of the coal industry.



Hot Senate Race: After knocking off venerable Senator Richard Lugar in a primary, Richard Mourdock seems to be on the verge of fumbling away an important seat to the Democrats. Though to be fair to Mourdock, his comments on rape were only the second-most offensive by a Republican Senate candidate this cycle.



7 p.m.: Georgia, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, plus the rest of Indiana and Kentucky and most of Florida (60 electoral votes so far). “Why do people believe Florida and Virginia are sure things for Mitt Romney?” Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post asked last week. Well, a lot of people believe it because the Romney campaign keeps saying it. And they keep saying it because of this underappreciated fact: Romney needs Virginia justconservative areas represented by Democrats, Hurricane Sandy has thrown a monkey wrench into local GOP plans to pick up seats in the New York State Senate. So if a couple of Republican senators go down, the chamber could lurch back to the Dems, who won a majority in 2008 but threw it away almost immediately. But do you think Andrew Cuomo would prefer sharing control with the dysfunctional Democratic caucus, or with the Republicans who played so nicely with him during his first year in office? To follow the drama, Google “George Amedore,” the name of the Republican running in a newly created Hudson Valley district that could tip the balance of the whole Senate. (You can also search for Cecilia Tkaczyk, the Democrat, but her name is