OVERNIGHT CAMPAIGN: Race to the finish

by Cameron Joseph, Josh Lederman and Emily Goodin - 06/12/12 9:54 PM ET

Here are the poll closing times (all in Eastern Time):

Virginia — 7 p.m.
South Carolina — 7 p.m.
Maine — 8 p.m.
Arkansas — 8:30 p.m.
Arizona — 10 p.m.
Nevada — 10 p.m.
North Dakota — 10 p.m.

Check back to digital-stage.thehill.com for results.

TOMORROW’S AGENDA TODAY: Mitt Romney will address the Business Roundtable’s Quarterly Meeting at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

TWEET OF THE DAY: “My dad & Reagan sacrificed political points for good public policy.” — former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It’s the height of hypocrisy for them to oppose it.” — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), accusing President Obama and Vice President Biden of hypocrisy, noting they called for a special counsel to investigate national security leaks during the Bush administration when they were serving as senators.

POLL POSITION:

Two new national polls show a slight lead for President Obama over Mitt Romney. Obama held an 8-point lead, 50-42 percent, in a survey by Democratic poll firm Public Policy Polling. But a poll by a Republican-leaning firm, The Tarrance Group, gives the president a much narrower lead, besting Romney 47-46 percent.

{mosads}Romney holds a small lead over Obama in North Carolina, 48 percent to 46, according to a survey from left-leaning Public Policy Polling. That’s a 7-point swing from the same poll in April, which showed Obama leading 49 to 44 percent.

Meanwhile, Obama has the support of 46 percent of Pennsylvania voters to Romney’s 40 percent in the latest Quinnipiac University poll.

AD WATCH:

President Obama‘s campaign released a new TV ad on Tuesday titled “No. 1,” warning prospective voters that Massachusetts under former Gov. Mitt Romney was first in state debt but “fell to 47th in job creation.”

BATTLE FOR THE HOUSE:

Arizona: Republican Jonathan Paton is suing to have his primary challenger, Gaither Martin, removed from the ballot, alleging more than half of the signatures Martin gathered were invalid. Martin did not respond to messages left by The Associated Press seeking comment. Paton is expected to face former Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) in the race for a redrawn toss-up seat. He ran for former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords‘s (D-Ariz.) seat in 2010 but lost the primary to Jesse Kelly, who lost to Giffords that year but is competing in Tuesday’s special election to replace her.

SENATE SHOWDOWN:

Montana: Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is getting some big-name help from Pearl Jam, whose bassist is an old family friend of the first-term senator.

North Dakota: Democrat Heidi Heitkamp’s Senate campaign has purchased Web ads in North Dakota accusing Rep. Rick Berg (R-N.D.) of hypocrisy on the minimum wage. And North Dakota Democrats released a new poll showing Heitkamp with a 1-point lead over Berg in the state’s Senate race — within the Democratic poll’s margin of error. An independent poll conducted for local television stations and released last week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research also showed Heitkamp up 1 point over Berg.

Ohio: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) launched a new campaign ad Tuesday touting his support for military families and veterans. Cue the big-government attacks from the GOP — Brown said that “everybody knows that government creates jobs” in an interview with The Washington Post, pointing to transportation and infrastructure jobs as examples of where the federal government had effectively created jobs during the 20th century.

Wisconsin: With federal student loan interest rates set to double at the end of the month, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) will spend this week pushing her opponents to take a stand on whether they would extend the current rates for another year.

Wisconsin Part Deux: Wisconsin voters are battling fatigue after a tough recall election, but former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) is doing everything he can to get them engaged in his Senate campaign — including a little polka dancing.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

President Obama swiped Mitt Romney on Tuesday, saying his opponent doesn’t have much of an argument for why he should be president going into the November election except, “It’s Obama’s fault.”

Romney said Tuesday that while he would repeal Obama’s healthcare reform law if elected, whatever law replaces it should include a provision to ensure those with pre-existing conditions keep their insurance.

Romney said Obama has shown this week “just how out of touch he is” with the country.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) met with Romney in Atlanta on Monday, the first time the two party leaders had seen each other since the former Massachusetts governor secured the necessary 1,144 delegates to essentially snag the GOP nomination.

Obama called Commerce Secretary John Bryson Tuesday after the Cabinet official said he would take a medical leave of absence following a pair of traffic accidents over the weekend.

Former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was sued Monday by federal elections officials who accuse him of misusing more than $200,000 in campaign funds for his legal defense following his 2007 arrest in a bathroom sex sting.

First lady Michelle Obama signed copies of her new book Tuesday, and revealed at the event that the hefty tome on the White House vegetable garden earned a hard-won “thumbs-up” from her daughters Malia and Sasha.

The AFL-CIO plans to mount an aggressive campaign against voter identification laws in a half-dozen battleground states that will be key in the presidential election: Florida, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Candidates will be allowed to accept donations via text message after the Federal Election Commission (FEC) unanimously approved such a measure Monday night.

Obama supporter and actor Kal Penn spoke to campaign volunteers in Arlington, Va., on Monday night, but faced questions about how he combines his work for the campaign with his Hollywood career.

Former President George H.W. Bush, in an interview aired Tuesday, denied that he knows anything about Justin Bieber — whom he called “The Bieber” — but acknowledged that he and the 18-year-old pop singer share a love of colorful socks. “I like a colorful sock. I’m a sock man,” Bush acknowledged on NBC. “Biebs? Is he a sock man? I don’t know much about The Bieber. I never see him, I don’t know what he does.”

Please send tips and comments to Emily Goodin, egoodin@digital-stage.thehill.com; Cameron Joseph, cjoseph@digital-stage.thehill.com; Josh Lederman, jlederman@digital-stage.thehill.com; and Justin Sink, jsink@digital-stage.thehill.com

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