The Democratic challenger to South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) trails her by just five points, according to a survey released Wednesday by Public Policy Polling.

The Democratic-affiliated pollster found that challenger Vincent Sheheen trailed the governor 50 percent to 45 percent. PPP has previously shown the race tighter than other pollsters, including with a poll conducted in June that showed Haley with a 3-point lead.

In contrast, a poll conducted at the end of August by Republican-leaning Rasmussen showed Haley with a 15 point lead. Another poll released Tuesday by American Research Group showed Haley garnering 43 percent of the vote compared to 33 percent by Sheheen and 18 percent by independent candidate Tom Ervin. Neither the PPP poll nor the Rasmussen poll included Ervin, who previously threatened to challenge Haley in the Republican primary.

The latest PPP poll was sponsored by the South Carolina Democratic Party, as was the one in June.

A prominent Kentucky businessman contributed $10,200 to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s campaign four days after the Republican leader appointed him to a government commission tasked with tackling hunger.

The timing of the donation is sure to draw scrutiny, as McConnell previously faced questions about a similar donation from a Delta Airlines CEO that shortly followed a breakfast the donor shared with McConnell in the exclusive Senate Dining Room.


On April 11, McConnell appointed Spencer Coates, the president of grocery conglomerate Houchens Industries, to the newly-created National Commission on Hunger, a nonpartisan committee meant to craft recommendations to tackle hunger and streamline existing food aid programs.

Four days later, Coates contributed $10,200 to McConnell’s joint fundraising committee with the Republican Party of Kentucky, according to his most recent Federal Election Commission filings.

COLUMBIA, SC — S.C. Speaker of the House Bobby Harrell of Charleston has been indicted in Richland County on charges of using campaign funds for personal expenses, filing false campaign disclosure reports and misconduct in office.

It was the first time in memory, and maybe in history, that a sitting House Speaker has been indicted.

The indictment followed months of a historic legal fight between Harrell and S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson that took a trip through the S.C. Supreme Court before Wilson handed the case off to 1st Circuit Solicitor David Pascoe in the Lowcountry.

The indictments came shortly after noon Wednesday from the Richland County Grand Jury.

“You guys down in Washington, you’re starting to make it sound like you’re either-or — you’re a moderate Democrat or you’re a liberal Democrat,” Cuomo said. “I want to say, in a liberal state like New York, you can hold both. The best basketball player, you can go to your left and you can go to your right. The politician who can hold that broad a spectrum, that is a powerful political base.”

Asked about Teachout’s challenge, Cuomo said, “She has no institutional liberal support,” and he dismissed her suggestion that his economic record is Reagan-esque.

“Why did the Working Families Party, which is made up of the most liberal institutions in the United States of America — you go to their left, you fall off the planet — why did they endorse me if I’m such an economic conservative?” he said. “It’s just without basis.”

Some liberals are upset with Cuomo for cutting taxes and spending on social programs and for not taking a stance against hydraulic fracturing, a controversial method for retrieving natural gas. Cuomo funded statewide pre-K, but without the accompanying tax increase on the wealthy that De Blasio had championed.

VIENNA (AP) — Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations under President George W. Bush, is being investigated by American authorities for suspected money laundering, Austrian officials said Monday.

State prosecutor Thomas Vecsey confirmed a report in the Austrian weekly Profil about the investigation of Khalilzad, who played a key role in the political transition in Afghanistan after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion and the fall of the Taliban.

According to the magazine, the investigation centers on the alleged transfer of 1.15 million euros ($1.5 million) in May 2013 to an account in Vienna owned by Khalilzad's wife, Cheryl Benard. The money came from business activities in Iraq and the United Arab Emirates, it reported. Vecsey would not elaborate on the allegations, nor did the magazine's report.

Profil said the case became public after a blogger found documents while rummaging through a garbage container used by the state prosecutor's office in Vienna.

McConnell begins to pull away in Kentucky

In Kentucky, McConnell’s eight-point lead among likely voters shrinks to just seven points among registered voters, 45 percent to 38 percent.

That’s a change from May, when the candidates were essentially deadlocked – with McConnell at 46 percent and Grimes at 45 percent.

Like in Arkansas, Obama’s approval rate in the Bluegrass State stands at 31 percent. And a similar percentage prefer a GOP-controlled Congress serve as a check on the president, rather than to see Democrats elected to send a message of more cooperation with Obama.

On Friday morning, less than 48 hours after President Obama delivered a speech in Estonia warning against Russian aggression, an officer with Estonia's state security bureau was kidnapped at gunpoint and taken into Russia.

It's not clear whether or not the attack has anything to do with the Russian government — Russian organized crime is active throughout the region. But the incident comes at an extremely tense moment between Russia and Estonia, one in which the United States has publicly committed to Estonia's military defense, meaning that a Russian invasion of Estonia would trigger war between Russia and the US.

"Unidentified persons coming from Russia took the freedom of an officer of Estonian Scurity police officer on the territory of Estonia," Estonia's state prosecutor's office announced. "The officer was taken to Russia using physical force and at gunpoint."

The kidnappers, who were somehow able to jam Estonian police radios, were clearly not your everyday criminals. The statement continues: "The officer was fulfilling his duties in connection to preventing a cross-border crime in taking place. The use of smoke grenades and intense interference with operative radio connections preceded the incident."

Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves tweeted almost immediately about the kidnapping, indicating that the government considers it a major incident. His government quickly summoned the Russian ambassador.

OpenSecrets Blog has learned that FBI agents have been interviewing a slew of witnesses connected to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign and grand jury subpoenas have been issued for email records from campaign officials. And in addition to payments to a Maryland video company that were routed to Sorenson in exchange for his endorsement, OpenSecrets has identified an additional suspicious payment by Paul’s campaign that may be linked to a $25,000 check to Sorenson from a jewelry store connected to a Paul operative.

Sources say two grand juries are looking into the 2012 campaigns of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), whom Sorenson originally endorsed, and Paul, to whom Sorenson switched his support just days before the Iowa caucuses. A number of individuals confirmed to OpenSecrets Blog that they had been interviewed by FBI agents, the grand juries, or both.

In late July, one of the grand juries issued subpoenas for emails and financial transactions between at least seventeen individuals, including Paul, Bachmann and Jesse Benton, who was Paul’s campaign chairman at the time and who resigned as campaign manager for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell‘s (R-Ky.) re-election bid late last week after news of Sorenson’s plea broke. A focus of the probe appears to be Dimitri Kesari, Kesari’s brother and several Maryland audio/video companies they are connected to. Kesari was a Paul operative who later was employed by the McConnell campaign.

An earlier Iowa Senate Ethics Committee investigation found that a Maryland documentary film company called ICT Inc. had paid Sorenson $73,000 in a series of transactions through early 2012. As first reported by OpenSecrets Blog last week, the Paul campaign sent ICT $82,375 in payments that almost exactly match payments to Sorenson. Sorenson’s plea agreement acknowledges that he took payments from a campaign, made to him through a film production company, in exchange for changing his endorsement.