ANDOVER, Minn. — By all the standard metrics, Rep. Michele Bachmann should be coasting to victory. 
 
 Her name ID is off the charts. She has bundles of cash. And her newly redrawn suburban Twin Cities district has an 8-point Republican registration edge. 
 
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 (PHOTOS: Michele Bachmann's most controversial quotes) 
 
 Of course, Bachmann is anything but your standard politician. And after spending much of her current House term running for president and lobbing partisan rhetorical bombs, the tea party hero suddenly has a fight on her hands. 
 
 Hotel company executive Jim Graves, her Democratic opponent, has spent more than $500,000 of his own money trying to unseat the three-term congresswoman. Bachmann has given him plenty of ammunition to attack her as an ideologue who treats her day job as a side hobby as she continually seeks the national spotlight. 
 
 “Unfortunately, Michele Bachmann’s gotten distracted by her own celebrity,” one Graves TV ad says. “It’s cost Minnesota.” 
 
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 His campaign is plastering the district with pamphlets, declaring that “Congress needs more people with experience building businesses, not burning bridges.” On the stump, Graves tweaks Bachmann for her oft-repeated mantra in the presidential primary that she’s a native of Waterloo, Iowa. 
 
 It’s “insult to injury for the people of the 6th District,” he says. 
 
 The offensive has left Bachmann bruised. A poll released last week by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune found Bachmann clinging to a surprisingly close 51 percent to 45 percent lead. 
 
 Iowa Rep. Steve King, a tea party leader and one of Bachmann’s closest confidants, spoke with the congresswoman recently about her reelection battle. 
 
 “She’s in a competitive race,” King said in an interview. “My sense is she’ll be alright. But she’s in a test with a self-funded multimillionaire running against her.” 
 
 It’s not the first time Bachmann has faced a serious challenge. In 2008, she held off her Democratic opponent, 46 percent to 43 percent. That election came just weeks after she set off a national firestorm by declaring in a TV interview that then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama “may have anti-American views.” 
 
 To some Republicans, Bachmann’s decision to wage an ill-fated presidential bid has left her vulnerable once again. 
 
 “Graves, having a few things to talk about, is making a pretty decent run of it,” said Scott Cottington, a Minnesota-based GOP consultant and a former top staffer at the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Running for president and missing votes – that’s got some bite to it.” 
 
 Bachmann dismisses any suggestion that she could lose. She exuded confidence in a brief exchange with reporters after a Saturday evening campaign rally here, which was complete with a tea party activist dressed up in Revolutionary War attire. 
 
 “Actually, we’re doing pretty well. The polling data looks very, very good, and it’s just a function of working hard,” she said. “Things look good, and we’re happy.” 
 
 But Bachmann also stresses to voters that, with her presidential run now behind her, she’s focused on her congressional seat. A brochure her aides handed out at the rally used the word “Minnesota” nearly a dozen times. 
 
 “I’m Michele Bachmann, and I was running for president of the United States. Now I am running to be the next member of Congress from the 6th Congressional District, and I’m telling you one thing: You get your money’s worth when you send me to Washington, D.C.,” she said to wild applause. ||||| Democrat Shelley Berkley is corrupt. Republican Denny Rehberg is reckless. And the candidates in Wisconsin either personally profited off victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or refused to honor them on the House floor. 
 
 At least that’s what their opponents would have you believe in the nasty, attack-filled closing days of the battle for the Senate. 
 
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 In state after state, candidates are wooing undecided voters by trashing their opponents. In the process, they’re revealing a cold calculation: Personal assaults — no matter how ugly or off-base — can help seal the deal in a close race, especially when many voters are just tuning in. 
 
 “Negative advertising works, unfortunately,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) admitted to “CBS Evening News.” Flake is running for an open Senate seat in the Grand Canyon State. 
 
 The rise of big-dollar super PACs has also injected another, more unpredictable element into these races. These outside groups, which are allied with but not controlled by the Democratic or Republican parties, can engage in some of the most negative onslaughts while allowing the candidates to keep their hands clean. Super PACs such as Crossroads GPS and Majority PAC are dumping millions of dollars into TV ad campaigns leading up to Nov. 6. 
 
 With control of the Senate up for grabs, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Republicans need a net gain of at least four seats to win the majority — three if Republican challenger Mitt Romney wins the White House — and the outcome has enormous implications for the ability of the next president to push his agenda through Congress. 
 
 Heading into Election Day, Democrats are favored to keep control of the Senate, but the GOP still has hope with polls showing that a host of races remain exceedingly tight, including in Montana, Wisconsin, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Virginia, Arizona and Massachusetts. 
 
 So as the candidates try to get some separation in the polls, it should come as little surprise that some of the hottest races in the land have turned into backbiting affairs. 
 
 In Nevada, Republican Sen. Dean Heller doesn’t mince words about his Democratic opponent. 
 
 “The most unethical, corrupt person I’ve ever met in my life is Shelley Berkley,” Heller told reporters last month. He is bashing Berkley relentlessly over a House Ethics Committee investigation into whether she used her official position to aid her husband’s kidney transplant practice. Berkley has adamantly denied any wrongdoing. 
 
 And she’s throwing mud right back at Heller. She has run ads linking him to a convicted drug trafficker and played up a diamond-mining Ponzi scheme that occurred during his tenure as Nevada secretary of state. 
 
 Democrats tried unsuccessfully to tie Heller to Eddie Floyd — who was convicted of money laundering five years ago — during his 2006 House campaign. And the Ponzi scheme, which cost Nevada investors $64 million, was not uncovered until Heller was already in Congress. 
 
 “They do not like each other,” said Jon Ralston, the state’s top political commentator. “Heller has run a campaign, aided by Crossroads, in which he has portrayed her as without integrity. She has responded by tarring him as a onetime secretary of state too cozy with those he oversaw and as someone who would push granny off the cliff. … It has been ugly.”
– Michele Bachmann's path to re-election has gotten a lot bumpier than you might expect, reports Politico. It digs into the Minnesota rep's bid to hang onto her seat against a challenge from hotel exec Jim Graves, and finds that even with "off-the-charts" name recognition, more than $12 million in campaign cash, and a freshly redrawn district that bears "an 8-point Republican registration edge," the race is far from a slam-dunk. A recent poll shows her up 51% to 45%, perhaps in part due to Graves' efforts: He's called her "distracted by her own celebrity," swung at her presidential-primary emphasis on her Iowa birthplace, and has flooded the district with pamphlets claiming she "burns bridges"—though he acknowledges he's a "serious underdog." Politico looks at other tight and "nasty" races, with a specific eye on the Senate, which could flip to GOP control if the party can achieve a net gain of four seats (three if Romney wins): In Nevada, GOP Sen. Dean Heller has called challenger Shelley Berkley the "most unethical, corrupt person I’ve ever met in my life." For her part, Berkley has run ads tying Heller to a drug trafficker. In Arizona, Rep. Jeff Flake is battling Democrat Richard Carmona in a close race for the retiring GOP Sen. Jon Kyl's seat. GOP ads note that a perk-obsessed Carmona made his staff collect his dry cleaning; Democratic ads claim Flake "voted to kick cancer patients out of the hospital." In Montana, Democrat Sen. Jon Tester is hitting at challenger Rep. Denny Rehberg by way of a report containing fresh details on a 2009 boating accident. (Rehberg was a passenger on a boat driven by former state Sen. Greg Barkus, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.16.) Rehberg has called Tester an Obama "twin." Click for more on the heated Wisconsin race between Tammy Baldwin and Tommy Thompson, who have each attacked the other's post-Sept. 11 behavior.