ANOTHER STRONG STRAW POLL FOR HUNTER

California Republican Rep. Duncan Hunter barely registers in the national telephone polls we report on all too regularly, but when flesh-and-blood Republicans come out in person to vote he seems like a pretty hot candidate.

With most of the votes recorded from last night's Spartanburg (S.C.) County Republican straw poll , Hunter is second in the polling, and within an eyelash of Rudy Giuliani, the leader in the poll.

With 81 of 92 precincts tallied, Giuliani garnered 158 votes compared to Hunter's 152. John McCain was a distant third, even though he has campaigned heavily in the state. Sam Brownback finished fourth and Mitt Romeny a weak fifth.

As we reported previously, Hunter finished first in a January straw poll in Maricopa County, the largest county in McCain's home state of Arizona.

McCAIN, OBAMA REACH DEAL TO LIMIT CAMPAIGN SPENDING

If he makes it that far, McCain will be using public funds for his general election campaign.

The New York Times reports today that McCain and Democrat Barack Obama have decided to accept public funding, and stay within the spending limits imposed by the public-funding program, if they eventually face each other in the 2008 general election.

One step toward campaign sanity.

ONE MORE NOTE

We might as well note this, because it will be all over everywhere today, though it one of those non-issue issues we talked about in a post yesterday.

The Baltimore Sun is reporting today that ancestors of Obama, who's father was black and his mother white, owned slaves.

The newspaper, after confirming a report on a geneologist's Web site, said two members of Obama's mother's family owned slaves.

"According to the research, one of Obama's great-great-great-great grandfathers, George Washington Overall, owned two slaves who were recorded in the 1850 census in Nelson County, Ky. The same records show that one of Obama's great-great-great-great-great grandmothers, Mary Duvall, also owned two slaves." --Baltimore Sun

The Obama camp, responding in the Sun article, gave the kind of straight-forward, "so-what" response it should have.

"An Obama spokesman did not dispute the information and said that the senator's ancestors " 'are representative of America.' "