Maggie Haberman:
“Tabloid headlines. Personal dramas. Organizational disarray.
Score-settling between rival factions documented in news accounts like a
soap opera. Does this have a familiar ring? No one — or mostly no one —
truly believes the swirl of headlines surrounding Bill and Hillary
Clinton in the summer of 2013 should lead to a grand conclusion about
whether another iteration of a Clinton campaign can be run effectively,
free of the internecine warfare and incessant drama that marked her 2008
bid. But if Clinton and her supporters were hoping to allay those
doubts well ahead of a possible 2016 run, the past few months have not
been helpful.”

National Review looks at how New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has worked to overcome the damage that his embrace of President Obama in the waning days of the 2012 presidential election did with many establishment Republicans.

“Christie’s inner circle has taken the complaints seriously, fearing their implications ahead of the 2016 presidential election. For the past nine months, they have quietly labored behind the scenes to woo the party’s skeptical power brokers. Their maneuvers have included huddles with Republican moneymen, off-the-record powwows with conservative journalists, and late-night conversations with past backers.”

“Officially, such sessions with national Republicans and figures of the right are considered part of Christie’s reelection campaign, but his playbook is filled with the broader, tacit push for his political rehabilitation.”

A new Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press Poll finds that Cory Booker (D) leads Steve Lonegan (R) in the October 16 special U.S. Senate election, 54% to 38%.

Tennessee state Rep. Joe Carr (R) is expected to challenge Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in next year’s Republican primary, the Tennessean reports.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that he will renounce his Canadian citizenship, ABC News reports.

Said Cruz: “Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship.”

He added: “Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator, I believe I should be only an American.”

Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R) told a group of Republicans at a fundraiser last week that President Obama “hates white people,” the Portland Press Herald reports.

“Two Republican lawmakers confirmed the comment when asked directly by a Press Herald reporter, but asked that their names be withheld for fear of political retribution. Each said LePage talked about how Obama could have been the best president ever if he highlighted his biracial heritage. But, LePage said, the president hasn’t done that because he hates white people.”

A new National Republican Senatorial Committee poll shows Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) leads Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) by four points, 45% to 41%.

Meanwhile, a Harper Polling survey shows Cassidy ahead by two points, 47% to 45%.

Hillary Clinton “is cheering on Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus’s efforts to kill a pair of upcoming televised programs about her,” Bloomberg reports.

Members of the Clinton camp “worry the TV series are more likely to hurt than help their candidate in the likely event she decides to run. They calculate the Republicans are already, in the words of one pundit, ‘working the refs’ — meaning the networks now would have to bend over backward to avoid turning the programs into flattering portraits. And they note the director of the CNN program is Charles Ferguson, who won an Academy Award for Inside Job, a scathing documentary on the Wall Street financial crisis. That film cast blame, in part, on key figures in President Bill Clinton’s administration for their roles in the events leading up to the crash.”

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been actively trying to find a successor and “secretly financed a poll by his own longtime pollster” in order to show Police Commission Ray Kelly could win if he ran, the New Yorker reports.

Bloomberg also tried to get Hillary Clinton and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman to run for mayor.

Democratic strategist Dave “Mudcat” Saunders tells Time that Democrats in Virginia are beginning to question gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe’s (D) “role in not just GreenTech, but also other ventures and activities.”

He adds: “In a low-turnout election, which I fully expect this one to be, the greatest political tool is enthusiastic support of the ground. How Terry is going to regain that enthusiasm in less than 100 days is beyond me.”