The conservative advocacy group American Future Fund is dropping $900,000 on a round of television and radio ads urging a group of centrist Democrats to "start over" on the health care bill.

The ad buy comes on the heels of another $500,000 round of advertising the group ran on national cable during the run-up to the White House health care summit two weeks ago.

The message in the two ads is similar -- the health care legislation Democrats are pushing amounts to "massive spending, backroom deals ... $500 billion in Medicare cuts, crushing burdens on small businesses," as the latest ad says -- but this time the targets are 18 House Democrats, who could be the swing votes when the bill comes back to the House.

Here's the latest tally of Democratic House members who have are giving up some or all of their donations from Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the 20-term Ways and Means Committee chairman who was recently admonished by the House Ethics Committee:

• Bill Foster (Ill.)
• Gabrielle Giffords (Ariz.)
• Jim Himes (Conn.)
• Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.)
• Jerry McNerney (Calif.)
• Walt Minnick (Idaho.)
• Carol Shea-Porter (N.H.)
• Dina Titus (D-Nev.)
• Niki Tsongas (Mass.)

All nine are freshmen or sophomores and all but Tsongas are in races that CQ-Roll Call rates as competitive.

Roughly one of four donations to House candidates so far this election cycle is coming from individual donors from outside states. But some candidates are receiving more of these out-of-state checks than others.

During the 2009 calendar year, House Democratic candidates received more than 30 percent of their donations from citizens who can't legally vote for these candidates -- because they live in another state -- but still have chosen to contribute to their campaigns.

Meanwhile, Republican House candidates raised just over 21 percent of their donations from out-of-state contributors.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) was feeling generous in January, pouring $95,000 from his political action committee into the coffers of his fellow Democrats, according to monthly leadership PAC reports filed over the weekend.

In doing so, Hoyer led the way in PAC giving among House leaders of both parties, and further padded the gap between the Democrat and Republican leadership's PAC contributions this cycle.

House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) gave $20,000 in donations to federal committees through his PAC, $15,000 of which went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. House Democrat Caucus Chairman John B. Larson of Connecticut made $5,000 in contributions and Democratic Congressional Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland gave $2,000.

Once again, politics has thrown Democrats in Indiana an unexpected curveball. Turns out they won't be able to quickly coalesce behind a Senate candidate after all.

The Indianapolis Star reports that the party's lawyers researched state law and discovered their assumptions were wrong. They can't just call a vote of the party's state central committee and hurredly declare a nominee to replace the unexpectedly retiring Sen. Evan Bayh.

The law lets parties fill ballot vacancies, but not until after the primary -- which this year falls on May 4.

Said party Chairman Dan Parker: "The sooner rather than later has now become later."

American voters are able to see subtle shades of gray when they identify with a political ideology or a political party. So they call themselves conservative, and they vote for Democrats.

"This helps explain why political leaders often have difficulty governing from either pole of the ideological spectrum, and why policies that gravitate more toward the ideological center can have more public appeal," the Gallup organization said in explaining results of an enormous compilation of its daily tracking polls.

In all, six states, led by the District of Columbia (yes, we know it's not a state but Gallup treats it as one) rank in the 10 most liberal and the 10 most Democratic states.

Alabama ranks as the most conservative state but comes in fifth among Republican states.

"Generally, there is a strong relationship between political ideology and party identification, but the two are not precisely parallel," Gallup said. "Whereas all states (excluding the District of Columbia) have more conservatives than liberals, Democrats have a numerical (if not a statistical) advantage in most states."

The results are based on telephone interviews with 291,152 adults nationwide who participated in Gallup's daily tracking polls in 2009. Nationally, the margin of error is plus or minus 1 percentage point. For most states, the margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points, although it is plus or minus 5 percentage points for the District of Columbia. Basically, the smaller the population, the higher the margin of error.

As Senate Republicans gather today for a strategy retreat, they may know exactly what moves to strategize against; Fox News says the Democrats have a divide-and-conquer strategy, and quotes from a memo advising Democratic candidates on how to bring up Obama's citizenship and another issues that might be divisive in a GOP primary.

"We have a finite window when Republican candidates will feel susceptible to the extremists in their party. Given the urgent nature of this dynamic, we suggest an aggressive effort to get your opponents on the record."

The report says the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee advises throwing these questions at Republican candidates:

• "Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen?

• Do you think the 10th Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum health care coverage standards?

• Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place?

• Do you think President Obama is a socialist?

• Do you think America should return to a gold standard?"

Appointed Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) is sticking to his plan to retire at the end of this year and will not defend the seat to which he was appointed on a interim basis.

"Serving the people of Delaware in the U.S. Senate is as fulfilling, challenging, and humbling as I imagined when I was appointed," Kaufman, who holds the seat formerly held by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said in a statement Monday. "But as I said at the time, I will not seek election for the balance of the term."

"I will continue to spend my time as senator serving the people of Delaware and our nation, and not running for office," he said. "It is a commitment I made when appointed, and one I will fulfill."

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris Van Hollen (Md.) addressed the current political landscape for House Democrats at a Wednesday evening caucus meeting at Democratic Party headquarters.

According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Democratic pollster Geoff Garin painted a "realistic" political picture for Members at the start of the 2010 election year. Van Hollen emphasized to Members that, unlike in previous cycles, the DCCC is prepared for a tough year.

"Unlike 1994 when Democrats were taken by surprise in the closing months of that cycle, the DCCC has been planning for tough races since January so no incumbent should be caught off guard," Van Hollen told Members, according to a set of talking points from the meeting obtained by CQ Politics.

En route to a health care summit with President Barack Obama on Monday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned Democrats that they risk repeating 1994's electoral blood bath if they fail to make good on legislative promises to unions.

"We will not vote for politicians who think they can push a few crumbs our way and then continue the failed economic policies of the last 30 years," Trumka told an audience Monday at the National Press Club. "Politicians who think that working people have it too good -- too much health care, too much Social Security and Medicare, too much power on the job -- are inviting a repeat of 1994."

-- Matthew Murray

Sen. Jon Tester's (D-Mont.) chief of staff Stephanie Schriock was named president of influential abortion-rights group EMILY's List, replacing Ellen Malcolm, the organization's founder, who is stepping down in February.

Schriock is well-respected in Democratic circles, with a resume that includes stints as the National Finance Director for Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign and Sen. Al Franken's (D-Minn.) hard-fought Senate campaign and recount.

She was she was named one of Washingtonian magazine's "Forty Under Forty: Young Washingtonians to Watch" in 2007.

The Republican Governor's Association raised $30 million total in 2009, topping the Democratic Governor's Association, which announced it raised $23.1 million in receipts.

And the RGA said it had more than $25 million in cash entering an election year in which 39 governor's seats are up for grab, 21 of them Democratic-held.

The DGA reported $17.5 million cash on hand, which it noted was "nearly 12 times as much cash on hand as 2006, the last equivalent election cycle."

In a release, the Republican organization noted that its fundraising total for the year "substantially surpasses the RGA's previous fundraising record of $28.2 million set in 2006, when there were 36 governors' races."

"We raised more, saved more, and won more than DGA in 2009 and that's a good forecast of what's to come in 2010," RGA Executive Director Nick Ayers said in a statement.

The DGA said its fundraising total is "more than ever before in the organization's history."

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell (D) will replace Gov. Brian Schweitzer (D-Mont.) as the new chairman of the Democratic Governor's Association, the organization announced Wednesday.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley will continue serving as vice chair.

The nod cements what has been a rapid rise in national politics for Markell, still in the first year of his administration. The 49-year-old was elected to Delaware's top post in 2008 after a decade as state treasurer.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee outraised its GOP counterpart, the National Republican Congressional Committee in the month of October, according to disclosures by both parties.

The DCCC will report raising $3.8 million last month, compared to $3.4 million for the NRCC. That's about the same amount both committees pulled in at the same point in the 2007-08 cycle, despite the fact that the economy has soured significantly since then.

However, like the NRCC, the DCCC spent more than it took in -- $4 million total in disbursements. A big chunk of that went to the hotly contested Nov. 4 special election to replace Rep. John McHugh (R) in New York's 23rd district. The DCCC reported $1.1 million in independent expenditures, total, on the race, which its candidate, Bill Owens (D), narrowly won.

The DCCC still has more than three times the cash-on-hand as the NRCC, with $14.5 million in the bank, and $3.3 million in debt. The NRCC will report $4.2 million cash on hand and $2 million in debt.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee outraised its partisan counterpart in October -- but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ended up with roughly twice as much cash in the bank.

The NRSC raised about $4 million and had about $5.9 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 30, according to fundraising reports set to be filed with the Federal Election Commission later this week.

The campaign arm of Senate Republicans also spent about $3.1 million last month with a substantial sum going toward updating the committee's direct mail programs.

The DSCC raised $3.7 million in October and spent $2.7 million. The committee had $11.3 million in the bank at the end of the month and $2 million in remaining debts from the 2008 cycle.