As polls show the Massachusetts special election in dead heat, Coakley resorts to desperate measures… Just one week before the election, Coakley cozies up to Pharma and HMO lobbyists in Washington. The Washington Examiner reports: If Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, Democrat, hangs on to win the special election next week for Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat, she will have to thank the cadre of elite K Street lobbyists who hosted a high-powered, high-dollar fundraiser for her Tuesday night on Capitol Hill… Coakley said in a debate Monday night that her opponent Scott Brown “wants to go back to those Bush-Cheney policies that provide for the very wealthiest.” But the very wealthiest were the ones feting and funding Coakley the next night. The Coakley fundraiser, held at Sonoma wine bar in the shadow of the Capitol, was bankrolled mostly by Democratic lobbyists with health care clients, according to a copy of the invitation I received.”

Following the event, Coakley’s campaign resorted to physical violence when a DSCC staffer “roughed up” a reporter on the street. The Associated Press picked up a report by the Weekly Standard regarding the altercation: A Weekly Standard reporter says he was roughed up last night outside a Washington, D.C. fundraiser for Attorney General Martha Coakley by someone he believes is associated with her U.S. Senate campaign. John McCormack, the magazine’s deputy online editor, writes about the incident outside the Sonoma restaurant in an online dispatch entitled: “We Report, We Get Pushed.” According to McCormack’s account, Coakley took two questions from reporters after the event, but declined to respond to his question. McCormack wrote he asked Coakley whether she stood by statements she made during Monday’s debate about terrorists in Afghanistan.”

Here is video from FOX News on the altercation:

And finally, Coakley “dodged a pointed question” about her Afghanistan claim. CNN reports: Democrat Martha Coakley dodged a pointed question Tuesday about her claim during a Massachusetts Senate debate the night before that terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan. During Monday’s debate with Republican Scott Brown, Coakley questioned why the United States still has troops in Afghanistan. She claimed that the al Qaeda terrorists who were originally targeted by American military action have migrated elsewhere, rendering the mission moot. “They’re gone,” she said. “They’re not there anymore. They’re in, apparently Yemen, they’re in Pakistan.”

A new Rasmussen poll shows the reason for such anxiety: The Massachusetts’ special U.S. Senate election has gotten tighter, but the general dynamics remain the same. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley attracting 49% of the vote while her Republican rival, state Senator Scott Brown, picks up 47%.”