObamaCare health plans. “Weston is founding director of a company invested in Obamacare. Why would he criticize the president when Obama is making him money?” the ad asks.

Wamp’s ad echoes his previous ones: “So Chuck Fleischmann’s running negative TV ads … again. But we’re not slowing down. There’s too much to get done, and right now, nobody’s doing it,” he says. 

NRSC Chairman Jerry Moran (Kan.) told The Hill today, which first previously reported his donation to Wamp even as his committee has defended other Senate incumbents from primaries, that the June donation was because “The Wamp family has been friends of the Morans for a long time.” 

TN-4 (DESJARLAIS): Against all odds, embattled Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) could be headed back to Congress next year. The GOP physician looked like he would be booted from office in late 2012 after revelations that he had pushed his ex-wife to have two abortions and carried on affairs with patients, one of whom he urged to terminate a pregnancy. But despite DesJarlais being seen as one of the cycle’s most endangered incumbents, more than a half-dozen strategists with deep Tennessee ties say the contest with GOP state Sen. Jim Tracy is far closer than expected ahead of the Aug. 7 primary, and that negative attacks may have backfired following DesJarlais’s cancer diagnosis earlier this month. DesJarlais isn’t exactly a pariah though within the Republican Caucus. Last year, both Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) and new Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) donated to him from their leadership PACs. 

One member who won’t be, though, is his home-state colleague, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.). She’ll host a fundraiser next week for Tracy’s bid. In response to that news, first reported by The Hill, DesJarlais issued a statement: “I am disappointed Diane Black would support someone she tried so hard to defeat in 2010. Perhaps it is not surprising though that two career politicians would join forces to try to unseat the fourth most conservative Member of the House. It seems my principled stance against ObamaCare, irresponsibly raising the debt limit and unconstitutional federal overreach just does not fit into their say one thing do another approach. It is beyond clear now that Jim Tracy is beholden to special interest groups and the Washington establishment.”

2016 WATCH

CLINTON: The Washington Post reports that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s list of Democratic donors-in-waiting continues to grow — at least 22 donors have signed up as co-chairs of Ready for Hillary’s national finance council, the super-PAC urging her to run for president. That designation requires donating or raising $25,000 each, amounting for $5.6 million total. 

WALKER: The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) keynote accomplishment, the controversial law that curtailed union power.

CUOMO: A Manhattan-based U.S. attorney has opened an inquiry into why New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) shuttered an anti-corruption panel that he’d launched after reports that his office had encouraged the panel not to investigate it.

QUOTE OF THE DAY 

“Now that I’m in the United States Senate, I’ll tell you that I am not the only United States senator who failed civics. There are a whole lotta those boys and girls! Lord, have mercy! I also failed Spanish and English, and when you fail Spanish and English, they don’t call you bilingual: They call you bi-ignorant, because you can’t speak in any language!”

— Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), speaking to a group of students on Wednesday at Young America’s Foundation