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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is traveling to New York City Thursday for two campaign fundraising events during a national transportation tour. He is scheduled to attend one event for the Democratic Party and another for the House Majority PAC, which tries to help Democrats win House seats. They are being held at separate private homes in Manhattan and are closed to media coverage. Obama will spend about five hours in the city, arriving at Kennedy airport at 4 p.m., then heading to the fundraisers. He will return to the White House just after 9 p.m.

Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Crist turned to voter-rich South Florida Thursday to tap a running mate. Crist's campaign announced he had picked Annette Taddeo-Goldstein, a Colombian-American and chair of the Miami-Dade Democratic Party, to be his lieutenant governor nominee -- provided he wins the primary

A mysterious Nigerian businessman whose empire is under scrutiny for its ties to a jailed, corrupt African politician has emerged as one of Democratic candidate for governor Charlie Crist‘s biggest campaign donors, Gossip Extra has learned exclusively. Onajite Okoloko, an oil executive turned fertilizer manufacturer with a sprawling property in Boca Raton, has donated $100,000 to Democrat Crist’s campaign so far this year, according to state campaign records.

It is hard not to wonder what kind of impact $3.7 billion, the amount President Barack Obama has requested to deal with the child immigrant border crisis, might have on the traumatized children of Chicago's South Side. In certain corners of this town — indeed, often in or very near Obama's own neighborhood — public school education is a joke, there are no jobs, there are no opportunities and there sure isn't much hope. The same can be said about areas in St. Louis, Detroit, Oakland and in many high-poverty communities populated almost exclusively by Hispanics and African-Americans. Putting aside...

Last week, Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn attended a fundraiser hosted by an ex-convict. No, I’m dead serious. The $2,600 a head Capitol Hill fundraiser for Ms. Nunn was co-hosted by Virtual Murrell; an early leader of the Black Panther Party who served some prison time for extorting businesses when he worked as an aide in city government in the 1990s (via National Review): Murrell was indicted in 1994 by a federal grand jury on charges that he solicited and received over $37,000 in bribes from businesses in San Francisco while serving as an aide to an Oakland city...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.- Write-in candidate for Mesa County Sheriff Mike Harlow is being endorsed by the Tea Party. This announcement was made on Wednesday at the Old County Courthouse. Harlow is a Navy Veteran with 17 years of Law Enforcement experience. He describes himself as an unaffiliated conservative candidate. "The sheriff is supposed to be the highest-reigning law enforcement in the county. I’ll make sure that is known and we won't back up to anybody. If I think they don't have business here, then they'll have to lave," said Mike Harlow. Harlow has experience working as a K-9 Police Dog...

In an unusual move that is getting some national political buzz, the chairman of the Missouri Republican Party is asking the national GOP to investigate campaign ads and robocalls that attacked Mississippi Tea Party candidate Chris McDaniel in his failed attempt to unseat U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss. Missouri Republican Party Chairman Ed Martin has requested that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus appoint a task to investigate the “racially divisive” ads and robocalls that alleged McDaniel had racist ties.

Sen. Thad Cochran’s (R-Miss.) campaign said Tuesday it “screwed up” its Federal Election Commission reports when disclosing $53,000 in get-out-the-vote cash payments, and will have to amend its filings. The Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Miss., reports that campaign adviser Austin Barbour said the campaign made a mistake when disclosing large sums listed as reimbursements for “Campaign Walkers” to staffer Amanda Shook. Conservative blogger Charles Johnson reported Monday night that the reimbursements, including payments ranging from $8,000 to $15,000, violated FEC rules, which declare staffers can only be reimbursed for food and travel costs. Any other reimbursements to staff are considered loans,...

The precinct level returns in Hinds County bolster the theory that a surge in black, Democratic turnout allowed Senator Thad Cochran to defeat Chris McDaniel, a Tea Party-backed state senator, in last month’s Republican primary runoff in Mississippi. Mr. Cochran won by 7,667 votes. Nearly half — a net 3,532 votes — came from the most Democratic precincts in Jackson’s Hinds County, where President Obama won a combined 97.8 percent of the vote in 2012, according to figures released Tuesday night by the Mississippi secretary of state. The surge in turnout was clearest in overwhelmingly black precincts; turnout sometimes increased...

Now that Republicans have made it clear that they will not participate on any level in basic problem solving when it comes to our immigration crisis, it is now on Obama to determine just how far he can go unilaterally, particularly when it comes to easing the pace of deportations. This is going to be one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency in substantive, moral, and legal terms, and politically, it could set off a bomb this fall, in the middle of the midterm elections.

Economics professor Dave Brat, who bested House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a GOP primary a month ago in Virginia’s 7th congressional district, has hired his third campaign manager of the race. Mr. Brat announced that Phil Rapp, an aide to state Sen. Bill Stanley, Franklin Republican, will be the campaign’s manager heading to the fall after Amanda Chase, a former Cantor staffer, ran things during the transition from the primary to the general election. The Brat campaign also announced it is bringing on Tim Edson as a general consultant. Mr. Edson was the campaign manager for former Florida congressman...

Obamacare open enrollment closed March 31. The White House’s Obamacare war room did not. Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early fall, and most are likely to rise, timing that couldn’t be worse for Democrats already on defense in the midterms. The White House and its allies know they’ve been beaten in every previous round of Obamacare messaging, never more devastatingly than in 2010. So they’re trying to avoid — or at least, get ahead of — any September surprise.

Allahpundit touched on this idea briefly this week in an article primarily to do with Mitt Romney in specific and the general question of whether or not there are second acts for losing party nominees in the 21st century. But apparently the idea has taken root in a few places, and as he noted in the article, the Daily Caller (or at least Mark Halperin) talked about it without being entirely tongue in cheek. Mark Halperin, the senior political analyst for “Time” magazine, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Thursday and boldly reiterated his Wednesday Twitter assertion that Al Gore —...

After an absence of several years, the new Pew Research Center political typology poll was just released. It breaks the American political electorate into eight groups. And, it makes clear what the Democratic challenge is in November midterm election. The Pew political typology has two dimensions. One is the likelihood of voting. Pew factors voters into three categories: "General Public," "Registered Voter," and "Politically Engaged." I'll assume the "Politically Engaged" are those likely to vote in the November midterm election and focus on those percentages. The second Pew dimension is the degree of partisanship. Pew sees three clusters. The first...

A new conventional wisdom is forming which says Democrat's gaffes don't matter because they aren't connected to (bad) Republican policies. There's a grain of truth to this argument and yet it misses the big picture. Hillary's policy positions won't be able to save her from her own serious flaws as a candidate. Progressive writer Brian Beutler explained why Romney's gaffe's mattered (and Hillary's didn't) this way: "Romney's weaknesses ran much deeper than tone-deaf asides about close friendships with NASCAR team owners, or a car elevator. His unfamiliarity with material deprivation was badly compounded by his devotion to an agenda (and...

Everyone assumes that Republicans will easily hold the House in November. The dominant storyline among the chattering classes centers instead on the possibility that Republicans could seize control of the Senate from Democrats. But the rapidly escalating immigration face-off between President Barack Obama and House Republicans raises the possibility that Democrats could win back the House — even if Republicans do take the Senate How is that possible? It's simple: There are more competitive House races than Senate races in areas with significant Latino populations. Last year, David Damore, a polling analyst for the firm Latino Decisions, found that there...

It was a revealing convergence Monday when the five-member conservative Supreme Court majority delivered the Hobby Lobby contraception decision even as President Obama announced that House Republicans had officially shelved immigration reform. Both disputes reaffirmed the GOP's identity as the champion of the forces most resistant to the profound demographic and cultural dynamics reshaping American life—and Democrats as the voice of those who most welcome these changes. And both clashes captured a parallel shift: While Republicans took the offense on most cultural arguments through the late 20th century, now Democrats from Obama on down are mostly pressing these issues, confident...

The Republican who lost a primary runoff election to Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran is taking the first step to challenge the outcome. Chris McDaniel's campaign said it believes it has found about 4,900 of examples of improper voting in the June 24 runoff. Most of them were people marked as voting in the June 3 Democratic primary and the June 24, the campaign said. McDaniel spokesman Noel Fritsch said the campaign served papers Thursday to Cochran's son, Clayton, giving notice of the intent to challenge based on allegations of improper crossover voting.

Bill Maher took on Hillary Clinton‘s big book tour/2016 pre-campaign and amid the mockery of Clinton downplaying how well-off her family is (he sarcastically sympathized with someone emerging “from the financial rut that is the U.S. presidency”), Maher had some advice for the soon-to-be-official presidential candidate: go away. Contrary to people saying that doing the book tour now will inoculate her from criticism in 2016, Maher said Clinton being constantly on TV and in the news will give way to a different result; namely, “we’re sick of you.” And people will grow tired of her by 2016 anyway.

Climate change is happening, and with that will come more deaths from heat-related illness and disease, according to a report released Tuesday. The report, spearheaded and funded by investor and philanthropist Thomas Steyer, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, examines many of the effects of climate change for business and individuals. "One of the most striking findings in our analysis is that increasing heat and humidity in some parts of the country could lead to outside conditions that are literally unbearable to humans, who must maintain a skin temperature below 95°F in order to...