•MA-Sen: Big Dog Alert! Bill Clinton is coming to Boston on Saturday to campaign for Rep. Ed Markey, giving the Democrat a highly unusual superfecta. Michelle Obama was in town last week, Joe Biden showed up at a DC event (with Al Gore!) on Tuesday, Barack Obama led a rally in Beantown on Wednesday, and now it'll be Bill's turn. All he needs is Bowzer from Sha Na Na, the king of special elections, to complete the ultra-rare uberfecta.
Markey's also relying on something else for fundraising: That garbagey McLaughlin & Associates poll showing Gabriel Gomez down just one point (which we shredded to pieces) has made at least one appearance in a Markey email blast. I guess it's pretty predictable that a campaign will always cite worst-case scenarios when trying to drum up dollars, even if they're dreamed up by the other side and almost certainly bogus. That's just politics... but politics is often pretty lame.
Meanwhile, Gomez has a new ad out that takes the very hackneyed "fake attacks" route, with a narrator intoning with faux horror: "Gabriel Gomez is a very bad man. He kills old people. He hates women. He even leaves the toilet seat up." Weak stuff, and there's no word on the size of the buy.
Gomez may finally getting some last-minute outside help, though. A new group with the (I'm sure deliberately) confusing name of Americans for Progressive Action will reportedly spend $700,000 on the airwaves on Gomez's behalf. Aaron Blake says that the organization itself hasn't even confirmed the buy, though, and also points out that their treasurer, Nancy Watkins, has been associated with a whole bunch of shadowy GOP money operations. The Markey campaign also noted that Watkins served as treasurer for none other that Bachmann for President.