First Read looks at “this week’s 10 hottest advertising markets in the presidential campaign and notes they’re all in states that George W. Bush carried in 2004 (and three that John Kerry never contested).”

“Six of the top 10 advertising markets are in North Carolina and Virginia… (Still don’t think that North Carolina is a true battleground?) The other four markets are in Colorado, Ohio, and Iowa.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times confirms that Romney has placed “a priority on winning Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia,” plus an additional one.

Senate Democrats “are bearing an early television advertising assault by Republican-leaning groups that is reshaping those races,” Bloomberg reports.

In Ohio and Virginia, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Tim Kaine (D) “are being outspent by at least a 3-to-1 ratio on television advertising as super political action committees supporting Democrats struggle to raise money and President Obama and the national party conserve resources for the fall election.”

Boston Globe: “They make awkward bedfellows, to be sure: Mitt Romney, the strait-laced Mormon who does not gamble, drink or cavort, and Sheldon Adelson, the socially liberal casino mogul whose resorts rank among the world’s favorite places to do all three.”

“Yet Romney met with Adelson Tuesday in Las Vegas, and the billionaire has pledged to support Romney against President Obama — presumably with money earned from gambling, which ‘undermines the virtues of work and thrift,’ according to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

President Obama’s re-election campaign is opening a new front in its war against Mitt Romney, ABC News reports.

The new effort focuses on Romney’s record as governor of Massachusetts “and the campaign promises Democrats say he left unfulfilled. Team Obama will point to Romney’s rhetoric on job creation, size of government, education, deficits and taxes during the 2002 gubernatorial campaign and draw parallels with his presidential stump speeches of 2012. The goal is to illustrate that Romney has made the same promises before with unimpressive results.”

Greg Sargent: “Obama needs to persuade voters to do more than simply accept Romney as an alternative to the economic status quo who’s worth taking a flyer on. He needs to get them to look past general impressions of Romney’s competence and to realize that Romney is offering an actual set of policies and ideas about the economy that have been tried before. His ‘Mr. Fix It’ aura — which is rooted in the pitch that he can translate private sector know-how to the public sector — is belied by his actual record as a public official.”

“Republican super PACs and other outside groups shaped by a loose network of prominent conservatives — including Karl Rove, the Koch brothers and Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — plan to spend roughly $1 billion on November’s elections for the White House and control of Congress,” Politico reports.

“That total includes previously undisclosed plans for newly aggressive spending by the Koch brothers, who are steering funding to build sophisticated, county-by-county operations in key states… Koch-related organizations plan to spend about $400 million ahead of the 2012 elections — twice what they had been expected to commit.”

Alexander Burns: “Democrats have been raising the alarm about outside spending for some
time and clearly have reason to be afraid. It’s anyone’s guess how
heavily all that money will influence the election: these groups are not
all equally effective or equally committed to the same set of message
points.”

David Dewhurst (R) and tea party darling Ted Cruz (R) were headed for another round in the Republican U.S. Senate race in Texas after Dewhurst fell shy of a majority vote in yesterday’s primary, the Dallas Morning News reports.

Politico: “The outcome marks the third victory for anti-establishment GOP Senate candidates in as many weeks. Earlier this month, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock upended 36-year Sen. Dick Lugar in Indiana, and state Sen. Deb Fischer upset two better-known candidates in Nebraska.”

Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) lost his reelection bid to challenger Beto O’Rourke (D) in the Democratic primary in Texas’s 16th congressional district, the AP reports.

“The 67-year-old Reyes was first elected to Congress in 1996. Reyes received a rare primary endorsement last month from President Obama.”

Wisconsin election officials “are predicting that between 60 to 65 percent of the voting age population, or about 2.6 to 2.8 million people, will cast regular and absentee ballots in the June 5 recall election,” the Wisconsin State Journal reports.

“That level of turnout would be higher than the 49.7 percent of voters who turned out in the November 2010 gubernatorial general election, in which Gov. Scott Walker beat Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, his current challenger, by about five percentage points. It would not be as high as the 2008 general election for president, when some 69.2 percent of Wisconsin voters turned out to vote.”

Wolf Blitzer: Donald, you’re beginning to sound a little ridiculous, I have to tell you.

Donald Trump: You are, Wolf. Let me tell you something, I think you sound ridiculous, and if you’d ask me a question and let me answer it.

A new Florida Opinion Research poll finds former Gov. Charlie Crist (I) would trounce Rick Scott (R) in Florida’s 2014 gubernatorial race if Crist ran this time as a Democrat, 48% to 34%.

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll of white working-class voters across the Rust Belt — Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and parts of New York and Pennsylvania — finds Mitt Romney leading President Obama, 44% to 30%.

Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) “turned in 2,000 petition signatures to get on August primary ballot, but all except 244 have been deemed invalid because of rampant duplicated copies,” the Detroit News reports.

“A review by The Detroit News of the petition signatures found full copies of a sheet of signatures that were photocopied once and in some cases two times and mixed in with the 136-page stack of signatures. In some cases, a different petition circulator’s name was signed to the duplicate copy.”

McCotter accepted the findings and will now run as a write-in candidate.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports the Michigan attorney general is investigating the McCotter campaign for possible fraud.

A new Public Policy Polling survey in Michigan finds President Obama leads Mitt Romney by 14 points, 53% to 39%.

Key finding: “Obama’s crushing Romney on what will doubtless be one of the biggest issues in the campaign in Michigan: 55% think that he’s been better for the automotive industry in the state to only 31% who say Romney wins out on that front.”