Miami Herald: “Democrats across Florida heard a mysterious recorded call over the weekend that seemed aimed at attacking likely Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist. The voice in the recording? Charlie Crist.”

The script: “Hi, this is Charlie Crist calling to set the record straight. I’m pro-life. I oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants, I support traditional marriage, and I have never supported a new tax or big spending program.”

“Not exactly your standard Democratic primary platform. But the voice in the robocall really is Crist’s and so were the positions he stressed. But it was Charlie Crist circa 2006 — not 2014.”

An effort to draft Hollywood star Jeff Bridges as the Democratic Party’s replacement for Sen. John Walsh on the November ballot “has grown like wildfire over the weekend,” the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports.

First Read: “But one race that’s not dominating junkies’ attention is the GOP Senate primary in Minnesota. Businessman Mike McFadden is trying to beat back four other candidates to get the nod to run against Sen. Al Franken. That’s the same Al Franken who only won the seat after an eight month legal battle resulting from one of the closest elections in Senate history. Now? There just aren’t signs that Franken’s the kind of serious trouble that most observers would have predicted in 2008. In a year when Republicans are boasting of a big Senate map, it’s remarkable that this is the one we aren’t talking about.”

A new McClatchy-Marist poll finds President Obama “is dragging down his party and hurting the prospects of fellow Democrats as they head into midterm elections that will determine who controls Congress.”

Key findings: “Just 40% of voters approve of the way he’s doing his job, tying his worst mark in three years and the second worst of his presidency. Just 39% approve of the way he’s dealing with the economy and only 33% approve of how he’s dealing with foreign policy, the worst of his years in office.”

By 42% to 32%, voters say their opinions of Obama make them more likely to vote this fall for a Republican than for a Democrat. And for the first time this election cycle, more people said they’d vote for a Republican than a Democrat for Congress, by 43% to 38%.

Several thousand voters in Puna on Hawaii island will get the rare opportunity Friday to settle a close election, but Colleen Hanabusa (D), who trails Sen. Brian Schatz (D) in the Demo­cratic primary for Senate, questioned whether holding the vote so soon is realistic, the Honolulu Star Advertiser reports.

The area did not open for Saturday’s primary because of nearby damage from Tropical Storm Iselle.

“National Democrats are poised to dump nearly $1 million in negative ads on Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), a sign that the congressman could hang onto his seat despite a 20-count indictment against him,” the New York Daily News reports.

“While national pundits have written off Grimm, Democrats say the Republican could win, in good part because his opponent, former City Councilor Domenic Recchia, resides in Brooklyn, a big handicap in the mostly Staten Island District.”

A new Rasmussen poll in Kansas finds Sen. Pat Roberts (R) leading challenger Chad Taylor (D) in the U.S. Senate race by just four points, 44% to 40%.

South Carolina petition gubernatorial candidate Tom Ervin (I) is spending $2 million to air three TV ads statewide through Labor Day, the Columbia State reports.

“The ad buy means Ervin, a Greenville attorney and radio-station owner, will have laid out as much money — $3.5 million — as Republican incumbent Gov. Nikki Haley and Democratic challenger Vincent Sheheen had spent together through June 30.”

New York Times: “That Mrs. Clinton is more hawkish than Mr. Obama is no surprise to anyone who watched a Democratic primary debate in 2008. Her policy differences with the president are well-documented: She favored supplying arms to moderate Syrian rebels, leaving behind a larger residual force in Iraq, and waiting longer before pulling American support for Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak during the historic protests in Cairo.”

“What has changed is her readiness to surface those differences and put them in the context of a different worldview… Mrs. Clinton is suggesting that she and the president hold fundamentally different views of American power: his view cautious, inward-looking, suffused with a sense of limits; hers muscular, optimistic, unabashedly old-fashioned.”

Despite extensive media coverage about U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s investigation into Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) now defunct Moreland Commission, a new Siena Poll finds Cuomo leads challenger Rob Astorino by a whopping 32 points, down a little from 37-points three weeks ago.

National Journal: “Every four years, presidential hopefuls flock to the Iowa State University campus in August to court a small handful of Iowans for the storied Ames straw poll. But if they got their own ballot, some of those candidates might vote to scrap the whole exercise. As would-be 2016 entrants head to Iowa … and presidential jockeying begins in earnest, Hawkeye State Republicans are genuinely unsure about what will happen to their famed event by the time next August rolls around. Most expect to see big changes at the very least, and potentially no straw poll at all.”

A new Boston Globe poll in Massachusetts finds Martha Coakley (D) leading Charlie Baker (R) in the gubernatorial race by double-digits, 42% to 31%.

Coakley is also way ahead of Steve Grossman (D) in the Democratic primary, 45% to 18%.