CHANGE: Northeastern Republicans Show Signs Of Life.

Connecticut might be the last place you’d expect Republicans to pick up a U.S. Senate seat this November, but it may happen. In the race for retiring Sen. Joe Lieberman’s seat, Linda McMahon, the co-founder of the highly profitable World Wrestling Entertainment, leads Democratic Rep. Chris Murphy by three points, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll.

Those numbers terrify Democrats, so much so that at the party’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., this week they frantically shuttled Mr. Murphy around town to meet deep-pocket Democratic donors.

Connecticut hasn’t had a Republican senator in modern times—with the exception of Lowell Weicker, who was so liberal that the Democratic Mr. Lieberman unseated him in 1988 by running to his right. Barack Obama carried the state by 23 points in 2008.

But Nutmeg State voters today are cranky, and even Mr. Obama is up only seven points on Mitt Romney in the latest Quinnipiac poll. One reason for their angst is tax-happy Gov. Dannel Malloy, who has raised income, sales and 70 other taxes and fees while insisting that taxpayers would be glad to pay the higher charges. They haven’t been—in part because the budget remains steeped in red ink and the unemployment rate remains persistently above the national average. Barron’s recently rated Connecticut the worst-run state in the country.

Hard to believe that the state that gave us Chris Dodd could have sunk to such depths. . . .