Two more congressional campaigns released information this afternoon about their fund-raising efforts.

Democrat Mark Lawrence raised $100,452 in the last three months of 2007, and had $189,489 in cash on hand at the end of the year, according to the report his campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Republican Dean Scontras said in a press release that he has raked in "close to $160,000" during the campaign. Given what Scontras' previous campaign-finance reports say, this means that he raised somewhere around $55,000 in the last three months of 2007.

– Kevin Wack

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., will begin airing television and radio advertisements in Maine as well Washington state, Washington, D.C., Nebraska, Maryland, Virginia and Louisiana, which hold their primaries on Feb. 9, 10 and 12.

Obama also has five paid staffers organizing Maine Democrats in advance of the Feb. 10 caucus. Obama reported raising $32 million in January.

Click here to view an Obama ad.

Click here to view another Obama ad.

Three of the Democratic 1st District congressional hopefuls have filed their end-of-the-year fund-raising reports with the Federal Election Commission.

Michael Brennan, the former state Senate majority leader from Portland, reports raising $41,560.92 between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2007. He also had $82,239.33 in cash on hand at the end of the year.

Steve Meister, a Winthrop doctor, raised $40,451.37 in the last three months of 2007. He reports $39,639.19 in cash on hand.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., announced his Maine leadership team that he hopes will carry him to victory in the Republican caucuses, which begin on Friday.

Maine’s Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, will be chairwomen, and Snowe’s husband former Gov. John McKernan will be an honorary chairman. State Rep. Josh Tardy will be the campaign’s organizer in chief.

Twenty-two state legislators have endorsed McCain.

Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, took up the cause of football players who still carry injuries from their playing days this morning on the Senate floor. Here is his statement.

California is a long way from Maine and Maine lacks California's diversity. But I want this blog to be for political junkies so readers can get a feel of what is going on in Washington and out on the campaign trail. That said, here's the news that I think is really interesting.

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., a liberal and aggressive black lawmaker from Los Angeles, endorsed Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for president. I cannot say I saw this coming except to say that during the State of the Union speech on Monday, Waters and Clinton had a cordial conversation on the House floor. She did not seek out or speak to Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as far as I saw and I was watching pretty closely.

It is hard to understate how influential Waters is in the black community and liberal politics. She is an effective political organizer, regardless of what one might think about her politics. Hopefully, this profile can give you a better understanding of who Waters is.

To view this story click here.

Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, will announce on Thursday that he raised $813,000 between October and December 31, 2007, and that he has more than $2.5 million in cash-on-hand, said his spokeswoman Carol Andrews.

Allen apparently targeted small donors and relied on the Internet. He raised money from 5,000 donors who gave an average of $25, Andrews said.

When the reports are filed on Thursday with the Federal Election Commission, it will be interesting to see the breakdown of who gave and how much.

Congressional Quarterly, a magazine for lawmakers, aides and Washington insiders, reported that Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, accepted $10,000 from Wal-Mart's political action committee.

We'll know more tomorrow when all other candidates for federal office are required by federal law to file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission today – unless the FEC grants them an extension.

Sen.Susan Collins, R-Maine, released a preliminary campaign finance report.

She has $3.9 million in cash on hand, which she can use to hire staff, run television advertisements, conduct polling, and send direct mail pieces to voters.

She raised more than $963,000 from October to December 2007.

Candidates for federal office must file their campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission by tomorrow, Jan. 31. We will break down the numbers further when they arrive.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised more than $9.9 million in the last three months of 2007, according to an analysis of his campaign finance report from Congressional Quarterly's Political Money Line.

The report, which all candidates for president, the Senate and the House, must file by Jan. 31 - that's tomorrow, shows that McCain spent no money in Maine. Perhaps he is confident that backing from Maine's Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins can deliver Maine's Republican delegates to him.

To view his report click here.

With John Edwards expected to drop out of the presidential race this afternoon, I thought I'd post the Democratic congressional candidates' views on their party's presidential candidates.

I asked them whether they're supporting a particular candidate. Keep in mind that I did these interviews during the week of the New Hampshire primary, so the candidates' preferences may have changed since then.

Here are their responses:

I got a call yesterday from Mark Lawrence, one of the six Democratic candidates for Congress in Maine's 1st District. He was calling about this story in Monday's Press Herald.

Based on an interview with Lawrence earlier this month, I had written the following: "Lawrence refused to voice an opinion on either gay marriage or civil unions, saying he would state his view if there were a proposal for gay marriage or civil unions in Maine. He did say he is against a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and he added that homosexual couples` relationships are as valuable as straight couples` relationships."

During yesterday's phone call, Lawrence answered the question directly: “I do support gay marriage and would support civil unions.”

Hello, welcome to Political Extra, which we hope will give our readers additional insight into the grittier and funnier side of the campaign trail, Capitol Hill and Washington in general.

As you know, President Bush held his final State of the Union address last night.

One of the oldest traditions for lawmakers is to get those aisle seats so they can shake hands with the president (it never hurts to send a photo back to the hometown paper displaying how chummy one is with the president, no matter which party he or she is from).

Maine's lawmakers were more reserved in this sense. Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, entered the chamber before her colleague, Senator Susan Collins, who is also a Republican. Snowe sat near the front of the chamber, slightly to President Bush's left in the center of the House chamber.

Collins sat between New Hampshire Senators Judd Gregg and John Sununu, both Republicans.

When President Bush entered the chamber, he walked down the center aisle shaking hands with lawmakers from both parties. When he saw the cast Snowe is wearing around her wrist, which she broke after slipping on a patch of ice in her driveway, Bush seemed to ask "What happened?" Throughout the speech, Snowe had a hard time clapping.

Rep. Tom Allen, a Democrat, sat with his Democratic colleagues, Reps. Peter Welch of Vermont and Tim Bishop of New York. He spent some time before the speech began shaking hands with who he hopes will be his future colleagues: Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and some others. He seemed to want to shake hands with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., but Obama was swamped with well-wishers.

Rep. Michael Michaud, a Democrat, watched the speech in the chamber, but from the press balcony I could not spot him in the crowd.

Welcome to our new blog on Maine politics. We plan to use this space to offer deeper and more sustained coverage of this year's big political races than we can in the newspaper.

So without further ado... I had a story in yesterday's paper that discussed the First District congressional candidates' stances on various issues.

Here's the main link. Sidebars are here and here. I didn't have room in the newspaper for the candidates' answers to a number of other questions. So I'm going to be posting that information on this blog over the next several days.

Today: the six Democratic candidates on energy policy.