The National Republican Congressional Committee is targeting three veteran Democrats who voted for the House version of the health care bill in a weeklong round of television ads that will begin airing on Thursday.

The new 30-second spots hit Democratic Reps. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, Vic Snyder of Arkansas and John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina for their votes by using the words of fellow Democratic legislators who opposed the legislation.

Among the statements the NRCC uses in it' new ad against Pomeroy is one released by the office of Rep. Dan Boren, D-Okla., when he announced he was going to buck his party and vote no on the bill two days before the vote came to the floor.

"The worst thing we could do during a recession is raise taxes and this bill does just that," Boren said in his statement.

They voted for the health care bill. With enough money behind the opposition, could they be voted out of office next year?

Republicans aim to find out with a new effort to raise campaign funds for challengers to two dozen House Democrats who voted for the health care bill earlier this month.

Reverse The Vote Victory Committee was established this week with the Federal Election Commission as a joint fundraising committee that will collect contributions to distribute among 24 GOP challengers.

It's still months until the first nominees will be formally selected in primary elections, so the committee for the time being will give campaign funds to 24 separate "congressional victory committees" that in turn will deliver the funds to party nominees once they are determined.

Michigan Republicans sense a prime opportunity to take back their state governor's seat in 2010, after two terms with Democrat Jennifer M. Granholm. But the state party is far from unified over who their best candidate is to take on likely Democratic nominee John Cherry.

Two polls released last week -- one by non-partisan Inside Michigan Politics and by GOP firm Mitchell Research & Communications Inc. -- showed state Attorney General Mike Cox continues to lead a crowded Republican primary field, with U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra not far behind. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard, technology entrepreneur Rick Snyder and state Sen. Tom George are also in the mix. None of the candidates topped 30 percent, however.

The poll for the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics found that a quarter of likely Republican voters were undecided and the Mitchell Research poll found nearly a third were unsure.

Cox and Bouchard lead Cherry in head-to-head match-ups, the two polls show.

Freshman Rep. Larry Kissell, who captured the seat in North Carolina's 8th District for the Democrats in 2008, has drawn a Republican challenger: Lou Huddleston, a businessman and retired U.S. Army colonel, who announced his candidacy Wednesday.

A 31-year Army veteran, Huddleston appears a long-shot as he enters the contest. He lost his only previous bid for public office, a 2008 state House race, to incumbent Democrat Margaret Dickson. But Republicans think he has the potential to become a credible challenger to Kissell, given his resume as a military man and a local business leader, as well as the fact that he is African-American. African-Americans make up more than a quarter of the 8th district electorate.

Huddleston appears to be the GOP's man in the 8th District, which the GOP says is its top target in the state, after other recruits decided to pass on the race. Former five-term Rep. Robin Hayes -- who lost a 2008 rematch to Kissell by 55 percent to 45 percent in 2008 after winning their 2006 contest by a razor-thin margin -- announced last Wednesday that he would forgo a comeback bid.

The third time won't be a charm for former North Carolina Republican Rep. Robin Hayes, who is passing up a re-rematch against freshman Democrat Larry Kissell.

Hayes, who defeated Kissell by just 329 votes in 2006 and then lost to him in 2008 by a margin of almost 10 times that number (30,551 votes, to be precise), announced Wednesday that he would not try to regain his 8th District seat in 2010, the Associated Press reported.

Instead, Hayes told the AP, he plans to play a behind-the-scenes role in the campaign.

Hayes' decision doesn't mean that Kissell has an easy path back to Capitol Hill. Although he currently lives just outside the 8th District boundaries, Pat McCrory, the longtime mayor of Charlotte, has been mentioned as a potential top-tier GOP challenger. He is already well known outside the city; in the 2008 gubernatorial campaign, McCrory ran a highly competitive (but ultimately unsuccessful) race against Democrat Bev Purdue.

Rick Snyder, a technology industry veteran from Ann Arbor, officially kicked off a dark-horse bid in the crowded 2010 Republican primary for governor, and set off on a four-day announcement tour across the state.

Snyder's bid to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm is his first campaign for public office, and he is framing himself as a political outsider.

A former president and chief operating officer of computer company Gateway Inc., Snyder contends his business and high-tech background makes him the candidate who is best able to re-energize the recession-plagued state's economy and repair the low opinion most Michigan voters currently have of their state government in Lansing.

Snyder sought to link himself to the legacy of inventor Thomas A. Edison during his announcement speech at Greenfield Village, part of the Henry Ford Museum in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. His event was held at Edison's Menlo Park, N.J., laboratory, relocated to the museum, which "embodies the inventive spirit we need to embrace," Snyder said in a statement.

The campaign arm of Republicans in the U.S. House is using this week's legislative recess to criticize some Democrats who backed a climate change bill the House narrowly passed last week.

The National Republican Congressional Committee's advertising campaign consists mainly of low-cost radio advertisements and telephone calls against 14 Democrats, most of them from conservative-leaning districts, who helped provide the winning 219-212 margin in the June 26 vote. Eight Republicans also backed the climate change bill, which most Republicans described as a massive "national energy tax" on consumers.

A top target of the NRCC campaign is first-term Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello, who broke with most politically vulnerable Democratic freshmen in backing the bill. The NRCC is airing a television ad in Perriello's south-central Virginia district that urges viewers to "tell him he was wrong to vote for the [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi energy tax."

State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith confirmed Friday that, as expected, she is joining the crowded 2010 race for governor of Michigan. She previously staged a short-lived bid for the same office in 2002.

Smith, whose state House district includes the eastern Michigan city of Ypsilanti, is the third Democrat to enter the race to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm. She joins Lt. Gov. John Cherry and George Perles, a former head football coach at Michigan State University and now an elected trustee of that school who has publicly stated he plans to run.

Cherry is considered the early favorite for the Democratic nomination, having served alongside Granholm for both her two terms.

Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land announced Thursday that she is not going to enter the already crowded 2010 race for governor.

The unexpected move by Land -- who was widely assumed to be a candidate in the open-seat race -- came with another surprise, as she endorsed one of the declared Republican contenders: Michael J. Bouchard, the sheriff of populous Oakland County in suburban Detroit and a former state senator, who was the GOP's unsuccessful challenger to Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow in 2006.

Bouchard on June 3 officially launched his campaign for the 2010 contest to choose the successor to two-term Democratic incumbent Jennifer M. Granholm, who is barred from running again under Michigan's term-limit law.

George Perles, a former Michigan State University (MSU) football coach and athletic director, told the Detroit Free Press he plans to run for governor as a Democrat in 2010.

Perles' election as an MSU trustee by state voters in 2006 was his only previous campaign for public office, but he told the paper he believes his public prominence in the sports-mad state can help him in an election. "Name recognition is a big thing," said Perles, who turns 75 years old on July 16. "You get attention in both the political pages of the newspaper and the sports pages. It's a unique situation."

Perles certainly has plenty of football credentials. After his career as an MSU player was cut short by injury, Perles served as an assistant coach from 1959 to 1970, a period that included the Spartans' championship era in the mid-1960s. He segued to more than a decade as an assistant coach of the NFL's Pittsburgh Steelers during their Super Bowl glory days.