Monday's campaign round-up

By Steve Benen

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Mon Mar 19, 2012 12:00 PM EDT

Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:
* President Obama's re-election campaign announced this morning that it raised $45 million in February. That's up from $29.1 million in January.
* On a related note, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised over $5.31 million in February, and has $19 million cash on hand, without any debts.
* Illinois' Republican presidential primary is tomorrow, and Public Policy Polling's latest survey shows it won't be close -- Mitt Romney now leads Rick Santorum by 15 points, 45% to 30%.
* In Indiana, two new polls show the Republicans' U.S. Senate primary getting increasingly competitive, with incumbent Sen. Dick Lugar up by only six points over State Treasurer Richard Mourdock.
* It's still unlikely, but GOP officials are "preparing for the possibility" that their presidential nominee won't be chosen until the national convention over the summer.
* Obama has not yet endorsed marriage equality, but in North Carolina, the Obama campaign has announced its formal opposition to a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage.
* Speaking of North Carolina, PPP shows former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory (R) with a big lead in the state's 2012 gubernatorial race.
* And in Nevada, failed U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle has announced the launch of a new campaign. She won't be running for office, at least not right now, but will instead invest her energies into to exposing "America's silent epidemic": voter fraud. (For the record, the scourge of voter fraud doesn't exist, and is largely limited to far-right imaginations.)