Democratic Raid on House Seats May Not Be Over

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The Democratic playbook isn't entirely without its glitches this year. Consider what could happen in Oregon on Tuesday.

Democratic Senate leaders were thrilled to recruit state House Speaker Jeff Merkley to run against incumbent GOP Sen. Gordon Smith. Merkley is the son of a Roseburg, Ore., sawmill worker, and he had worked for the Pentagon and Habitat for Humanity before launching a successful Oregon House career.

But Merkley had a primary opponent, Steve Novick. And Novick was no ordinary primary opponent. He dropped out of junior high and went straight to college, entered Harvard Law School at age 18 and served as Justice Department lead counsel in the Love Canal environmental disaster case when he was in his early 30s. He moved to Oregon and became an ace Democratic activist.

Novick also was born with disabilities. He uses a hook for his missing left hand and stands 4-foot-9 because he is missing bones in both of his legs. He calls himself "the fighter with the hard left hook," and he has made the hook the punch line in a political ad, using it to open a beer for a voter in a bar.

In a Portland Tribune poll released last week, Novick led Merkley by 29 percent to 23 percent among likely Democratic voters -- with 43 percent of the voters still undecided. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has viewed Novick as the weaker general-election candidate, and they're worried he's going to pull an upset against their chosen candidate.

Smith -- who has run ads against both his potential rivals -- said he is "agnostic" on the outcome. "We've always assumed Merkley would win. He's been pounding me for a year," Smith said.

But he gave Novick "a very good chance" of prevailing. "He's run a much more exciting campaign," he said.

FIVE DAYS: Sen. John McCain plans to release his medical records and allow reporters to ask follow-up questions of his doctors about his health. McCain's age has been and will continue to be an underlying current of discussion in the campaign; a clean bill of health over the past eight years would go a long way toward pushing it to the back burner.

16 DAYS: Montana and South Dakota will cast the final votes of the Democratic primary season -- officially ending one of the most compelling races in modern political history.

PLAYERS

Stephanie Schriock, a highly regarded Democratic operative, is returning to her home state of Minnesota to manage the Senate candidacy of entertainer Al Franken (D), who is challenging Sen. Norm Coleman (R) this fall. Schriock, a Mankato native, made a name for herself in 2006 when she guided state Sen. Jon Tester (D) to an upset victory over Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). Before her work with Tester, Schriock served as finance director for former Vermont governor Howard Dean's 2004 presidential bid and also spent several years with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.