Eight influential Republican senators jumped on board former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina's California Senate campaign Thursday, a day after she officially launched her bid.

Those endorsing Fiorina included Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Assistant Minority Leader Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.; 2008 presidential nominee John McCain, R-Calif.; Tom Coburn, R-Okla.; Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska; and Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe. All cited her experience as a business leader.

In his statement, McCain praised Fiorina's service as an adviser during his presidential bid. "I benefited from her no-nonsense way of getting things done when she served on my campaign last year," he said.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, is expected to formally launch her long-awaited Republian campaign against Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer sometime this week. She has public appearances scheduled Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, though the campaign is not disclosing at what event, specifically, she will make her announcement.

Her main rival for the GOP nomination, state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, is hoping for a big announcement of his own. The DeVore campaign is hyping a conference call slated for Tuesday night hosted by the Senate Conservative Fund political action committee and featuring the PAC's chairman, Sen. Jim DeMint , R-S.C., and Erick Erickson, editor of the influential conservative blog RedState.com.

A release touting the conference call, which is being held to discuss the state of play in the 2010 Senate races, promises that "Sen. DeMint will announce at least one major SCF endorsement at the end of the call." The DeVore campaign is leaving the strong impression that it could be him.

The first campaign finance report filed by Colorado Republican Jane Norton, a former lieutenant governor who is running for the Senate in 2010, reads like a Who's Who of GOP officeholders past and present, strategists and lobbyists.

Prominent Republicans in Colorado and Washington, D.C., helped Norton raise $510,000 in less than one month as an active candidate for the seat Democratic incumbent Michael Bennet is defending.

That is more money raised to date by any of the other Colorado Republican candidates for Senate, some of whom have been campaigning for months. One of them, Aurora city councilman Ryan Frazier, raised just $71,000 in this year's third quarter and dropped out of the Senate race last week to run instead for a House seat in suburban Denver.

A possible bid for the 2010 Republican Senate nomination in Kentucky certainly won't enable eye surgeon Rand Paul to rake in the mega-millions in campaign donations procured by his much better-known father -- Texas Republican Rep. Ron Paul -- when he campaigned for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination on his strongly libertarian-tinged platform.

But the younger Paul, a first-time candidate for public office, has taken a page from his father's playbook by going online to build up the treasury for the "exploratory" Senate campaign committee he established in May. And he pronounces himself pleased with the fact that his receipts topped $100,000 in a little more than a month.

Paul's organization said it hasn't held any fundraising events, instead collecting mostly small contributions "from over 1,200 regular people who nickle and dimed their way to an impressive showing" in advance of the candidate's fundraising report for the year's second quarter, which is due to be filed by July 15.

He didn't exactly refuse to answer but Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky didn't exactly endorse his home-state colleague Jim Bunning in his 2010 race, either.

"Your fellow Republican senator ... Jim Bunning, is mad at you, I think it's fair to say," said "Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace to McConnell. "He says you don't want him to seek re-election and that while you've given money to other GOP incumbents, you've stiffed him.

You can put this all to rest right now, Senator," Wallace said. "I'm going to give you the opportunity. Do you endorse Jim Bunning for re-election?"