On August 5, Public Policy Polling released an Alaska poll, for both Governor and U.S. Senate. The poll included all general election candidates. Because the primaries haven’t been held yet, and the Republican U.S. Senate primary is considered difficult to predict, alternate Republican nominees were presented. However, the Libertarian primary for U.S. Senate is also difficult to predict, yet PPP seemed to assume that the Libertarian nominee would be Mark Fish. Thanks to PoliticalWire for the link.

The Kentucky Libertarian Party has completed its petition for U.S. Senate. The nominee, David Patterson, has 9,000 signatures. The party has already checked the validity of its own petition and finds more than 6,000 names are valid. The requirement is 5,000.

This is the first time a minor party or independent candidate has qualified for a U.S. Senate election in Kentucky since 1998, when the Reform Party, which was ballot-qualified that year and didn’t need a petition for any of its nominees, ran Charles Arbegust. Arbegust’s vote total, 12,546, was not especially impressive, but it did prevent anyone from receiving a majority of the vote. In that 1998 election, Republican Jim Bunning won with 569,817 votes, and the Democratic nominee, Scotty Baesler, received 563,051.

Opponents of Oregon’s Measure 90, the top-two system initiative, have established this web page.

This newspaper story says that former New York city Mayor Michael Bloomberg will probably contribute a substantial sum of money to assist the campaign in favor of the top-two system. The story mentions that Bloomberg’s emissary to Oregon for this purpose was Bradley Tusk. Tusk formerly worked for U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, who had an op-ed praising top-two systems in the New York Times last month.

Blue Oregon has this commentary on Measure 90, by Carla Hanson. Thanks to Blair Bobier for the link to the story about Mayor Bloomberg.