The deadly disease originating in Africa is an issue with scant traction in governor’s campaign, but the Senate challenger is using it as a cudgel.

GOP candidates are defending seats in Florida, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio and trying to defeat a Democratic incumbent in Colorado.

The Republican Governors Association has routinely promised donors special access to top leaders, documents show.

Late last month former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty made an appearance on the popular MSNBC show “Morning Joe.” The interview was timed to coincide with a major foreign policy speech that the GOP presidential hopeful was slated to give at the Council on Foreign Relations later that day.

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has hired NIck Ayers, a highly regarded GOP operative, as his campaign manager for an all-but-certain presidential bid. Ayers previously served as executive director of the Republican Governors Association, which helped the GOP pick up seven gubernatorial seats in 2010.

This week's $1 million from the RGA comes after it spent $830,000 as of its third-quarter filing in Minnesota.

Best Buy has given $25,000 to both the RGA and DGA, while United Healthcare has given $175,000 to the RGA and more than $125,000 to the DGA.

The Republican Governors Association turned heads yesterday when it announced that it raised $31 million in the third quarter of 2010 and had slightly more than that amount in the bank. To put that figure in perspective, it's three times the amount raised by its Democratic counterpart.