James Coyne King has not received much attention in the Massachusetts Democratic primary for US Senate, to take on Scott Brown in 2012, and perhaps rightly so -- "served in the Carter administration" is not a compelling top-line qualification these days. But I have learned something that may be worth taking note of: Chris Keohan has agreed to join the campaign.

According to reports, Mitt Romney will report raising $18.25 million since officially launching his Presidential campaign in early April. This is way ahead of the rest of the field: Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul, and Jon Huntsman have each claimed a little over $4 million, while Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich say they're in the $2 to $2.

Setti Warren will report raising $122,000 for the just-ended 2nd quarter, in just under two months since he launched his campaign. A spokesperson tells me they think that's a "strong start," while Warren's been focusing mainly on meeting and speaking with Democratic committees, and trying to raise his name recognition, and so on.

Man, you could just feel the stupid last night, at the GOP Presidential debate up in Manchester, New Hampshire. The idiocy, the closed-information-loop spiral of nonsense reinforcing nonsense.

No, I'm not talking about the candidates; I'm talking about the media punditocracy.

Everywhere you look and listen, you're being told that the candidates, particularly Tim Pawlenty, ruined themselves by not attacking Mitt Romney last night.

Mitt Romney threw a great political bash yesterday, in Stratham, New Hampshire, to "officially" launch his 2012 Presidential campaign. He and his team do this stuff right. They held it on a lovely farm owned by Republican donors, located conveniently for both local and DC media to get to, got two or three hundred people to show, served chili, and put Romney up in ready-for-video staging with a speech loaded with bite-sized remarks.

"Joey" asks:

On the InTrade exchange for the 2012 Republican Nomination for President, whose shares are currently undervalued/overvalued in your mind?

Ecellent question. Rounding off, here are the current Intrade numbers:

29% Mitt Romney

19% Tim Pawlenty

17% Jon Huntsman

7% Sarah Palin

6% Michele Bachmann

"Boston Tom" asks:

Have we heard the last of the announced Democrats to challenge Scott Brown? If not, who is either (a) strongly considering a run or (b) definitely in for a run against Brown.

& "CMassPolitics" asks:

When Patty Murray and the DSCC say that they will have a front-line Senate candidate in a few weeks, do they mean Elizabeth Warren, one of the congressmen, someone else? It seems to me that Frank, Neal, Olver and Menino all publicly talking down the current candidates is an effort to keep the decks clear until Capuano makes a decision.

This afternoon, to stir up some online enthusiasm over Thursday's big Presidential campaign launch event, Mitt Romney launched a little Twitter hashtag fun. It didn't really go so well.

From his @MittRomney account, the would-be President Tweeted:

I believe in America & look forward to sharing my vision with the country.

As my regular readers know, I believe that the 2010 "Year of the Republican Woman" was a bust, and a huge missed opportunity for the GOP. Others disagree with me. OK -- now what next?

The 2012 Presidential race is not going to say much on the topic -- Michelle Bachmann will run, and we'll see how that goes. At the US House level it will be interesting to see whether the 2010 hoopla encourages more and better Republican women to run in 2012, but it's too early to tell.

Mike Huckabee won't run for President this time around, which is no great surprise. My prediction: he will endorse Tim Pawlenty, either shortly before or shortly after the August 13 Ames Straw Poll.

I think it's pretty clear he intends to endorse at some point, which makes sense. First of all, doing so -- and going through a period of deciding who to endorse -- plays up the perception of his importance in the party.

It strikes me as a big deal, in GOP 2012 politics terms, that Tim Pawlenty has come out firmly opposed to Congress raising the debt ceiling. Although he's toyed with the notion before, it's really just in the past few days -- including his speech at Friday's Tea Party rally in Boston -- that Pawlenty has flat-out called for a no vote.

In this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix -- in print and online now -- I have articles about Mitt Romney's path to the nomination, and the operatives who will be running the various New Hampshire campaigns. Plus, on the blog, my new rankings of candidates' chances!

I pegged these articles for this issue a few weeks ago, as signs suggested that Romney would be announcing sometime in mid-April, and I got lucky with his announcement (of a Presidential Exploratory Committee) earlier this week.

Much has happened in the two months and change since my last rankings, but my Top 3 remains the same: Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, and Mitt Romney.

I wrote at that time that I could only see realistic chances for five people -- those three, plus John Thune and Rick Perry. Thune has since opted out, and Perry has made very clear that he's not running.

To the surprise of nobody, Willard Mitt Romney -- aka the Barnstormin' Mormon -- today opened a Presidential Exploratory Committee, which is kind of like becoming an official candidate except without actually disclosing all your donors.

As it happens, I've just been putting the wraps on a column about Romney for this week's issue of the Boston Phoenix

At this point, there is enough speculation about whether Donald Trump has been replaced by a PCP-addicted gardener on the run from the Federales (a Google search for "Donald Trump" +"PCP" returns over 100,000 hits!!!) to beg the question of why, if it's untrue, he doesn't simply put an end to it by submitting to a simple retinal-scan identification procedure.