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By Mark Murray

Democrats are getting ready to drop a big chunk of change in a Senate contest almost no one's been talking about.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is going to spend $1 million for advertising and ground game operations in South Dakota's Senate contest, NBC News confirms.

The cash infusion was first reported by Bloomberg News.

It's notable because Democrats had all but written off the race months ago.

A recent robo-poll (which doesn't meet NBC's methodological standards) showed the three-way race featuring former Gov. Mike Rounds (R), Rick Weiland (D), and former GOP Sen. Larry Pressler (I) to be very competitive.

The South Dakota Senate seat is currently held by retiring Sen. Tim Johnson (D), and Democrats winning the seat -- or convincing a victorious Pressler to caucus with them (he endorsed Barack Obama in 2012) -- would mean Republicans would have to win AN ADDITIONAL seat to win control of the Senate.

Those are a lot of "ifs," especially in a state where Obama got just 40% of the vote in 2012. But with Democrats now spending $1 million in South Dakota -- keep an eye on the race.

First published October 8 2014, 12:51 PM

Mark Murray is the Senior Political Editor at NBC News, where he covers politics for the network, writes and edits its popular First Read blog, and appears daily on MSNBC and Washington DCs NBC affiliate to discuss the latest political news.

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Democrats Are Getting Ready to Spend Big in SD Senate Race

In tight Senate races across the country, Democrats are frantically trying to win over the prized mix of voters dubbed the Obama coalition. They just don't want President Obama's help.

Unpopular in many states whose voters will determine which party controls the Senate, Obama has been relegated to the role of silent partner. He is asked to raise money and will do so Thursday in California and to stay on message but to keep out of the close races.

It's not an unusual demotion for second-term presidents, who are known to lose their electoral mojo by their sixth year. But in this case, the president on the sidelines wrote the playbook for modern campaigning, and one of his keys to success was cobbling together a coalition of voters including women, young people, blacks and Latinos.

The president's status is laid bare in his recent travel, mostly to true-blue territory. Obama spent time last week in his hometown of Chicago and rubbed elbows with top-dollar donors in New York and Connecticut on Tuesday. On Thursday, he'll hit up the Hollywood crowd for a fundraiser at Gwyneth Paltrow's home in Los Angeles before heading to San Francisco on Friday.

Less than a month from election day, he has yet to appear onstage with a Democrat for a fall campaign event. He has not stumped for voters in North Carolina's Senate race, although Obama in 2008 was the first Democrat win the state in 32 years. The president has not been to Colorado since July, another state he helped flip for Democrats. Even Iowa, where he began his road to the White House, has been off the calendar, not to mention Arkansas and Louisiana, two conservative states with closely contested campaigns.

"The irony is that a lot of these races, particularly in states like Arkansas, Louisiana, others, depend so much on African American turnout," said David Axelrod, the president's former senior advisor. "This is a place where the president could be very helpful. Those candidates are trying to figure out how to deploy him in some form or fashion, not necessarily in person. But they'll deploy his voice and image in a targeted way."

The White House says the president is happy to help Democrats however he can. The president and first lady have done their part with low-profile tactics that some strategists argue are more efficient and effective than large rallies. On African American radio and in mailers, Web videos and robocalls, Obama will close out the final weeks aiming to activate the universe of die-hard supporters who tend not to vote in midterm elections.

The president is also expected to step up travel to places where he is more welcome, particularly to such states as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois, which all have key governor's races.

Some strategists say the president's predicament is not merely a result of his lower approval rating. The lineup of Senate races this election cycle was daunting even before he lost popularity. Of the 24 states Obama lost in 2012, nearly 80% have Senate contests.

Although White House aides knew this terrain would be difficult, they acknowledge a frustration and an itchiness to get out on the trail. There's a persistent nostalgia for the crowds and the pace of a campaign season, they say, and a belief it could be good for Democrats and the president if he were out of Washington more, working the crowds. But with world crises looming particularly the war against Islamic State militants and the Ebola outbreak a more practical approach has prevailed.

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Democrats use Obama campaign playbook while benching the president

Update: An earlier version of this post spelled Justin Shalls name wrong.

Four years ago, Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) was the favorite in a January special election to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D). She lost to a state senator named Scott Brown (R), the first siren that alerted Democrats nationally to an angry midterm electorate that year.

Now Coakley is running for governor, and Bay State Democrats are getting a sickening sensation of deja vu: Three reputable polling firms show Coakley statistically tied with businessman Charlie Baker (R) with less than four weeks to go before Election Day.

National party strategists on both sides started the year focusing on governors races in just a handful of mega-states: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan. Now theyre dealing with a much larger electoral map, as voter unrest puts an unexpected number of gubernatorial contests in play and leaves Democrats on defense in states they ordinarily win.

Thats especially true in the Northeast, with Republican candidates performing surprisingly well in states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maryland and Connecticut.

Voters are fed up with politicians at every level, say polls, whether in Congress or at the state house. This years midterm elections are likely to turn on voter anger directed at incumbents. In races without actual incumbents seeking re-election, political analysts say, voters can register dissatisfaction by casting ballots against the party they perceive to be in charge, even in states with overwhelming advantages for one party: no Republican has won an electoral vote from any of those four states since George H.W. Bush won Maryland and Connecticut in 1988.

In a state like Massachusetts, that works against Democrats. Gov. Deval Patrick (D) is retiring after two terms with healthy approval ratings, but voters take a dim view of the Democratic-dominated state legislature. Republicans have had success in recent gubernatorial elections Patrick broke a 16-year streak of Republican control of the governors mansion when they are able to portray Democratic candidates as products of Beacon Hill.

People in this state, which is dominated by the Democratic Party, will look at the Republican candidate as a balance to the Democratic legislature, said Maurice Cunningham, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

A Suffolk University poll conducted for the Boston Herald showed 51 percent of voters see Coakley as a Beacon Hill insider, while just 24 percent said she would be a reformer. Forty-six percent of those surveyed told Boston Globe pollsters in August that they preferred the governor and the legislative majority hail from different parties. Every one of the eight public polls released in the last two weeks has showed Coakley and Baker in a statistical tie.

In neighboring Connecticut, voters have the opportunity to weigh in with their views of Gov. Dannel Malloys (D) first term and they dont like what they see. Just 41 percent of voters and 36 percent of independents have a favorable view of Malloy, who stumbled over tax rebates he promised but failed to deliver, while 51 percent have an unfavorable opinion. Malloy is tied with former U.S. Ambassador Tom Foley (R) at 43 percent apiece, according to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, with an independent candidate taking 9 percent, in a state President Obama won with 58 percent of the vote.

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GovBeat: Amid voter anger, Democrats struggle to lock down Northeast governorships

Taxes, polls show, have historically been a better campaign issue for Republicans than Democrats. This year, Democrats appear to be testing that assumption.

Democrats are dominating television advertising about the topic, according to data compiled by Kantar Media Intelligences campaign media analysis group. Of 43,245 tax-related ads that aired in House races through the end of September, some 63% were backed by Democrats, the numbers show. The disparity was even starker in Senate races, where some 73% of tax-related television advertisements came from the Democratic side, leaving Republicans with just 27%.

The Democratic push to gain an edge on taxes may have gotten new momentum with the inversions issue. Over the summer, as Democrats started talking in highly political terms about tax inversions companies reincorporating overseas for tax purposes the issue appeared to give them a one-two punch: Labeling companies as tax dodgers gave them a populist message, and they could accuse Republicans in Congress of not acting on legislation to stem the practice. GOP lawmakersare pushing for a tax-code overhaul that would make the U.S. more attractive for businesses in the first place.

Now Democrats are extending the tax theme into the 2014 campaigns, trying to paint Republicans as the defenders of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

Who will win the Senate? See the latest polls and enter our contest.

Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar, said one reason Democrats have been able to seize on the issue is that Republicans have avoided promoting it. Republicans really havent had that much to say about taxes, Ms. Wilner said. They dont have an agenda, at least not one that they are promoting in their ads.

The muted Republican tax message is notable because House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) last month said that fixing the tax code was a necessity in order for Congress to lay the groundwork for economic growth and mobility. While Republicans have pushed for a tax overhaul, neither party is likely to tackle such complicated and fraught legislation in an election year. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman David Camp (R., Mich.) released an ambitious tax plan in February, but it quickly became clear that the GOP leadership would not rallying around it this year. Then Camp announced a month later that he was not running for re-election.

In the Senate, the tax-writing committee has also been in flux, as former Finance chairman Max Baucus, (D., Mont.) was appointed ambassador to China. His successor, Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) is eager to pass a tax overhaul. But Democrats are divided and the Senate leadership has shown little interest in the issue.

Republicans say that they are talking about taxes. Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, noted that RNC Chairman Reince Priebus last week gave a speech in which he said that overtaxing simply helps Washington D.C. Other Republicans have offered up tax plans, like to expand the child tax credit. If Democrats are running more tax-related ads, I have a feeling this has to do with us having a wealth of issues to talk about and them being fairly limited, she said.

Moreover, letting Democrats dominate the air war over taxes hasnt seemed to hurt Republicans in general. A September Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found that Republicans had a four-point advantage over the Democrats when people were asked which party would be better in dealing with taxes.

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Democrats Test Waters, and Dominate Airwaves, With Tax Ads

Washington National Democrats plan to drop $1 million behind their candidate forSouthDakota'sopen Senate seat, for the first time signaling that political operatives consider the race winnable and part of their drive to defend the Senate majority.

The investment from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will primarily go to television advertising for Democratic hopeful Rick Weiland, who is in a tough race against former Republican Gov. Mike Rounds for the seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Running as an independent is former Republican Sen. Larry Pressler.

Republicans are driving to gain six seats and the Senate majority. Rounds has been considered a favorite in the contest.

A businessman and onetime aide to former Sen. Tom Daschle, Weiland was not the national committee's preferred candidate in the race; they tried to recruit former Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin. But Weiland and Pressler have both stayed competitive, benefiting from Rounds' recent struggles and the complex, multicandidate race.

Rounds has come under scrutiny for a state-run federal program that let foreign investors earn green cards in exchange for investments in rural job-creating projects. TheSouthDakotaBoard of Regents announced Tuesday that a 2008 lawsuit brought againstSouthDakotarelated to the embattled EB-5 visa program has been dismissed and the state would not be liable for potentially millions in damages.

Democrats have sought to make the EB-5 program a political issue, accusing a Rounds appointee of costing the state money by dragging it into litigation. The lawsuit began while Rounds was serving as governor. Rounds' knowledge about the lawsuit has become an issue in the Senate campaign. He has said he was not personally aware of the lawsuit when it was filed, but Democrats have said he must have known.

Mayday PAC, a political action committee, said earlier this week it would spend another $1 million to back Weiland with TV ads.

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Democrats plan last minute ad blitz in South Dakota