Despicable! That’s the best description of how readers should feel about John Raese’s attempt to buy their opinion.

Raese, the Republican candidate for the unexpired term of the late Sen. Robert Byrd, is offering to pay a West Virginian in each county who submits the most published letters to the editor in support of his candidacy, which can only be seen as ethically disgusting and insulting to those who truly have a political opinion they wish to share with newspaper readers. The “contest,” as Raese’s spin doctor called it, makes every letter received by a newspaper questionable as to its motive for being written.

I’m assuming this practice isn’t on par with such illegal activities as vote buying, but it does at the very least call into question, as the News and Sentinel points out, the independence of concerned citizens throughout the state. As such, the tactical significance of Raese’s move — to the extent that it becomes common knowledge — seems perhaps as questionable as the practice itself.

It’s a clever tack, and one that gets to the heart of Manchin’s current difficulties in his race against relatively unknown Republican businessman John Raese for the Senate seat previously held by the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). The problem for Manchin is that even though he enjoys quite high favorability ratings as governor, West Virginians have been slowly but steadily undergoing a seismic shift in their opinions towards the Democratic Party over the last couple decades — a shift that culminated with the once reliably blue state voting for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over Barack Obama by a solid 13 percentage points in 2008.

So while West Virginians seem plenty happy with Manchin as their governor, they’re a lot less pleased with Democrats in Washington and not immediately eager to ensure that the party has another vote at their disposal. Manchin is still the favorite in the race, but the NRSC’s play makes it clear the group thinks the state is very much in contention.

The first — and most surprising — item concerns Gov. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who a new Public Policy Polling survey shows trailing his GOP opponent John Raese 46 percent to 43 percent in the race to fill the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s (D-W.Va.) Senate seat. Just months before, soon after Manchin signaled his intention to run, most preliminary polls put him up by at least 20 points, but since then his lead has steadily diminished. The poll results are also coming out at the same time as revelations that a federal probe into highways built in West Virginia is being focused, at least in part, on a $150 million road that connects I-79 to to Fairmont, Manchin’s hometown — but any connection to the governor’s office at this stage is circumstantial at best.

Meanwhile, new polls showing former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) holding a steady 7 point lead over Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) in the race to replace Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) are causing come forecasters to recategorize it from “toss up” to “lean Republican.” But anyone who followed Sestak’s come-from-behind victory over Specter in the primary knows it’s too soon to say anything for sure: “Pat Toomey is in a good place, ahead by 7 points with six weeks to go. But Congressman Joe Sestak has proven himself a tough competitor so it’s too early to order the champagne,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement.

Finally, a new CNN/Time/Opinion Research poll indicates that Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is falling behind Weld County DA and tea party–backed candidate, Ken Buck, in Colorado’s Senate race. The difference in the race seems to be all about the enthusiasm gap that’s plaguing Democrats around the country, pundits note: Buck leads Bennet 49 percent to 44 percent among likely voters. When registered voters are polled, however, Bennet takes 47 percent to Buck’s 44 percent. Getting those 2008 Obama voters out to the polls for Bennet, in other words, is a must-do if he hopes to keep his seat.

At least Democrats can still be thankful that Christine O’Donnell is the GOP Senate candidate in Delaware.

A total of 15 people had filed by the 5 p.m. deadline today — three Democrats, 11 Republicans and Jesse Johnson, a member of the West Virginia Mountain Party. Though Manchin does have two challengers for the Democratic nomination — former state Secretary of State Ken Hechler and former state Del. Sheirl Fletcher — he is still heavily favored to get the nomination in the Aug. 28 primary.

John Raese, a prominent businessman who has already run in two past Senate races, is by far the best-known Republican to file. He lost 52-48 percent in a 1984 open-seat race against then-Gov. Jay Rockefeller (D), but only got 34 percent of the vote in a 2006 contest against Byrd.

A Rasmussen Reports poll released today indicates Raese would not even come close to winning the race this time either — Manchin leads him 51-35 percent. Part of the issue: Only 56 percent of Republicans would support him in that match-up, while another 29 percent would give their vote to Manchin.

There is no doubt state Republicans are dismayed by Capito’s decision to forgo a Senate bid in favor of only running for re-election to her House seat, though the law authorizing the special Nov. 2 election gave her the option of running for both seats simultaneously.

“We were pinning our hopes on Shelley, and while we respect her decision, we are very disappointed,” state party chairman Doug McKinney told The Charleston Gazette. “I thought that would have been a great race.”

Ken Hechler, a former congressman and former state Secretary of State — ironically, Manchin succeeded him in that role — filed the necessary paperwork today to run in the Aug. 28 Democratic primary. As of this article’s posting, he and Manchin are the only filed candidates.

Hechler started his political career as a White House assistant during the Truman administration. As a member of Congress, he represented portions of what is now Rep. Nick Rahall’s (D) district between 1959 and 1977. After losing the 1976 Democratic gubernatorial primary to now-Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) and a bid to win back his old House seat in 1978, Hechler went on to serve as Secretary of State from 1985 through 2001. By the time of the Nov. 2 special election, Hechler will be 96 years old — four years older than Byrd was when he died June 28.

Hechler is far more liberal than Manchin. He was a strong advocate of campaign finance reform, joining activist Doris “Granny D” Haddock in her lobbying efforts that eventually produced the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He is also an outspoken advocate of mining safety reforms. He was critical of the Mining Safety and Health Administration in the wake of the April explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine during an interview with TWI later that month.

“This is a case not only of the operator thumbing his nose at the strictly legal requirements and regulations,” Ken Hechler, former West Virginia congressman who was lead sponsor of a 1969 law that overhauled mining safety, said this week in a phone interview. “It also involves a failure of the Mine Safety and Health Administration itself to act aggressively against the mine in order to ensure that either the conditions be made safe, as provided in the law, or to toughen the enforcement … to close the mine.”

In fact, Hechler appears to be basing his entire campaign on another mining issue — mountaintop removal. He told the Charleston Daily Mail:

“I don’t want to make it a campaign against Gov. Manchin,” Hechler said this morning, speaking on the phone from New York, where he is doing a series of public lectures. “I want to make it about mountaintop removal. A vote for me is not a vote for Ken Hechler –  it’s tantamount to a vote against mountaintop removal.”

Manchin has generally been an opponent of mining reforms — recently because he has considered suing the Environmental Protection Agency over new water quality guidelines that would affect work at the state’s strip mines. Manchin has received $281,963 in campaign contributions from coal industry PACs and individuals who work in the industry.

Hechler’s candidacy does not appear to pose a significant challenge to Manchin’s claim on the Democratic nomination — Hechler told the Daily Mail as much. But given that the two represent two different political ideologies present within the state party, things could still get interesting.

State GOP lawmakers had managed to wrangle an amendment into the final bill that designated the Senate election as completely separate from the general election, though both occur Nov. 2. The amendment basically allowed any candidate who was running for another office to also run in the Senate election — more pointedly, it allowed Capito to run for the Senate while also allowing her to run for re-election to her House seat. Previous reports indicated that Capito was reluctant to make the jump to a Senate run if it meant giving up her House seat and risking her status as the state’s top elected Republican.

So why would Capito still decide to bow out, even after her party went to a great deal of trouble to perfectly align the stars for her? A source gave Politico some indication of what Capito’s problem is now.

Even though a newly-passed special election law specifically allows for Moore Capito to run for re-election to her House seat and in the special election, there is still much concern about a possible legal challenge if she tries – or worse, the prospect that she might get kicked off the ballot for both offices – if she tries to file for the Senate race. The source added that the congresswoman is concerned the logistics of running and fundraising for two simultaneous races on Nov. 2, and is also mulling several personal considerations.

Of course, there’s also the fact that the only poll so far of this race, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, showed Manchin leading Capito 53-39 percent. Manchin is very popular in West Virginia — Rasmussen found 77 percent of voters approved of him — and Capito may be concerned that a failed Senate bid would tarnish her political prospects. Of course, turning down a run at what may be the Republicans’ best opportunity to pick up one of the state’s Senate seats won’t exactly help her reputation with the national party. State GOP bigwigs likely won’t be pleased with her either, especially since they risked making the special election fix — already a prime example of political kabuki — into even more of a spectacle by insisting on the Capito Amendment.

There has been no comment from Capito’s camp yet, but we may know a definitive answer soon enough. She is scheduled to appear on Hoppy Kercheval’s “Metronews Talkline” radio show at 10 a.m., so it is possible she may announce her intentions on the program.

People in line for a job fair in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Michael Francis McElroy/ZUMA Press)

This afternoon, the Senate cleared a crucial hurdle to reauthorizing the federal extension of unemployment benefits, held up in the Senate for an unprecedented two months. The upper chamber voted down a filibuster of H.R. 4213, also known as the jobs bill or the extenders package — the vehicle for a $34 billion extension of jobless benefits, retroactive to June 2, when they lapsed, and continuing through the end of November.

[Economy1] The cloture vote took place immediately following the swearing-in of Sen. Carte Goodwin (D-W.Va.), the temporary replacement for Sen. Robert Byrd, who passed away at the end of June at the age of 92. Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine) joined 58 members of the Democratic caucus — every member save for Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) — in voting to end debate on the bill. All other Republicans opposed. The final vote was 60 to 40.

The bill now moves to a majority-rules vote on the actual legislation. Democrats hope to pass that today, though Republicans could object and force the majority party to wait 30 hours to vote. After that, the bill returns to the House, where the Democratic leadership plans to pass it as quickly as possible. (The Senate is not voting on H.R. 5618, the House’s standalone version, opting instead to hold a new vote on a failed Senate bill in order to bypass an additional procedural roadblock.) President Obama could sign the bill as early as Wednesday evening, barring procedural hold-ups, and states could begin the process of disbursing the benefits as early as Thursday morning.

The bill does not include an extension of the $25-a-week Federal Additional Compensation funds, tacked onto many unemployment checks. It also does not include any of the other provisions originally included in or proposed for the jobs bill or extenders package: It does not close tax loopholes, or provide Medicaid funding to states, or include funds to keep teachers and other state employees working. It also does not create an additional fifth tier of benefits; federal extensions only continue in states with higher than an 8 percent unemployment rate, and the maximum weeks of state and federal benefits remains ninety-nine.

Nevertheless, the unemployment extension comes as a desperately needed lifeline to 2.5 million American families. “When millions of Americans lost their jobs, they didn’t just lose a place to go to work in the morning,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor on Monday. “They lost their incomes, their savings and their retirement security. They lost their tuition payments. Many lost their homes. They lost their gas money and their grocery money. All of this through no fault of their own. I’m not talking about just a handful of people in an isolated corner of the country. I’m talking about millions of Americans from every one of our states.”

Additionally, economists expect the unemployment benefits extension to have a strong stimulative impact on the economy, as the recovery lags and a growing band of experts calls for more government spending to keep up demand. Lawrence Mishel, the head of the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that the unemployment benefits extension will support 800,000 jobs over the remainder of the year — as the unemployed generally spend their unemployment benefits immediately, rather than using them to pay down debt or to keep as savings. Unemployment benefits usually end up costing the government only about 40 percent of the sticker price, Mishel said on a call with reporters on Monday. “[Passing the unemployment extension] is not only a decent thing to do. It’s one of the most stimulative things you can do to create jobs,” he noted.

But Republicans have argued that unemployment benefits should no longer be considered emergency spending, in which case they would not be allowed to raise the deficit. “We’ve offered ways of paying for these programs, and we’ve been eager to approve them,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “But we can’t support job-killing taxes and adding tens of billions to the already unsustainable national debt. So the only reason the unemployment extension hasn’t passed is because Democrats simply refuse to pass a bill that doesn’t add to the debt. That’s it. That’s the only difference between what they’ve offered and what we’ve offered.” A number of Republican senators — including McConnell and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) — introduced unemployment bills with offsets.

Over the weekend, President Obama joined the Democratic caucus in hitting at Republicans for blocking the benefits for so long. Never in U.S. history have extended benefits been allowed to expire with unemployment over 7 percent. He devoted his Saturday radio address the topic. And, speaking in the Rose Garden on Monday, flanked by three unemployed Americans, Obama said: “[Republicans] say we shouldn’t provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They’ve got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help.”

With Goodwin’s support, the Senate passed cloture on the unemployment benefits extension bill shortly after his swearing-in. When Goodwin cast his vote in favor of the bill, applause broke out in the chamber.

Updated at 3:50 p.m.

He announced his campaign run this morning, a little more than 13 hours after signing the bill that actually declared the election. His run was widely expected for weeks, as he was long known to have been interested in running for the late Sen. Robert Byrd’s seat when it became vacant.

“If I am so fortunate and honored to have the support of the people of West Virginia,” Manchin said during his campaign announcement. “I can’t fill [Byrd's] shoes. I can only hope to follow his footsteps and serve the people of West Virginia as best I can.”

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) will also likely be a candidate for the seat — the deal legislators struck yesterday to allow the election to take place included an amendment allowing candidates for other offices to also run in the Senate race. Capito had previously appeared reluctant to run for the seat because she was concerned it would mean giving up her House re-election bid. She is expected to announce her intentions by the end of the week.

We will get a full sense of who is running in the race — if anyone decides to challenge Manchin or Capito in their parties’ Aug. 28 special primaries — by 5 p.m. Friday, when the filing period for this race closes.

Whoever wins the race will take over the seat soon after the Nov. 2 election. Until then, former Manchin general counsel Carte Goodwin (D) will fill the seat. He will be sworn in at 2:15 p.m. today.

People in line for a job fair in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. (Michael Francis McElroy/ZUMA Press)

Today, Congress plans to vote on a federal extension of unemployment benefits, held up in the Senate for an unprecedented two months. The Senate will reconsider H.R. 4213, also known as the jobs bill or the extenders package, as the vehicle for a $34 billion extension of jobless benefits — retroactive to June 2, when they lapsed, and continuing through the end of November.

[Economy1] The vote will take place immediately following the swearing-in of Carte Goodwin, the replacement for Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), who passed away at the end of June at the age of 92. That vote will be the 60-vote cloture hurdle to end debate. With Goodwin, the Democrats have 59 in their caucus, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are expected to cross the aisle, while Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) will vote no.

The bill will then move on to a majority-rules vote on the actual legislation, which will return to the House, where the Democratic leadership plans to pass it as quickly as possible. (The Senate is not voting on H.R. 5618, the House’s standalone version, opting instead to hold a new vote on the Senate bill, which already failed to pass cloture once, in order to bypass an additional procedural roadblock.) President Obama could sign the bill as early as Wednesday evening, barring procedural hold-ups, and states could begin the process of disbursing the benefits as early as Thursday morning.

The bill does not include an extension of the $25-a-week Federal Additional Compensation funds, tacked onto many unemployment checks. It also does not include any of the other provisions originally included in or proposed for the jobs bill or extenders package: It does not close tax loopholes, or provide Medicaid funding to states, or include funds to keep teachers and other state employees working. It also does not create an additional fifth tier of benefits; federal extensions only continue in states with higher than an 8 percent unemployment rate, and the maximum weeks of state and federal benefits remains ninety-nine.

Nevertheless, the unemployment extension comes as a desperately needed lifeline to 2.5 million American families. “When millions of Americans lost their jobs, they didn’t just lose a place to go to work in the morning,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on the Senate floor on Monday. “They lost their incomes, their savings and their retirement security. They lost their tuition payments. Many lost their homes. They lost their gas money and their grocery money. All of this through no fault of their own. I’m not talking about just a handful of people in an isolated corner of the country. I’m talking about millions of Americans from every one of our states.”

Additionally, economists expect the unemployment benefits extension to have a strong stimulative impact on the economy, as the recovery lags and a growing band of experts calls for more government spending to keep up demand. Lawrence Mishel, the head of the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that the unemployment benefits extension will support 800,000 jobs over the remainder of the year — as the unemployed generally spend their unemployment benefits immediately, rather than using them to pay down debt or to keep as savings. Unemployment benefits usually end up costing the government only about 40 percent of the sticker price, Mishel said on a call with reporters on Monday. “[Passing the unemployment extension] is not only a decent thing to do. It’s one of the most stimulative things you can do to create jobs,” he noted.

But Republicans have argued that unemployment benefits should no longer be considered emergency spending, in which case they would not be allowed to raise the deficit. “We’ve offered ways of paying for these programs, and we’ve been eager to approve them,” argued Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “But we can’t support job-killing taxes and adding tens of billions to the already unsustainable national debt. So the only reason the unemployment extension hasn’t passed is because Democrats simply refuse to pass a bill that doesn’t add to the debt. That’s it. That’s the only difference between what they’ve offered and what we’ve offered.” A number of Republican senators — including McConnell and Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) — introduced unemployment bills with offsets.

Over the weekend, President Obama joined the Democratic caucus in hitting at Republicans for blocking the benefits for so long. Never in U.S. history have extended benefits been allowed to expire with unemployment over 7 percent. He devoted his Saturday radio address the topic. And, speaking in the Rose Garden on Monday, flanked by three unemployed Americans, Obama said: “[Republicans] say we shouldn’t provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed. They’ve got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help.”