• The Karl Rove-founded Crossroads GPS unveils a new ad going after incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan’s support of Obamacare and its fiscal effects on Medicare.
• The conservative American Thinker website publishes an essay comparing the backgrounds of Hagan and her Republican challenger, House Speaker Thom Tillis.
• The legislative battle over moving the State Bureau of Investigation from the control of the attorney general to an agency in the executive branch may be getting personal. The SBI announced Wednesday a criminal probe of political contributions made by a Florida-based operator of sweepstakes parlors who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations to members of the General Assembly who were rewriting sweepstakes rules. Attorney General Roy Cooper is mulling a bid for governor in 2016. The donations went to a host of public officials, Gov. Pat McCrory (Cooper’s likely opponent), Tillis, and state Senate leader Phil Berger (each of whom later donated the money to charity). The campaign contributions reportedly came from an account that used laundered money from illegal gambling operations.
• A new Pew Research Center shows increasing distrust between Republicans and Democrats, as each party has become more cohesive ideologically. As political historian Michael Barone noted several month ago, such polarization is precisely the outcome political pundits and academics once longed for.
