•MT-Sen: Just as things started to look better for appointed Democratic Sen. John Walsh, he got some very bad news on Wednesday. The New York Times reported that Walsh plagiarized at least one-fourth of his final paper to graduate from war college in 2007. The Times even has sections of Walsh's paper along with the original sources he allegedly copied from without citing or quoting. Walsh is denying that he did anything wrong intentionally, and was being treated for combat-related post traumatic stress disorder when he did the paper.
Plagiarism charges have sunk more than one campaign. A recent example is the 2010 Colorado gubernatorial election, where presumed Republican nominee and former Rep. Scott McInnis never recovered from a series of accusations that he had been paid for work he had plagiarized. McInnis ended up narrowly losing the primary to Some Dude Dan Maes. We'll see what happens with Walsh, who is already facing an uphill climb to keep his seat against Republican Rep. Steve Daines.
This story comes at a very bad time for Walsh, as a few recent polls showed him gaining ground. Just before the news hit, Gravis Marketing released a (probably now obsolete) survey showing Walsh down only 45-41, the closest result any publicly released poll has ever found here. But with the alleged plagiarism story dominating the news, Walsh is going to have a tough time keeping whatever gains he's made in the last few months, much less overtaking Daines. Skilled politicians and talented campaigns have come back from worse things, and we'll see soon if Walsh and his team have what it takes to recover and move on.